Old hippies to save the movie industry?

Okay, after a week of posting this and that analysis re the state of the movie business, this serendipitous NYT article crystallizes one big, fat, honking point:

Hollywood and older Americans have never had much use for each other. The 50-plus crowd doesn’t go to opening weekends or buy popcorn; a youth-obsessed Hollywood has happily ignored them.

But in the last few months an older audience has made a startling reassertion of its multiplex power. “True Grit,” “The King’s Speech,” “The Fighter,” “Black Swan” — all movies in contention for a clutch of Oscars on Sunday — have all been surprise hits at the box office.

And they have all been powered by people for whom 3-D means wearing glasses over glasses, and “Twilight” sounds vaguely threatening.

Hollywood, slower than almost any other industry to market to baby boomers, may be getting a glimpse of its graying future. While the percentage of moviegoers in the older population remains relatively small, the actual number of older moviegoers is growing explosively — up 67 percent since 1995, according to GfK MRI, a media research firm.

And the first of the 78 million baby boomers are hitting retirement age with some leisure hours to fill and a long-dormant love affair with movies.

“There is an older audience that is growing, and it’s an underserved audience, which makes for an obvious and important opportunity,” said Nancy Utley, co-president of Fox Searchlight, whose “Black Swan” has sold over $100 million at the North American box office. If the core audience for a particular film is over 50, she noted, “that’s now a gigantic core.”

I’ve been saying precisely this for years: Someone should make movies for the Baby Boomer and up crowd precisely because of the reasons listed in this article — largest demo group, most discretionary time, most discretionary income. And oh yeah, unlike some age groups, we don’t know the first thing about pirating movies online and actually prefer to see movies in a movie theater.

Could this mean that the people who will save us from endless sequels, remakes, 3-D, and ordinary movies are Old Farts?!?!

For more of the article, go here.

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