What we can learn from “Jack the Giant Slayer” (Part 1)
If there’s one day out of the week you want to be tracking news out of Hollywood, it’s Monday. That’s when the weekend post mortems hit: NYT, LAT, THR, Variety, Deadline, TheWrap, etc.
This past weekend, the big news was the poor opening of Jack the Giant Slayer. Why did it fail to find an audience? The NYT offers some suggestions:
Start with a glut of bedtime-story adaptations following the success of “Alice,” longtime film producers and box office analysts said. When lightning strikes in Hollywood it prompts an immediate imitation reflex among studios. But the results are rarely good, and this instance has been no different.
Universal’s “Snow White and the Huntsman” did the best, with about $400 million in global ticket sales. But the disappointments have been many: “Beastly,” “Red Riding Hood,” “Mirror Mirror,” “Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters.” “The problem is that the audience is really savvy today and judges each film as its own entity,” said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for Hollywood.com.
So audiences seem to have had it with ‘bedtime-story adaptations’.
Warner also got tangled in the elaborate computer-generated effects needed to make “Jack the Giant Slayer.” Digital Domain, a visual effects company hired by the studio to work on the movie, started to sputter financially while the film was unfinished.
Problems in post-production with visual effects.
Warner was also having a hard time striking the right tone — too scary could turn off families, too tame might alienate Mr. Singer’s fanboy base. The studio changed the title from “Jack the Giant Killer” last summer after deciding that “Slayer” would be a better draw for young men and would go over better with parents.
Studio wobbled when it came to its target audience: kids or adults.
The initial plan was to release the movie last June. But with the visual effects still not up to snuff, Warner bumped the movie to early March, a tricky time for attracting the broad audience that big-budget pictures need to earn back their investments. Disney succeeded with “Alice” in 2010 yet failed badly with “John Carter” last year.
But “Oz the Great and Powerful” was already camped out in mid-March, when spring break starts.
Shift in release dates was problematic.
Uninspired advertising was the next problem that “Jack the Giant Slayer” encountered, according to multiple people who worked on the movie.
A big push for “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” and the Oscar campaign for “Argo” strained Warner’s resources; the studio also continued to have a hard time deciding what audience to go after.
Less than stellar marketing campaign — and again the issue of target audience rears its ugly head.
It’s still possible Jack the Giant Slayer can break even if it does really well internationally, but that involves some issues, something we will take up tomorrow.
What can screenwriters take away from the movie’s performance?
* While it’s tempting to use preexisting fairy tales as the basis of a screenplay adaptation, proceed with caution. Just because there is the presumed value of ‘pre-awareness,’ you can’t assume audiences will respond like they did with Alice in Wonderland and Snow White and the Huntsman.
* One of the first questions you should ask of any story concept you develop is this: Who is my audience? And it should be specific, not “everyone” or “guys” or “gals,” but adults 35+ or tween girls or a young couple going on a date. That will not only help the studio in knowing how to position the movie, but also enable you to stay laser-focused on writing a story for a distinctive group of people.
Tomorrow: Part 2 of what we can learn from Jack the Giant Slayer.
For more of the NYT article, go here.
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