“The Heat” is a hit… now what?
Last Friday, I pointed out something that — to my knowledge — nobody else commented on:
Meanwhile we have an occurrence this weekend I can’t recall happening in the 25+ years I’ve been involved in the movie business: A pair of big blockbuster movies opening on the same day, both of which were notable spec script sales.
I was talking about The Heat and White House Down. Moreover the scripts sold 1 day apart in March, 2012, and opened on just about the same number of movie screens (3,181 and 3,222 respectively).
So what happened on their opening weekend?
The Heat: $40M.
White House Down: $25.7M
It remains to be seen how WHD does in the domestic and international market, but clearly The Heat is a hit, especially considering its relatively inexpensive budget of a reported $43M. Perhaps that is why Fox paid screenwriter Katie Dippold to write a sequel script all the way back in April.
A modestly priced action-comedy written by a woman, starring two women is a breath of fresh air amidst a summer filled with ginormous superhero tentpole movies. Hollywood should be jumping all over R-rated female comedies, right?
That’s what Karen Velby at Entertainment Weekly asks in this piece:
It’s great news that The Heat is going to make a ton of money. (Friday’s box office estimates has the Paul Feig-directed film bringing in $13.6 million, nearly $5 million ahead of the new Channing Tatum/Jamie Foxx sweaty action movie White House Down.) Great news for everybody involved. Though I worry how much we, the moviegoing public will benefit from the success. I dread the same game-changer stories on Monday about the surprise power of female dollars at the box office. The problem is it’s always the same “surprise”–the unexpected success of Something’s Gotta Give or Sex & the City or Bridesmaids or Magic Mike or Pitch Perfect. But the game seems to remain the same because then there follows the same unacceptably long slog in between movies for women to rally around.
Good point. Bridesmaids came out and did huge business. Then what? Nothing much changed. Will this be different? From THR:
The Heat opened to a rousing $40 million, signaling another major win for McCarthy and her Bridesmaids director Paul Feig. The pic also marks McCarthy’s best opening to date for a lead role — as well as the best opening ever for Bullock and Feig.
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The Heat, costing Fox a modest $43 million to produce, provided a needed respite for younger and older women weary of action fare stars (females made up 65 percent of the audience). In the film, Bullock stars as a strict FBI agent who is forced to team up with McCarthy’s rough-around-the-edges Boston street cop.
“We positioned this movie as a female summer movie event, and it worked. That was the entire thrust of the marketing campaign, but due to the popularity of the stars and the storyline, men also turned out,” said Chris Aronson, Fox’s president of domestic distribution.
The success of The Heat was driven by women, comprising 65% of the audience. But men “also turned out,” perhaps cutting into the audience for White House Down due to the fact both movies are in the action genre. Again evidence suggests there is a ‘there’ there. Will Hollywood accept the numbers… or not?
One key to what happens, if anything, is the perception that emerges about The Heat’s success. Do industry types chalk it up to simply to the strength of Melissa McCarthy and her increasing drawing power? Do they deduce it was the action-comedy story type, which seems to be having a resurgence, that drove business? Will any of the conventional wisdom that arises about The Heat include the fact it is (A) based on a spec script, (B) written by an established talent female writer, © starring two top comedic actresses, and most importantly (D) that there is an audience out there for something other than sequels, prequels, remakes, and movies based on preexisting brands.
Time will tell. While males typically show up in bigger numbers on opening weekends, if women hook into a movie, they tend to keep showing up, giving the film ‘legs,’ so it will be interesting to see what sort of percentage drop-off The Heat has in week 2, and how long its B.O. run can last against a relentless schedule of new movies being released each weekend through the rest of the summer.
But in my tiny non-cynical corner of the world where I really, really want to believe the studios are about making money the way they used to make money, by producing movies for a wide variety of viewers, not just young adult males, I hope the lesson screenwriters take from the success of The Heat is this: Be different. Don’t be afraid to twist the conventions. Invert the expected into the unexpected. As this article from the Los Angeles Times suggests:
“The Heat” has all the elements you’d expect from a buddy cop movie — the oil-and-water partnership, the car chases, the wisecracks — and a few you wouldn’t — for instance, a scene involving Spanx.
Faithfully conforming to the macho genre made famous by movies such as “Bad Boys” and “Lethal Weapon,” “The Heat” is also — curiously — summer’s only studio film built around female leads: Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy.
“If someone asks what you wanna do and you don’t really wanna work, you pick the most farfetched thing,” Bullock said. “This was it, a pairing where everyone was equal and you had these storylines that weren’t girly…. It had depth and humor and balls and action. It was just something I saw the boys getting to do.”
People are sick of the same old shit. Even Zack Stentz, who co-wrote Thor and X-Men: First Class warns “the more destruction you see, the more hollow it feels.” Amen!
And the fact is it doesn’t take much to create a story that feels ‘different,’ especially if you are willing to bend the genre or gender, and play against expectations.
As Paul Feig, director of The Heat and also Bridesmaids tweeted yesterday:
Just want 2 sincerely thank all of you for your overwhelming support of #TheHeat this weekend. Funny ladies can open movies! Got it, Movies?
Got it, movies, indeed!
Who saw The Heat this weekend? What did you think? Good? Overrated? A game changer? Or nothing will change? See you in comments for your thoughts.
UPDATE: Steve Zeitchik (LAT) weighs in today with this:
It’s here where the female-led comedy boom seems to be in such an important but precarious place. It’s worth noting that two of the crop of female-led R-rated comedies have shared a pair of specific elements — director Paul Feig and star Melissa McCarthy, who in addition to “The Heat” also collaborated on “Bridesmaids.” “Bad Teacher,” a third in the lot, involved different directors and stars, but it’s no surprise that Sony is also looking to duplicate its success by going for a sequel.
This category of movies has succeeded despite — or because — it hasn’t expanded in every lamebrained direction in the manner of the male pics. And we might well be better off if female-centric comedies (as in other areas of life) didn’t follow down the guys’ foolish path.
For the rest of the article, go here.
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