I've come across several fascinating articles about the movie industry lately since it is in a huge state of flux right now. Rather than post them all separately, I consolidated them all into one long post that gives a great overview of where things stand now, which I'm sure is differently than how things will look in ten years.
Spielberg And Lucas Predict
‘Massive Implosion’ In Film Industry
(By Bryan Bishop, The
Verge.com, June 13, 2013)
George Lucas and Steven Spielberg think the film industry is
heading towards a cliff. The pair behind some of the most successful franchises
in movie history think that conservative programming choices and rapidly
evolving distribution schemes have set the stage for a massive upheaval — and
internet-based services may become the dominant medium when moviegoing as we
know it crashes and burns. The duo were
joined during a panel at the University of Southern California by Microsoft's
president of interactive entertainment Don Mattrick, who played backup with the
occasional Xbox reference as Lucas and Spielberg took center stage. While the
focus was ostensibly on the future of the entertainment medium- USC just opened
a new building for the school's Interactive Media department- the topic quickly pivoted to the state of film
distribution in a world where everything from games to television are competing
for consumers' attention.
"A studio would rather invest $250 million in one film
for a real shot at the brass ring. People
simply have a limited amount of time, said Spielberg. "We can't expand the
week. We can't expand the 24-hour cycle. So we're stuck with so many
choices." The enormous amount of available content has pushed movie
studios to be more conservative, banking on the power of event films to break
through the white noise of a crowded marketplace. "You're at the point
right now where a studio would rather invest $250 million in one film for a
real shot at the brass ring," he said, "than make a whole bunch of
really interesting, deeply personal — and even maybe historical — projects that
may get lost in the shuffle because there's only 24 hours. There's going to be an implosion where three
or four or maybe even half a dozen of these mega-budgeted movies are going to
go crashing into the ground," Spielberg said, "and that's going to
change the paradigm again."
Barreling from opinion to opinion throughout the discussion,
Lucas presented a clear vision of this post-crash entertainment landscape: a
world where going to the movies is no longer a casual outing, but a high-end
experience more in line with Broadway. "What you're going to end up with
is fewer theaters," he said. "Bigger theaters, with a lot of nice things.
Going to the movies is going to cost you 50 bucks, maybe 100. Maybe 150."
It will be more in line with sporting events, with films playing in these
high-end cinemas for as long as a year. "And that's going to be what we
call ‘the movie business.' But everything else is going to look more like cable
television on TiVo."
As Lucas painted it, the shift will present new
opportunities both for consumers and filmmakers. "It's not going to have
cable or broadcast," Lucas said. "It's going to be the internet
television." Viewers will have
access to a wide variety of programming, "usually more interesting than
what you're going to see in the movie theater. And you can get it whenever you
want, and it's going to be niche-marketed, which means you can really take
chances and do things if you can figure out there's a small group of people
that will kind of react to it." That
kind of niche focus has already paid dividends for cable networks like HBO, he
said, which have lower thresholds for success than a movie studio or
traditional network — and are able to produce less-conventional programming as
a result. "All you need is a million people," Lucas said. "Which
in the aggregate of the world is not very many people. And you can actually
make a living at this. Where before you couldn't."
Spielberg offered a softer touch — even turning wistful when
discussing the increasingly narrow theatrical window movies have to deal with
today. "It used to be, when I first started making movies it was really
cool, my movies stayed in theaters for one year," he said. "If it was
a hit, it was a year long. Raiders [of the Lost Ark] was in
theaters for a year. E.T. was in a theater for a year and four months...
That was an amazing situation, back then."
Today's movies are in hotels two weeks after they hit theaters, he said.
"There's going to be eventually day and date with movies" — when
films are available on demand at home the same day they hit theaters —
"and eventually there's going to be a price variance. You're going to have
to pay $25 to see the next Iron Man. And you're probably only going to
have to pay $7 to see Lincoln."
Lucas jumped in: "I think eventually the Lincolns are going
to go away and they're going to be on television." Spielberg smiled, saying, "And mine
almost was! This close. Ask HBO — this close!"
Despite the chaos, both men see the changes as something the
industry will overcome, with Lucas taking particular relish in the
opportunities the disruption is providing — adamantly stating that "now is
the best time we can possibly have."
Comparing the industry's panic over fleeting DVD sales and crumbling
business models to the 2008 economic crash, he stressed that now is the time to
look forward. "It's a mess. It's total chaos," Lucas said. "But
out of that chaos will come some really amazing things. And right now there are
amazing opportunities for young people coming into the industry to say, ‘Hey, I
think I'm going to do this and there's nobody to stop me.' "It's because all the gatekeepers have
been killed!"
VOD ‘Definitely
Not Offsetting Decline On DVD’
(By
Rachel Abrams, Variety.com, March
6, 2013)
It’s fairly
well-accepted that subscription VOD platforms are helping to ease the pain from
declines in DVD sales. But for Hollywood, the question has become “Can that
happen fast enough?” “DVD does seem to
be going away, and it is being replaced by this new digital format, and there
will be the question of ‘Well how much dollar for dollar are we making up? ’ ”
said Eli Baker, a partner at fund Hemisphere Capital Management. “And the
answer is that it’s very difficult to pinpoint.” Baker spoke on a panel at the Film Finance
Forum West presented by Winston Baker in association with Variety on Tuesday. Hemisphere operates in the somewhat safer
space of the studio tentpole, and has co-financed pics including “The Smurfs,”
“World War Z” and “The Adventures of Tintin.” The globally commercial nature of
those projects have helped Hemisphere hedge its bets against declines in disc
sales (Blu-ray still shows signs of growth), but it’s still paying close
attention to how digital streaming platforms are changing the value of its
content. “I don’t know whether we’re at
an inflection point, but clearly there’s a reason to be optimistic,” Baker
said.
These streams are
becoming a more vital resource for financing, especially in the independent
sector. But with only a few years of historical data from SVOD players like
Netflix, it’s hard for both financiers and film execs to quantify just how many
digital dimes they can rely on. And with many financiers more risk-averse than
before the 2008 financial collapse, there’s less of an appetite to lend or
invest against unpredictable cash flows.
“Now what we’re seeing is something really meaningful,” said DreamWorks
CFO Larry Wasserman at Tuesday’s panel. Wasserman noted that while SVOD and
other digital platforms barely factored into financial modeling a decade ago,
they could now help a “good title” earn upwards of $10 million for DreamWorks
or a comparable situation.
But, Wasserman
also pointed out, those platforms are “definitely not off-setting the decline
on DVD.” Homevideo could typically earn between 70% and 80% of the box office
before 2008, but at least two panelists said they now use estimates of between
50% and 60%. If digital dimes ever end
up making up for lost analog dollars, it likely wouldn’t be for years. And that
means that Hollywood has to adjust its cost structures to account for revenues
that have changed drastically since DVD’s heydey. The two biggest areas that need fixing:
Production and marketing budgets. While
the studios are playing mostly in the tentpole big-budget space, budgets of
$150 million and up can’t save a picture. “Jack the Giant Slayer” is the most
recent example of this: The Warner Bros. pic opened to under $30 million
million at the domestic box office on a budget of nearly $200 million. (And
therefore likely upward of $100 million in P&A on top of that.)
“You really need
to adjust the cost side of the business,” said Scott Parish, CFO and COO of
Alcon Entertainment (not about “Jack” specifically). “You can’t rely on an
opening weekend anymore … especially for younger-skewing movies … the word gets
out, and you see the falloff happen a lot quicker.” Two big places where belts need to be
tightened: Upfront talent deals and P&A.
While the industry has seen a slight surge in the number of P&A
funds looking for films, more money doesn’t mean more butts in seats (or in front
of a computer). “I think there’s a lot
of room for innovation on the marketing side,” said Doug Hansen, president of
Endgame Entertainment and CEO of Endgame Releasing. Hansen pointed toward
social media as one example of a cost-conscious way to create buzz around a
film. “There’s a lot of money spent (in
marketing) that just gets blasted out, and if we could only be more
laser-specific to … hit the right people for movies and save some money on that
side, or at least be more efficient on what you’re spending (so that) you’re
really hitting the right people.”
Wasserman and
Parish said their respective films “Transformers” and “The Blind Side”
illustrated this point well. On each film, the executives said, upfront talent
deals were cut in favor of making participants like Sandra Bullock “true equity
participants. If we can take this SVOD
bump and keep the cost of talent down … to me that’s a win,” said moderator
Clint Kisker, director of finance firm Screen Capital Intl.
Movie Theaters Cut Print Show Times
As Web Gains
(By David Twiddy, Associated
Press, August 22, 2009)
Filmgoers who have long turned to the local newspaper to
find theaters and show times for movies may have to start looking elsewhere as
theater chains rethink the value of paper and ink in a digital age. The top two U.S. chains, Regal Entertainment
Group and AMC Entertainment Inc., have begun in recent months to reduce or
eliminate the small-type listings showing the start times for movies at
individual theaters. Theaters typically must pay newspapers to print that
information. Looking to cut costs, the
theater chains are instead directing consumers to their Internet sites or
third-party sites, like Fandango, Moviefone or Flixster, which offer those
listings for free and make money from the fees they charge for selling advance
tickets to movies. Many of those sites also feature film reviews and movie
trailers.
The effort may be gaining some
traction, as U.S. Internet traffic to AMC's Web site rose 21 percent in July
compared with a year ago, according to comScore Inc., while visits to Regal's
Web site were up 18 percent. The Newspaper Association of America doesn't track revenue
that newspapers generate from print movie listings, but believes the amount is
relatively small. Yet every dollar counts as newspapers are forced to cut
staff, reduce the frequency of print editions or even close completely amid the
recession.
And readers have come to expect such listings. Seeing them
curtailed or disappear could give them yet another reason to abandon their
subscriptions. "For a reader, some
things that are ads are actually considered news," said Mort Goldstrom,
the NAA's vice president of advertising. "Ads for concerts and things at
clubs, for restaurants and movies - that's a reason people read." He said the pullback in listings will hurt
theaters by reducing their visibility among potential customers, sending those
dollars to competitors that still buy listings or to other sources of
entertainment like plays or clubs. Readers
formulating weekend plans "may look at something broader than
Moviefone," he said. "That's the piece that newspaper Web sites have
and niche (entertainment) publications have."
Kansas City-based AMC helped shine a spotlight on the trend
last month when it pulled its listings from The Washington Post, prompting the
newspaper's ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, to deflect readers' ire in his blog. "Most readers believe that it was the
newspaper's decision," Alexander wrote, comparing it to The Post's recent
move to cut back on the newspaper's television listings. "In fact, movie
listings in the print product are paid advertising, and it was AMC's decision
to stop paying."
The Post declined further comment, and Alexander wrote in
his column that the newspaper wouldn't tell him either how much revenue the AMC
ads provided. AMC spokesman Justin Scott
said daily movie listings are expensive and the theater chain believes that
that money would be better spent promoting its value programs or other theater
events. "In an era when many
moviegoers are using alternative resources to access show times, AMC has chosen
to reallocate its show-time information methods," Scott said. Scott wouldn't say where else AMC has cut its
listings and how much it has saved. But he said "so far we've seen no
impact on attendance."
Regal, based in Knoxville, Tenn., said its in-theater and
online surveys found 60 percent to 80 percent of respondents saying they
received their movie listings online. "So
we've evaluated our newspaper strategy on a case-by-case basis and in a number
of markets have eliminated our newspaper ads," spokesman Dick Westerling
said, adding that in other markets Regal theaters run movie listings only on
the weekends. The company has eliminated
ads in such markets as San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis and Orlando , Fla.
Carmike Cinemas, a Columbus, Ga.-based chain that operates
primarily in smaller towns, also has cut back on newspaper ads in some markets,
in most cases just buying listings on the weekends. "Out of the 50 markets where we've done drastic
reductions, I've received one complaint," said Dale Hurst, Carmike's
director of marketing. "I'm not trying to be a soothsayer but everyone
seems to be going high-tech. They want it now." Some newspapers don't charge for movie
listings, considering them akin to community meeting notices or television
listings. In markets where the listings are free, Regal and AMC said they've
continued to run movie listings. The NAA's Goldstrom said, though, that he knew
of no newspaper that has dropped fees as a result of the theaters' pullback.
Movie studios, meanwhile, have been cutting their own
newspaper advertising as well. The newspaper trade group said national
movie-related display advertising totaled $141.5 million in the first quarter
of 2009, or 51 percent lower than five years ago. Ken Doctor, a media analyst with Outsell Inc.,
said some newspapers have responded by teaming up with Web sites that sell
movie tickets, gaining a small revenue stream on each ticket sold, or by
selling movie studios sponsorships for parts of their Web sites. For example,
he noted that The New York Times displays small ads for movies when a user
wants to e-mail a news story to a friend. In general, though, Internet ad rates haven't
matched what print commands.
And as social-networking sites like Twitter and Facebook
become the place to learn about which movies are hot and where they're playing,
he said, newspapers and their Web sites risk losing their readers if they
cannot quickly figure out how to tap in. Andrew Lipsman, director of industry analysis
for comScore, said the online sites have become more interactive than
newspapers. Although newspapers may try to add similar features to their own
sites, he said, the damage may be done. "Once a behavior has moved from the print medium to
online, in many cases people go to the online brands," Lipsman said.
"They won't necessarily go to the newspaper."
Opening Now In New York, Los Angeles ...
And Washington?
(By Ned Martel,
Washington Post, December 8, 2011)
Starting Friday, moviegoers in New York and Los Angeles get
to white-knuckle it through the Cold War thriller “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier,
Spy,” starring Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. Washingtonians, however, have to
wait an extra week. The movie isn’t slated for release in the nation’s capital
until Dec. 16. Doesn’t make sense, does
it? After all, this is where Jackie told Jack that she did not want to evacuate
when Fidel and Nikita had us on the brink, where spooks haunted suburban parks
and Chinese restaurants and embassy parties. We’re on a first-name basis with
the Cold War here. Why not open the film in Washington instead, or at least
simultaneously with L.A. and the Big Apple?
It’s a sad fate that our region’s moviegoers know too well:
Washington gets films (especially the really good ones) after New York and Los
Angeles, sometimes even after Boston, Chicago and San Francisco. Back in the
day, when there were only so many prints available and film distributors
invented a pecking order, we were deemed second-rate. Washingtonians were
supposed to have other things on their minds (pressing global concerns,
perhaps?), and marketers devised a mysterious and self-serving metric for how
long it took the cultural conversation to reach us.
In the 1980s, it was four weeks. Now, with their formula
adjusted, the gurus say it’s more like two weeks — which is how long we’ll have
to wait in January, when the Meryl-as-Maggie biopic “The Iron Lady” comes our
way. Apparently, we’re still far behind the times. Except we’re not, and there’s no good reason
for Washington to take a back seat to New York or Los Angeles anymore. This is
a city that starts conversations, and its citizens are fluent in cinema — and
not just movies about pressing global concerns.
On top of that, Washingtonians exhibit two behaviors that marketers
value most: We make money, and we spend money. We’re buying all sorts of
cognoscenti things- e-books and tagliatelle pasta, Mercedes Benz and Michael
Kors- but movies still come to us via a
creaking cultural conveyor belt that studios are too entrenched to modernize.
As moviemaking got more radical in the late 1960s and early
1970s, Hollywood got more conservative with its marketing money, deciding that
adventurous films needed time to entice adventurous audiences. “If you go all
the way back . . . to movies like ‘Bonnie and Clyde,’ ‘Easy Rider’ . . . all of
the great movies of that era, they were platform-released,” explained Tom Bernard,
a Sony Pictures Classics executive.
“Platforms” were imaginary tiers that started with cineaste audiences in
the most populous cities- New York and Los Angeles- and descended to the hinterlands, with hype
orchestrated region by region. “It took awhile for people to learn about the
film,” Bernard recalled. “There was only the telephone and the newspaper.” But why persist with this system now? “We
have this argument almost weekly,” lamented Jamie Shor, a film publicist who
recently opened D.C.’s West End Cinema and who has encouraged distributors to
think anew about the region. Washington readers consume all the coverage —
premiere shots on E!, interviews on Vulture.com, reviews in Variety — but can’t
act on it, she said. Before the movie ambles into town, “the national campaign
dies off,” Shor explained. “Many times, you lost the window to capitalize on a
really engaged audience.”
But there is good news: Some box office numbers have D.C.
inching ahead of other markets. “At this point, Washington, D.C., can be seen
as a higher-performing market for us than Los Angeles, Boston and Philadelphia.
But not New York,” said Neal Block, head of distribution at Magnolia Pictures.
“Your audience is a mix between keyed-in and politically inclined and also
ready for standard art house,” said Block, who noted that Tilda Swinton’s
florid “I Am Love” drew crowds here last year. “I believe in D.C. as a market,”
he continued, calling those who don’t “dinosaurs.” Sony’s Bernard similarly saw big ticket sales
for “Midnight in Paris,” Woody Allen’s time-travel adventure. The film was
popular nationwide and remained so in Washington for months, morphing from a
literati romance for the older crowd to a date movie for younger couples. “You
can open Washington, D.C., now with five or six screens with competitive
grosses,” said Bernard — by which he means we have more places to see movies,
and they’re packed.
This season, Washington is showing what it can do: “Margin
Call’s” critique of Wall Street is well-timed, and local audiences are buying
lots of tickets, just as they did with topical documentaries such as “Food,
Inc.” and “Page One.” And the Nov. 9 release of Clint Eastwood’s “J. Edgar”
marked a rare occasion- the film opened in Washington at the same time as in
New York and Los Angeles, before being blasted to other markets two days
later. Yes, “J. Edgar” depicted the
federal bureaucracy ably and condensed a half-century of complicated history,
but here’s the bad news: “J. Edgar” depicted the federal bureaucracy ably and condensed
a half-century of complicated history. So will the movie industry look at
regional box office results for “J. Edgar” and decide that Washington didn’t do
its part to sanctify an Important Film? Or was the nearly $35 million in ticket
sales in four weeks a success that started here in Washington? The studios
refuse to share their analysis.
Film execs haven’t realized that wonky movies are not all
that plays well here. D.C. moviegoers have a knack for finding films that speak
to them — and to others like them. Take 2006’s “Little Miss Sunshine,” which
opened first in New York and Los Angeles but became so popular in Washington
that its long run at Landmark’s E Street Cinema was the most lucrative of any
booking in the country, according to Stephanie Kagan, who manages bookings at
Landmark’s theaters at E Street and Bethesda Row. “Weirdly, last summer’s ‘Mao’s Last Dancer’
was a sleeper hit,” Kagan said. “It was based on a true story about a dancer
that came over from China for a ballet career here.” Crucial marketing
strategy: outreach to local dance companies, big and small, telling them that
their kind of movie was coming soon.
“Things that are very, very specialized and look like it would have a
tiny, tiny niche audience work well here,” Kagan said. If there’s a movie that
looks like it would appeal intensely to two people, those two people will show
up and tell everyone they know to do the same. “There’s a movie for everyone
here and someone for every movie here,” Kagan said.
Small Washington movie houses have been getting monthly
lessons in District demographics: Hip-hop lovers came in large numbers to see
the documentary “Beats Rhymes and Life: The Travels of A Tribe Called Quest.”
Pacific Islander audiences turned out for “Amigo,” the John Sayles narrative
feature about the Philippine-American War. Hispanic viewers showed up for “The
Way,” starring Martin Sheen and Emilio Estevez making a religious pilgrimage in
Spain. Gay men thronged to see a one-night stand flower into love in “Weekend.”
And “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaucescu” lured former intel types, Iron
Curtain emigres and practitioners of word-and-image polemics who are making
Washington an international capital of documentary film.
New York will always be a land of plenty — there are simply
more screens and more moviegoers — and Los Angeles is the obvious cinematic
company town. But Washington is emerging as a megaphone city, a place where
citizens often organize around a movie and amplify its values. Early access to movies, therefore, would work
for both Hollywood, which would benefit from a smart national forum, and
Washington, which tends not to discuss movies after the conversation elsewhere
has wrapped up. Mike Feldman, who worked for Al Gore, the presidential
candidate, got to know this phenomenon when introducing Al Gore, the star of
the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.” “The former vice president giving a
keynote address about global warming — it doesn’t immediately scream ‘box
office success,’ ” recalled Feldman, who works at the Glover Park Group, a
political strategy firm. Through a
concerted effort, columnists got to see the film early, as did science writers
and environmental analysts. “That then gave the broader theater public
permission to embrace it as a film,” Feldman said. Insider thumbs-up happened
early and often.
Feldman’s firm took an entirely different film, 2009’s “The
Hurt Locker,” and made sure the D.C. military community had a chance to chime
in early. Absorbing the coverage, moviegoers saw that combat veterans gave the
film their approval. “The community of EOD teams — you didn’t know these people
existed, right?” Feldman said, referring to the military’s “explosive ordnance
disposal” experts. “They looked at it and said, ‘This captured what we went through.’
When it came time for Oscar consideration, there were audiences that had the
feeling this was real.” Sony Picture
Classics has taken a similar tack to hype movies, Bernard said, recalling Jimmy
Carter’s visits to Washington in support of Jonathan Demme’s documentary about
him, “Man From Plains.” Similarly, insiders got to see “Inside Job,” the
financial industry post-mortem that aired to what Bernard called “the shadow
community” — pundits and lawmakers assembled by Sony’s in-town lobbyist. After these
influencers see a movie, “it goes through the government and translates back to
where everybody’s from.”
In contrast, “The Ides of March” came and went; Washington can’t be relied on to rescue a film just because it’s political and stars George Clooney. Indeed, Feldman and his colleagues constantly tell potential Hollywood clients that “it doesn’t need to be about campaigns, politics or elections to be relevant to a community that considers issues and ideas,” he says. “It starts with you seeing the film, and you might tweet about it, you might blog about it, you might talk to a friend who’s a producer of a dayside cable show who might need a segment that is not a live shot from the Capitol or the White House.” Washington has many such players who come out in droves to movies about all sorts of subjects, and their reactions can have all sorts of resonance, in ways that the sacrosanct “per-screen average” in our local Zip codes might never detect. “If you walk into the Loews in Georgetown on a Saturday night on opening weekend of any given title,” Feldman observed, “it’s hard to throw your Snickers bar across the room and not hit someone who has an audience, a following, a reach, some influence.”
Former senator Chris Dodd (Democrat- CT) recently considered
the mutual Washington-Hollywood obsession at a dinner honoring his arrival as
chief lobbyist for the Motion Picture Association of America. He said he has
seen directors depict Washington intrigue ever since his father was a senator
and he was a page, and Otto Preminger was given access to shoot “Advise and
Consent” scenes in the Senate subway. He has seen Clooney expound on the Sudan,
winning far more attention than the average Capitol Hill orator. But he noted
that Hollywood does not necessarily realize how much movies mean to political
power players. “It is part of my job to convince the industry that this is an
important place to be,” he said. At the
soiree, a piano player banged out movie themes and guests guessed at the
titles- with blazing success. “For two or three hours, Iraq never came up, the
debt ceiling never came up,” Dodd recalled. “I was surprised how many had such
knowledge.”
Rating High on Hollywood's List: Immature Audiences
(By Ann Hornaday, Washington Post, August 23, 2009)
If
2009 is remembered for anything in American cinema, it might be as the year
grown-ups and Hollywood finally agreed to call it quits. This is the year when such slick, star-driven,
adult-oriented movies as "State of Play," "Duplicity,"
"The International" and "The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3"
underperformed at the box office. And when talking-toy movies like "Transformers:
Revenge of the Fallen" and "G.I. Joe" raked in millions. Suddenly, movies for grown-ups are in the
cross hairs. "I'm caught up all in it," Spike Lee said recently with
a rueful laugh, noting that the sequel to his 2006 thriller "Inside
Man" is hanging in the balance. "I'm waiting on Universal," he
said. As it happens, Universal is the
studio that has come to symbolize the current plight of movies for adults,
having released both "Duplicity" and "State of Play," as
well as "The Soloist" and "Funny People," considered
box-office disappointments. Last week, Universal Co-chairman Marc Shmuger told
the Los Angeles Times that 2009 "has certainly been a humbling year.
First, there's a real need to be making movies for less money. Second, there's
a real premium on sharper, more marketable concepts. Audiences are clearly
seeking escape from their lives." Translation:
Hello, "Paul Blart." Sayonara, "Frost/Nixon."
The
trend has been under way for some time now: With movies becoming more expensive
to make and market, Hollywood has increasingly gone for sure bets. Studios want
movies -- preferably based on an already successful book or video game,
preferably featuring non-stars who need not be paid much -- that are guaranteed
to bring in audiences not just once but twice or three times. Franchises like
"Lord of the Rings," "Harry Potter" and
"Twilight," with their sequels, prequels and just plain 'quels, fit
that bill nicely. Alternatively, small,
modestly budgeted films that become sleeper hits -- the "Little Miss
Sunshines" and "Junos" of the world -- also are prospering,
simply because even with smaller-than-"Transformers"-size audiences,
it's easier for them to make their budgets back. (It looks like this year's
winner in the category will be the winsome romantic dramedy "[500] Days of
Summer.")
The
result is that only two types of movies -- big-budget blockbusters or
poverty-row strivers -- seem to be making profits these days. The middle range
of high-end, relatively sophisticated movies made with glossy production values
and well-paid stars might do well with critics and some filmgoers but, between
star salaries and the high costs of marketing, fail to earn their keep. And
many observers worry that this will influence Hollywood's decisions about which
projects to greenlight. Note: These
aren't movies described as "quirky" in their newspaper ads. Nor are
they "gritty," "edgy," "offbeat" or
"groundbreaking." These are movies that are simply smart, well-made
and directed at filmgoers with discerning but not necessarily adventurous
tastes. The year 2006 provides a useful core sample: That was when such movies
as "The Devil Wears Prada," "The Departed" and "The
Pursuit of Happyness" made the Top 20 list of box-office earners, and
Lee's "Inside Man" came in close behind.
Part
of the problem is that, with services like Netflix and video on demand making
it easier for adults to avoid the parking headaches, high concession prices and
annoying ads of the modern-day multiplex, more and more grown-ups are looking
at the Friday paper and saying, "Why bother?" One distributor that has capitalized on this
trend is IFC, which this year released Steven Soderbergh's "Che" and
the foreign films "Gomorrah" and "A Christmas Tale" in
theaters and on its cable channel simultaneously. On Wednesday, it will release
"Passing Strange: The Movie," Lee's documentary version of the
Broadway show by performance artist Stew, the same way (it's also opening at
the IFC Theater in New York), on a new pay-per-view channel, Sundance Selects. IFC initially saw the simultaneous release of
films in theaters and video on demand (known colloquially as
"day-and-date") as ideal for small independent films, says IFC Films
President Jonathan Sehring, who notes that "Che" and
"Gomorrah" enjoyed roughly equivalent audiences in both venues. But
he foresees a time when more mainstream movies are released the same way.
"It's a way for films that either have bigger budgets or are really smart
adult-oriented films to reach that audience," he says, "when
megaplexes are programming [blockbusters] and studios are having a tough time
doing anything else."
Would
Lee consider the day-and-date strategy for, say, "Inside Man 2"?
"Nope!" he says, without hesitation. "I've had my share of
firsts already, so let somebody else take some bullets." He adds, however,
that "it's gonna happen. I think we're getting [to the point where] the
same day you see a movie in the theater, you can see it on video on demand or
download the DVD to your home or computer or your telephone. "Everybody and their mama has a 52-inch
screen in their house," Lee says. "It's not necessarily a luxury item
anymore. It's like having a toaster. And they have sound systems and Blu-ray
machines. So in actuality, what people are viewing in their living rooms might
be better than what they might see in these run-down theaters. As a filmmaker,
I prefer for people to see my films in the theater. But if it's a choice
between not seeing them at all, I'll take seeing them at home."
Meanwhile,
observers agree that, if adult-oriented mainstream dramas and comedies are to
survive, Hollywood
Producer
Laura Bickford ("Traffic," "Che," "Duplicity")
agrees with Thompson that more stars are going to have to emulate George
Clooney, who has often taken a salary cut to make good movies. He starred in
"Michael Clayton" for a price far below his customary $15 million,
making it possible for the 2007 thriller to make a profit with a $93 million
box-office take. "Movies have to be made for less," Bickford says,
"and the interests of financiers and talent have to get more aligned,
where everyone gets less up front and shares the upside." Another Hollywood habit coming under scrutiny
is the pathological focus on the Oscars. Increasingly, studios have saved their
classy productions for the end of the year, spending tens of millions of
dollars on Oscar campaigns that boost awareness and prestige -- and, the
studios hope, ticket sales. The strategy flopped this year, Thompson says.
"Even with films that got good reviews," she says, "like
'Frost/Nixon,' 'The Reader' and 'Milk,' their Oscar campaigns cost more than
the money they yielded."
Hollywood
Reporter writer Carl DiOrio, who in April wrote about the struggles of
adult-oriented dramas, says it all comes down to one thing: marketing.
"It's less about whether there will be actual motion pictures and more
about whether they're concepts that are easily marketed," he says.
"You need to let the viewer understand what their moviegoing experience is
going to be like in a very simple TV message, and that's not easily done unless
you have something that can be boiled down to a [one-sentence synopsis]. And
the [typical] modestly budgeted adult-oriented drama of the character-driven
variety doesn't really lend itself to a convenient marketing hook." (Last winter's "Taken" and the
current "Julie & Julia," both adult-aimed movies that have done
well, exemplify DiOrio's point. One is a fast-moving action thriller about a retired
CIA agent who must rescue his abducted daughter. The other features a beloved
actress playing an equally beloved American icon, in a story set in romantic
postwar France
6 Things the Film Industry Doesn’t
Want You to Know About
(By Ashe Cantrell,
Cinematic Listology, September 8, 2011)
You may already be a film industry cynic. Maybe you think
Hollywood is a barren wasteland, devoid of creativity and originality. Maybe you’re
sick of seeing talented people get ignored and vapid hacks get splashed all
over the trades. Maybe you’re tired of 3D everything and having to re-buy your
movies every five to ten years. I’m not
here to dissuade you of any of that. Hell no, I’m here to make it worse. Get
ready, because this is some of the rottenest shit of which the film industry is
capable. These are the things so terrible that Hollywood has to cover them up,
lest God see their sin and smite them accordingly (and keep various government
entities and lawyers off their backs, of course). If you still had any kind thoughts toward
Hollywood, I suggest you prepare yourself for crushing disappointment. But first, I’d like to give a very huge shout
out and thank you to writers C. Coville and Maxwell Yezpitelok for their help
on this article. You guys are great! And
now back to the shit storm, already in progress:
6. Tricky
Hollywood Accounting
Here’s a basic example of Hollywood Accounting: A studio
makes a movie. The studio distributes the movie itself, and although the
distributor is technically a separate company, they both belong to the same
parent company. Also, the distribution arm sets whatever fees it wants. If they
want to charge themselves eleventy quintillion dollars for distribution, they
totally can. Then, even if the film earns billions of dollars in box office
receipts, they’re still technically in debt (to themselves) and thus haven’t
turned a profit.
Sound ridiculous? It happens all the freaking time. David
Prowse, the guy who was in the Darth Vader costume in the original trilogy of
Star Wars (before being ousted by that douche Hayden Christensen in the special
edition) has never been paid for Return of the Jedi because it hasn’t turned a
profit after nearly 30 years. That’s after dozens of home video and theatrical
re-releases. (All the merchandising money goes to Lucas directly, of course.) Similarly, someone leaked Warner Bros.’
accounting sheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix onto the
internet, showing that the film that had grossed about $1 billion worldwide had
lost $167 million on paper. Winston
Groom, the writer of Forrest Gump was told that the film based on his work
wasn’t profitable. Of course, he got the last laugh when they came to him asking
if they could turn the sequel, Gump and Co. into a film as well, and he
reportedly told them, ”I cannot, in good conscience, allow money to be wasted
on a failure.” In other words, “Go fuck yourself.”
And then there’s Art Buchwald, whose spec script got stolen
by Paramount (remember that, it’s going to come up later), and got turned into
Coming to America. When he took them to court and sued for a percentage of the
profit, Paramount was totally cool with it, because according to their books,
it hadn’t made any kind of profit, so they didn’t owe him one red fucking cent.
The judge later ruled that it was “unconscionable” for Paramount not to pay
Buchwald something in a settlement. Otherwise, he’d have to ask Paramount to
open their books for the courts to review. Paramount quickly backed down and
settled with Buchwald instead.
5. Extorting
Theaters
Ever wondered why popcorn, something that costs $.25 a bag
on Planet Earth, costs $7 at the movies? Here’s a hint: it’s not because of the
reconstituted pig flesh that they call butter.
Movie theaters have had to look for more and more ways to increase
revenue, like jacking up the prices of things at the concessions stand and
adding a dozen ads to the beginning of each film. Why, when new releases are
constantly breaking records and making obscene amounts of money? Because film
studios don’t like the theaters getting their beak wet.
Movie theaters operate on a kind of sliding scale. The first
weekend of a movie’s release, the profit is split heavily in the studio’s
favor, typically around an 80/20 split. The second weekend, it may change to a
70/30 scale, and so on. It’s even rumored that some major blockbuster films
like Avatar are released with 90/10 or even 95/5 splits. Now keep in mind that
exceptionally few films do very well after the first week of their release. So why do the theaters take these awful
deals? Because if they don’t, the studio is under no obligation to lease their
films to that theater, so they can just totally bounce if they want to. If that
happens, the theater has no films to show at all, and then what have they got
to draw people in? Overpriced hot dogs?
4. Fake Reviews
Have you ever seen a trailer for a shitty movie on TV and it
has one of those blurbs that’s like “…stunning…,” and maybe a soothing voice
reads it aloud? You may joke with your friends that the rest of that quote is
“a stunning pile of horse shit.” Turns out, that actually happens. It’s not a
joke at all. Marketing departments just plain don’t give a fuck. For example,
one critic’s review of Live Free or Die Hard got shortened from “hysterically
overproduced and surprisingly entertaining” to “hysterically… entertaining.”
Sometimes they’ll even take the blurb from parts of the review where the critic
was referring to a different movie entirely or the genre as a whole, like when
a blurb used for Definitely, Maybe turned out to be from the critic’s
description of the romantic comedy genre as a whole and not his actual thoughts
on the film.
Another fun trick Hollywood likes to use is trying to woo
critics with free screenings, food, set visits, and other goodies. The people
who take the bait are called quote whores. If your film needs a good review,
they’re there to give it. One of the most infamous is a critic named Earl
Dittman, who is the film critic for a publication called Wireless Magazine.
You’ve probably never heard of Wireless, and that’s because they apparently
have zero subscribers and no web presence, and yet that doesn’t stop film
studio marketing departments from using his blurbs like they’re gold. In fact,
Dittman was the center of a lot of controversy when an e-mail he sent to Fox
contained not one, but ten different blurbs for the movie Robots and
instructions for the studio to pick and use whichever one they liked best. But
at least Earl Dittman’s a real guy.
David Manning, however, is a different story. In 2000, Sony
Pictures created the fictitious Manning and claimed that he worked for The
Ridgefield Press, a real newspaper. Unfortunately, they didn’t foresee someone
actually asking the paper if they’d ever heard of the guy, because, you know,
they hadn’t. All of his blurbs were concocted by Sony Pictures’ marketing
department. Fox pulled similar shit, using footage of employees pretending to
be ordinary movie-goers for promotional material.
3. Copyright
Bullshit
Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that copyright sucks
and it should be abolished, because I think it’s a useful tool for creators who
want to protect their work from douchebags who might rip it off. What sucks is
the way that big film companies use copyright as a bludgeon to keep people away
from their intellectual property. See,
originally, copyright was limited to a maximum of 28 years. If you created
something, you had 28 years to get all you could out of it, because after that
it became public domain. Since those days, copyright terms have been extended
numerous times, and each time one company has been leading the charge: Disney.
Each time the copyright on Steamboat Willie is about to run
out, Disney loses their shit and lobbies the government to pass another
copyright extension law. Although a popular explanation for this is that they’d
lose the rights to Mickey Mouse if Steamboat Willie were to become public
domain, that’s not the case. Mickey Mouse is actually a trademarked property,
and trademarks are perpetual as long as the company continues to use it. (If
you haven’t noticed, Disney uses the fuck out of Mickey Mouse.) The simple fact
is that Disney still makes lots of money selling DVDs and merchandise relating
to Steamboat Willie.
In fact, Duke University compiled a list of all of the films
that could have entered the public domain this year if Disney hadn’t argued for
the law to be changed in 1976. Movies like On The Waterfront and Seven Samurai,
and even the first two books of The Lord of the Rings would be in the public
domain now, free for anyone to use and enjoy and remix and learn from. As it
stands now, Steamboat Willie remains under copyright until 2023, and even fairly
boring things like the very first issue of Sports Illustrated are protected
until 2050. You can imagine what that means for movies that came out this year.
Here’s something funny, though: Some legal experts believe
that Steamboat Willie may have never been registered for copyright at all.
Nowadays, the very act of creating something gives you copyright, whether you
register it or not, but back then, you had to specifically register the
copyright for the works you wanted protected, and you had to label it in a very
certain way afterward. A Disney researcher, Gregory Brown, believes that Walt
Disney may have improperly formatted the copyright notice on Steamboat Willie,
thus making the copyright void. In fact, a law student at Arizona State
University researched Brown’s claims and agreed with him. Not only that, but a
George Washington University copyright expert agreed with both of them and
published a paper saying so. It was at this point that Disney took notice of
the issue and actually threatened to sue him for “slander of title.” Holy shit,
Disney.
2. Strangling
Consumer Choice
If you’re like many
millions of other Netflix customers, you were probably pissed off when they
jacked up their prices last month, effectively doubling the cost of some people’s
subscriptions. And before that, you were probably annoyed when they started
putting out their DVDs 28 days after they went on sale. And maybe you’re mad
now that they’re losing their contract with Starz because they had an argument
about money.
It’s almost like Netflix got tired of making money or
something. Why do they keep doing all this stupid stuff? Well, simply put, it’s
not really their fault. You see, film studios aren’t the biggest fans of things
like Netflix, Redbox, or Hulu. You know, those things that allow you to pick
and choose what you want to watch when you want to watch it for a reasonable,
affordable price. The reason is that it eats into their sales of DVDs and
pay-per-view rentals, for which they get a much higher cut of the profit. As
DVD sales drop, movie studios panic.
So, instead of adapting their business model to a format
that consumers obviously prefer, they’d rather try to turn back the clock and
take away the distribution methods people love and enjoy. That means demanding more
money from Netflix to lease their movies, ever-increasing delays between a
DVD’s release and its availability out of Redbox machines, and putting Hulu, a
service created by the content creators themselves, up on the auction block
when it ended up being too successful. The Time Warner CEO has even taken to
blasting Netflix in the press for the last year, describing them as a “fading
star.” You’d fade, too, if someone wrapped their hands around your throat.
1. Stealing
Scripts
Remember Art Buchwald from earlier? The guy who almost got
screwed by Paramount before a judge stepped in and told them to cut that shit
out? Well, there’s a little more to that story. A few years before the big
court case, Buchwald was already a successful humor writer and satirist, even
winning himself a Pulitzer for his work. Then he set his sights on Hollywood,
and he pitched Paramount an idea for a movie about an African prince who moves
to America to find a bride. He suggested Eddie Murphy as a lead actor. (That’s
right, kids. People used to want Eddie Murphy in their movies.)
Paramount took the pitch, but then had trouble getting it
off the ground. Eventually, the rights returned to Buchwald and he pitched it
to Warner Bros. Shortly after they began work on it, though, Warner Bros.
killed the project. Turns out, there was a similar film going into production
at Paramount. It was a movie about an African prince who moves to America to
find a bride. Oh, and it starred Eddie Murphy, who was also given writing
credit. That movie, of course, was Coming to America. Buchwald was furious and
immediately took Paramount to court, which instigated the events discussed back
in the Hollywood Accounting entry. So Buchwald didn’t just get screwed, he
almost got double-screwed. But he’s not the only one.
Turns out, some of those crazy people who constantly crop up
and say Hollywood producers ripped off their scripts aren’t so crazy. In fact,
it turns out that it’s a dirty little secret of Hollywood’s that stealing
scripts is almost commonplace. Jeff Grosso wrote a script about his life as a
professional Texas Hold ‘Em player and had it turned down by Miramax, only for
them to turn around and begin production on an identical project that became
the Matt Damon film Rounders. Another
writer, Reed Martin, pitched his idea and, like Buchwald, even recommended the
perfect actor for his script– Bill Murray. Months later, an exceptionally
similar movie, Broken Flowers (starring Bill Murray, of course), went into
production without Martin. Although Martin’s claim survived many attempts at
dismissal, it saw a trial in which a jury sided with the studio. Due to the
high cost of the appeals process (an approximated $800,000), he has not filed
an appeal.
The problem is that while scripts can be copyrighted, ideas
cannot. So, if Hollywood gets pitched an idea and likes it, but doesn’t want to
deal with the whole “paying for the script” thing, they can just hire someone
to write another script based on “their” idea. Since they have much bigger,
meaner lawyers than your average spec script writer, the writer kinda gets
boned. So even the mythical “original idea” in Hollywood? Yeah, it may not be
so original after all.
Ratings System Runs Adrift
(By Ann Oldenburg,
USA TODAY)
One suggested solution: a universal
ratings system. In 1999, Hillary Clinton
called for one in the wake of the Columbine High School shootings, carried out
by two video-game-obsessed teenagers. Last week, the senator from New York was
among those on Capitol Hill reiterating that idea, calling for "ratings
systems that work" and legislation to ensure they do. Making the issue even more critical, Walsh
says, is the changing media world. "We are moving into an area of media
convergence, and as we do that, the lines separating all these forms of media
will disappear. A child with a remote will be able to switch from a Web site to
video-on-demand to television - all with
the click of a remote. As we go from screen to screen, it makes more sense to
have a universal rating system." By
the way, the answers to the above questions are: TV-Y7-FV is a TV rating denoting content that
is appropriate for age 7 and up and contains fantasy violence. PG-13 movies, for children 13 and up, are
allowed "one use of the harsher sexually derived words," according to
the Motion Picture Association of America.
Xbox's Conker: Live and Reloaded, with a fighting squirrel, is rated M
for Mature, age 17 and up.
"The system is
working effectively now," says Patricia Vance, president of the
Entertainment Software Rating Board, which assesses video games. "There's
nothing broken." San Andreas, she says,
"is an isolated incident." No
ratings system would have caught the content problem in the game because it
could be found only by a downloaded modification to the game, she says. And parents, she says, are fully aware of
what games are rated. Vance points to a 2003 study commissioned by her board
and conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates in which researchers found
that parents believed ratings were "about right" 77% of the
time. In the movie world, Jack Valenti,
former head of the Motion Picture Association of America who still oversees the
ratings system, says there's nothing wrong with his process, either. Every year
parents are surveyed to see whether they think it's working. "Last year,
80% of all parents with children under 13 found the ratings very useful to
fairly useful. Members of Congress don't have an 80% approval rating," he
says.
Since 1985 in the music industry, the
Recording Industry Association of America has provided record companies with
the warning sticker that alerts parents to explicit lyrics. There isn't a
ratings system, per se. In 2002, when politicians called for stricter warnings
for music, Hilary Rosen of the RIAA told The New York Times it was unnecessary
because a large number of adolescents no longer bought music in stores.
"They simply go to the Internet and download it." And in TV, networks say they're complying
with the Federal Communications Commission mandate that a rating be placed on
every episode that airs. "Surveys
we have seen suggest parents are using them," says Dennis Wharton of the
National Association of Broadcasters. "The ratings system that we have put
forth is not meant to replace the role of parents, but it's a tool to empower
parents." As for being too confusing, he says, "We think the parents
who truly value these descriptors understand them."
So, asks the software ratings board's Vance,
"Where's the problem?" The
answer: It varies from medium to medium.
"I think there's inconsistency," says Tara Paterson, mom and
founder of Justformom.com. "We have a Spider-man game rated E for
Everyone, but Spider-man's kicking and punching the bad guys. "I think things should be rated, but
parents have to pay attention to what the rating is." Gregory Keer, dad and founder of
familymanonline.com, says the industry should be held accountable, but not
blamed. "It's always the battle between who is ultimately responsible, and
ultimately it's the parent." The
industry, he says, will always be concerned with "the bottom-line dollar,
but I don't think they're evil and I don't think they want to corrupt kids. I
think they look for the easy route." Parents, he says, get "lazy and
say we're mad at the ratings board. But PG is parental guidance - that's a
parent's job."
In movies, a lack of consistency in the
ratings that parents are supposed to follow draws the most criticism. A study
released last year by the Harvard School of Public Health found that a decade
of "ratings creep" has allowed more violence and sex into films,
suggesting that movie raters' standards have grown more lenient. For example,
Disney's 1994 movie The Santa Clause was rated PG while the 2002 sequel, The
Santa Clause 2, which had comparable content, was rated G. Valenti says in defense, "Let me ask you
a question: Do you think the society has changed? Well, the ratings system has
changed as well. The ratings system tries in its own halting way to change with
it." He concedes, "A PG-13 today might have been an R 15 years
ago." But, he adds, "it depends on the movie." TV has drawn even more criticism. "The TV ratings are meaningless,"
says Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council. In a study released in
April, the council found that "there is no inter-network consistency in the
ratings, nor is there even intra-network consistency." On top of that, parents don't heed the
warnings. A March report by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that for a
majority of kids there are no rules in the household about media use. Where
there are rules, often they aren't enforced or they apply only to how many
hours children watch TV, not to content.
In each medium, there is a circular
argument. Parents look to producers and the government for guidelines and
regulations, the government looks to the producers and the industry to
self-censor, and producers expect parents to make their own decisions regarding
their kids. To help fill the void,
outside ratings sources have cropped up. Various non-profit parent
organizations offer reviews. Last week,
a coalition of organizations such as corporations, entertainment companies
& family groups launched a new Web site - PauseParentPlay.org - dedicated
to educating parents about ratings.
Other for-profit groups are tackling the topic, too. For example,
Kids-in-Mind.com employs a staff of five critics who list scenes that could be
considered objectionable in movies and DVDs, and they hope to expand to video
games. It's advertiser-driven, or subscribers can pay $12 a year for access to
the same content without ads.
David G.
Kinney, CEO of Los Angeles-based PSVratings available at
www.currentattractions.com, says he has the solution to the universal ratings
problem with his database-driven technology.
It assigns ratings to movies, TV series, DVDs and video games based on
rules designed by a board of educators, child psychologists and child
psychiatrists, all of whom are parents.
Another alternative: legislation. Several bills are pending in states
pushing for harsher penalties to be levied against retailers who sell adult-content
videos to minors. Gov. Rod Blagojevich
just signed the Safe Games Illinois Act, making Illinois the only state in the
nation to ban the sale and rental of violent and sexually explicit video games
to children. "Parents don't need
government to raise their kids. That's their job," Blagojevich said.
"But government can help them protect their children from influences they
may not want their kids exposed to."
In response, the Entertainment Software Association is leading a fight
to reverse the bill on First Amendment grounds. The group said in a statement,
"The law will have a chilling effect on free speech."
Eight
Lessons From Summer Movies
(By Ann Hornaday,
Washington Post, 23 August 2013)
The summer
of 2013 might be remembered best as the Season of the Collapsing Tentpoles. As
mega-budget spectacles such as “White House Down,” “The Lone Ranger” and “After
Earth” fell apart at the box office, little engines that could — one with a
name that was literally “Mud” — proved they could not only survive the
competition, but thrive. As we learned
last summer, which featured such debacles as “John Carter” and “Battleship,”
quality still counts. Studios, which generally avoid movies that are novel or
risky or not based on a comic book because they’re “execution dependent,” may
slowly be realizing that everything’s execution dependent, no matter the
star, source material or special-effects budget.
That goes for enduringly reliable family films as well — in
the pile-up of animated kids’ movies this summer, the triumphs happened also to
be the best: “Despicable Me 2” and “Monsters University.” Those victories, plus
a few out-of-left-field hits and misses, made the past few months particularly
instructive for anyone willing to pay attention. Before we all go back to
school, here are a few lessons learned that Hollywood may want to study up on
when it plans our next summer vacation.
1. Even the biggest stars burn out
Two of the biggest stars on the planet — Will Smith and
Johnny Depp — got rude awakenings this summer when their movies flopped. “The
Lone Ranger” proved that a dusty period Western based on a 1930s radio serial —
surprise! — won’t connect with young audiences or international viewers,
regardless of explosions, spectacular stunts and the magical Mr. Depp. “After
Earth” has done better overseas, but probably not well enough to turn a genuine
profit.
2. It’s not just about U.S.
Even if non-U.S. box-office receipts can’t save a debacle
such as “After Earth,” they have tipped the scales in favor of “Pacific Rim,”
especially in China: Guillermo del Toro’s science fiction fantasy
underperformed when it opened domestically but has more than made up for that
in other markets, largely because of del Toro’s instinctively global point of
view and knack for cosmopolitan casting.
3.Women aren’t the enemy, Hollywood
One of the biggest surprise hits of the summer was “The
Heat,” the only big-popcorn movie to feature a female lead (two, in fact:
Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy). And another dark horse can attribute
its success to women: Brad Pitt’s zombie chase movie, “World War Z,” went from
disasterpiece to Brad’s highest-grossing film, thanks to the women who made up
a whopping 50 percent of its audience.
4.Black films don’t ‘overperform.’ They perform, period.
With successes such as “Fruitvale Station” and “Lee Daniels’
The Butler,” this was a great summer for African American stories on screen.
And they became hits not just because they were good, but also because they
were made for modest budgets and marketed with savvy and sensitivity. Like the
Tyler Perry oeuvre, rom-coms such as “Jumping the Broom” and “Think Like a Man”
and “42” before them, this summer’s films by and about African Americans
connected with just the right audiences — whether that meant the Weinstein Co.
reaching out to black churches to promote “The Butler” or Codeblack
Entertainment, which produced “Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain,” researching Hart’s
ticket sales and Twitter and Facebook followings. The result? “Let Me Explain”
was one of the sleeper hits of the summer, grossing a little more than
$32 million (which, coincidentally, is also the gross from ticket sales from
Hart’s last tour).
5.A rising tide can’t lift all boats if the harbor is too
crowded
The movie season broke box-office records this summer,
earning north of $4 billion. But John Fithian, president and chief executive of
the National Association of Theatre Owners, suggests that studios left money on
the table by crowding their movies into an already busy three-month period.
“Some of those movies would have done a lot better somewhere else. A family
title moved from summer to February could have increased its gross. Even some
of the popcorn action movies released somewhere else could have increased their
gross,” Fithian says. “There are 12 months on the calendar. We continually urge
distributors to spread their movies out.” (Hear that, “White House Down”? Or
“Croods”? Or “Turbo”?)
6. Ditch the cape . . .
“You don’t need superheroes to succeed,” Boxoffice.com’s
Phil Contrino says. “If you look at the one studio that had one of the best
summers it would be Universal — minus ‘R.I.P.D.’ — and they had ‘Fast and
Furious 6’ and ‘Despicable Me 2,’ [neither] a superhero franchise. This idea
that you have to take a superhero and make eight movies out of that character
is not the only way to go.” That goes for franchises in general: Series
installments such as “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters” and “The Smurfs 2”
arrived in theaters gasping for air, but original horror films such as “The
Conjuring” and “The Purge” — as well as the literary adaptations “The Great
Gatsby” and “World War Z” — defied Hollywood’s tired reboot-sequel-franchise
paradigm. (Of course, “World War Z” has reportedly launched another franchise,
and the world goes round and round.)
7. . . . And let serious dramas save the day
One of the most profitable movies of the summer was “Mud,”
an atmospheric bayou thriller starring Matthew McConaughey in the title role;
after opening in theaters in April, it played all summer long, still attracting
audiences even when it was available on DVD. Similar successes include “The
Place Beyond the Pines,” the midlife romance “Before Midnight,” Woody Allen’s
“Blue Jasmine,” the coming-of-age comedy “The Way, Way Back” and the
emotionally gripping urban drama “Fruitvale Station.” All of these winners
prove that “the audience is really craving classic filmmaking,” says Howard
Cohen, co-president of Roadside Attractions, “Mud’s” distributor. “ ‘Mud’ had
Matthew McConaughey, it had some ambition, it had some scope, it was accessible
for the whole country, it was not culturally exclusive. But most [important],
it was a movie for grown-ups, the kind that’s not getting made anymore outside
movies engineered for Oscars.”
8. We may be getting over 3-D here, but it isn’t over over
there
After a mad rush to convert movies and theaters to 3-D in
the wake of blockbusters such as “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland,” the 3-D
market has matured in the United States. Less than a third of box-office
revenue for two of the summer’s biggest hits — “Despicable Me 2” and “Monsters
University” — came from 3-D premiums. Says NATO’s Fithian, the success of 3-D
“breaks down geographically as well as [by] genre. Three-D did pretty well
internationally this summer, but not so hot domestically.” Genre-wise, he says,
“family titles, particularly involving young children, aren’t working on 3-D as
well as we thought.” Meanwhile, an adaptation of a Jazz Age novel by F. Scott
Fitzgerald does gangbusters. Says Fithian, “Three-D’s not going away in the United
States, but we have to be more selective in the movies where we expect it to
work.”
Longing For The Lines That Had Us At Hello
(By Michael Cieply,
New York Times, October 19, 2010)
Have we heard the last (truly memorable) word from
Hollywood? Probably not, but it’s been a
while since the movies had everybody parroting a great line. Like, say, “Go ahead, make my day.” That was
from “Sudden Impact,” written by Joseph Stinson and others, more than 27 years
ago. Sticky movie lines were everywhere
as recently as the 1990s. But they appear to be evaporating from a film world
in which the memorable one-liner — a brilliant epigram, a quirky mantra, a moment
in a bottle — is in danger of becoming a lost art.
Life was like a box of chocolates, per “Forrest Gump,”
released in 1994 and written by Eric Roth, based on the novel by Winston Groom.
“Show me the money!” howled mimics of “Jerry Maguire,” written by Cameron Crowe
in 1996. Two years later, after watching “The Big Lebowski,” written by Ethan
and Joel Coen, we told one another that “the Dude abides.”
But lately, “not so much” — to steal a few words from
“Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of
Kazakhstan.” Released in 2006, that film was written by Sacha Baron Cohen and
others and is one of a very few in the last five years to have left some lines
behind. Maybe it’s that filmmaking is
more visual, or that other cultural noise is drowning out the zingers. “I’m at
a loss, because the lines for a while were coming fast and furious,” said
Laurence Mark, who had us at “hello” as a producer of “Jerry Maguire,” and is a
producer of “How Do You Know,” which is written and directed by James L. Brooks
and scheduled to open just before Christmas. (In 1987 Mr. Brooks mapped the
media future in seven words from “Broadcast News”: “Let’s never forget, we’re
the real story.”)
If film lines don’t stick the way they used to, Mr. Mark
said, it is not for lack of wit and wisdom in Hollywood
In truth, a good deal of thought went into the line. “When
we came on, one of our conditions was that the line had to be in the movie,”
said Matt Manfredi, who, with his writing partner, Phil Hay, joined in revising
a script by Travis Beacham. A
predecessor film in 1981, written by Beverley Cross, had used the line,
alongside another formulation that called for the Kraken to be “let loose,” Mr.
Manfredi recalled. “In terms of poetry, ‘release’ worked for us,” he said. “Machete don’t text,” from “Machete,” written
by Robert Rodriguez and Álvaro Rodriguez, also traveled well on the Internet
this year. But “can you imagine comparing that to ‘round up the usual
suspects?’ ” said Mr. Mark, invoking a much-quoted line from “Casablanca
Written by Julius Epstein, Philip Epstein and Howard Koch,
based on a play by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, with uncredited work by
Casey Robinson, “Casablanca” placed six lines in a list of 100 top movie
quotations compiled by the American Film Institute in 2005, with help from a
panel of 1,500 film artists, critics and historians. “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn,” was
first on the list. Those words, of course, come from “Gone With the Wind,”
whose screenplay, based on the novel by Margaret Mitchell, was written seven
decades ago by Sidney Howard and a number of uncredited writers. Only one post-’90s line made the institute’s
ranking. That would be “My precious.” The line came in 2002 from “The Lord of
the Rings: The Two Towers,” written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Stephen
Sinclair and Peter Jackson, based on a novel by J. R. R. Tolkien.
When the film institute updates its list in another five
years, at least a handful of lines from the current era will perhaps have aged
into greatness, alongside classics like “Forget it, Jake, it’s Chinatown,” from
“Chinatown,” with a screenplay by Robert Towne, in 1974, and “Hasta la vista,
baby,” from “Terminator 2: Judgment Day,” written by James Cameron and William
Wisher Jr., in 1991. “I drink your milkshake”
is a possibility, said Bob Gazzale, the institute’s chief executive. Those
words, connoting triumph, came from “There Will Be Blood,” written in 2007 by
Paul Thomas Anderson and based on a novel by Upton Sinclair.
Great movie lines might communicate insouciance
(“La-di-da”), rage (“You talking to me?”) or something more cosmic (“May the
Force be with you”). But they are almost never so much about Noël Coward-like
turns of phrase as simply capturing “indelible character moments,” says Tom
Rothman, a chairman of the Fox movie operation, who has also introduced regular
showings of classic films on the Fox Movie Channel. (In a window display at the headquarters of
the Writers Guild of America West and the Writers Guild Foundation here, some
of the more elaborate wordsmithing comes from Billy Wilder and his various
associates. Even Mr. Coward would be hard-pressed to one-up a line from a
script by Mr. Wilder and Charles Brackett for “The Major and the Minor.” The
line is spoken by Robert Benchley, and Mr. Wilder attributed it to him, although
Mr. Benchley, in turn, apparently attributed it to his friend Charles
Butterworth: “Why don’t you get out of that wet coat and into a dry
martini?”)
And Mr. Rothman cautions against believing that the great
lines are all behind. “It just takes a
little time to sort the wheat from the chaff,” he said in an e-mail last week.
Mr. Rothman predicted, for instance, that “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps,”
with a script by Allan Loeb and Stephen Schiff, would have a keeper with “Stop
telling lies about me, and I’ll stop telling the truth about you.” (Written by
Stanley Weiser and Oliver Stone, the original “Wall Street,” from 1987, will
ever be remembered for declaring that “greed, for lack of a better word, is
good.”) Meanwhile, a call to Eric Roth,
the veteran screenwriter behind movies like “Munich” and “The Curious Case of
Benjamin Button,” found him scratching to find an unstoppable one-liner in “The
Social Network.” That film was written
by Aaron Sorkin and directed by David Fincher, and in a bit of dialogue that
inspired Web parodies galore, it has the Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg
“talking about taking the entire social experience of college and putting it
online.”
Mr. Roth said that he deeply admired “The Social Network,”
and that he thought that it could secure its place in history with a simple bon
mot. But “is there a great line” in it?
he pondered. Its best lines, Mr. Roth said, were not as “sophomoric” as his own
much-quoted speeches from “Forrest Gump.” Who could forget “Stupid is as stupid
does”? Neither are they quite as angry
as Paddy Chayefsky’s mad-as-hell work in “Network,” from 1976, he noted. But, Mr. Roth said, there is still time for
viewers to find a word or two that will sum up “The Social Network” — much as
“plastics” did for “The Graduate,” with a script by Calder Willingham and Buck
Henry, in 1967. Besides, memorable words have a way of popping up when they are
least expected. “The minute you write this, you’ll be proved wrong,” Mr. Roth
predicted. As Quentin Tarantino wrote in
“Inglourious Basterds,” just last year, “That’s a bingo.”
AFI’s Top 100 Movie Quotes
1 "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Rhett Butler
2 "I'm going to make him an offer he can't
refuse." Don Vito Corleone Marlon Brando The Godfather 1972
3 "You don't understand! I coulda had class. I coulda
been a contender. I could've been somebody,
instead of a bum, which is what I am."[2] Terry Malloy
Marlon Brando On the Waterfront 1954
4 "Toto, I've got a feeling we're not in Kansas
anymore." Dorothy Gale Judy Garland The Wizard of Oz 1939
5 "Here's looking at you, kid." Rick Blaine
Humphrey Bogart Casablanca
6 "Go ahead, make my day" Harry Callahan Clint
Eastwood Sudden Impact 1983
7 "All right, Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my
close-up."[3] Norma Desmond Gloria Swanson Sunset Boulevard 1950
8 "May the Force be with you." Han Solo Harrison
Ford Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
9 "Fasten your seatbelts. It's going to be a bumpy
night." Margo Channing Bette Davis All About Eve 1950
10 "You talkin' to me?" Travis Bickle Robert De
Niro Taxi Driver 1976
11 "What we've got here is (a) failure to
communicate."[4] Captain Strother Martin Cool Hand Luke 1967
12 "I love the smell of napalm in the morning!"
Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore Robert Duvall Apocalypse Now 1979
13 "Love means never having to say you're sorry."
Jennifer Cavilleri Barrett Ali MacGraw Love Story 1970
14 "The stuff that dreams are made of."[5] Sam
Spade Humphrey Bogart The Maltese Falcon 1941
15 "E.T. phone home." E.T. Pat Welsh E.T. the
Extra-Terrestrial 1982
16 "They call me Mister Tibbs!" Virgil Tibbs
Sidney Poitier In the Heat of the Night 1967
17 "Rosebud." Charles Foster Kane Orson Welles
Citizen Kane 1941
18 "Made it, Ma! Top of the world!" Arthur
"Cody" Jarrett James Cagney White Heat 1949
19 "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this
anymore!" Howard Beale Peter Finch Network 1976
20 "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful
friendship." Rick Blaine Humphrey Bogart Casablanca
21 "A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his
liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti." Hannibal
22 "Bond. James Bond." James Bond Sean Connery[6]
Dr. No[7] 1962
23 "There's no place like home." Dorothy Gale Judy
Garland The Wizard of Oz 1939
24 "I am big! It's the pictures that got small."
Norma Desmond Gloria Swanson Sunset Boulevard 1950
25 "Show me the money!" Rod Tidwell Cuba
26 "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?"[8]
Lady Lou Mae West She Done Him Wrong 1933
27 "I'm walking here! I'm walking here!"[9]
"Ratso" Rizzo Dustin Hoffman Midnight Cowboy 1969
28 "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'"[10]
Ilsa Lund Ingrid Bergman Casablanca
29 "You can't handle the truth!" Col.
30 "I want to be alone." Grusinskaya Greta Garbo
Grand Hotel 1932
31 "After all, tomorrow is another day!" Scarlett
O'Hara Vivien Leigh Gone with the Wind 1939
32 "Round up the usual suspects." Capt. Louis
Renault Claude Rains Casablanca
33 "I'll have what she's having." Customer Estelle Reiner When Harry Met Sally... 1989
34 "You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just
put your lips together and blow." Marie "Slim" Browning Lauren
Bacall To Have and Have Not 1944
35 "You're gonna need a bigger boat." Martin Brody
Roy Scheider Jaws 1975
36 "Badges? We ain't got no badges! We don't need no
badges! I don't have to show you any stinking badges!"[11] "Gold
Hat" Alfonso Bedoya The Treasure of the Sierra Madre 1948
37 "I'll be back." The Terminator Arnold
38 "Today, I consider myself the luckiest man on the
face of the earth."[12] Lou Gehrig Gary Cooper The Pride of the Yankees
1942
39 "If you build it, he will come."[13] Shoeless
Joe Jackson Ray Liotta (voice) Field of Dreams 1989
40 "Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates.
You never know what you're gonna get." Forrest Gump Tom Hanks Forrest Gump
1994
41 "We rob banks." Clyde Barrow Warren
Beatty Bonnie and Clyde 1967
42 "Plastics." Mr. Maguire Walter Brooke The
Graduate 1967
43 "We'll always have Paris." Rick Blaine Humphrey
Bogart Casablanca
44 "I see dead people." Cole Sear Haley Joel
Osment The Sixth Sense 1999
45 "Stella! Hey, Stella!" Stanley
46 "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have
the stars." Charlotte
47 "Shane. Shane. Come back!" Joey Starrett Brandon
48 "Well, nobody's perfect." Osgood Fielding III
Joe E. Brown Some Like It Hot 1959
49 "It's alive! It's alive!" Henry Frankenstein
Colin Clive Frankenstein 1931
50 "Houston, we have a problem."[14] Jim Lovell
Tom Hanks Apollo 13 1995
51 "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel
lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"[15] Harry Callahan Clint Eastwood Dirty Harry
1971
52 "You had me at 'hello'" Dorothy Boyd Renée
Zellweger Jerry Maguire 1996
53 "One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How
he got in my pajamas, I don't know."[16] Capt. Geoffrey T. Spaulding
Groucho Marx Animal Crackers 1930
54 "There's no crying in baseball!" Jimmy Dugan
Tom Hanks A League of Their Own 1992
55 "La-dee-da, la-dee-da." Annie Hall Diane Keaton
Annie Hall 1977
56 "A boy's best friend is his mother." Norman
Bates Anthony Perkins Psycho 1960
57 "Greed, for lack of a better word, is
good."[17] Gordon Gekko
Michael Douglas Wall Street
58 "Keep your friends close, but your enemies
closer."[18] Michael Corleone Al Pacino The Godfather Part II 1974
59 "As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry
again." Scarlett O'Hara Vivien Leigh Gone with the Wind 1939
60 "Well, here's another nice mess you've gotten me
into!"[19] Oliver Oliver Hardy Sons of the Desert 1933
61 "Say 'hello' to my little friend!" Tony Montana
62 "What a dump."[20] Rosa Moline Bette Davis
Beyond the Forest 1949
63 "Mrs. Robinson, you're trying to seduce me... Aren't
you?"[21] Benjamin Braddock Dustin Hoffman The Graduate 1967
64 "Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War
Room!" President Merkin Muffley Peter Sellers Dr.
65 "Elementary, my dear Watson."[22] Sherlock
Holmes Basil Rathbone The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes 1939
66 "Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty
ape!" George Taylor Charlton Heston Planet of the Apes 1968
67 "Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the
world, she walks into mine." Rick Blaine Humphrey Bogart Casablanca
68 "Here's Johnny!"[23] Jack Torrance Jack
Nicholson The Shining 1980
69 "They're here!" Carol Anne Freeling Heather
O'Rourke Poltergeist 1982
70 "Is it safe?" Dr. Christian Szell Laurence
Olivier Marathon Man 1976
71 "Wait a minute, wait a minute. You ain't heard
nothin' yet!"[24] Jakie Rabinowitz/Jack Robin Al Jolson The Jazz Singer
1927
72 "No wire hangers, ever!"[25] Joan Crawford Faye
Dunaway Mommie Dearest 1981
73 "Mother of mercy, is this the end of Rico?"
Cesare Enrico "Rico" Bandello Edward G. Robinson Little Caesar 1930
74 "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." Lawrence Walsh Joe Mantell Chinatown
1974
75 "I have always depended on the kindness of
strangers." Blanche DuBois Vivien Leigh A Streetcar Named Desire 1951
76 "Hasta la vista, baby." The Terminator Arnold
77 "Soylent Green is people!" Det. Robert Thorn
Charlton Heston Soylent Green 1973
78 "Open the pod bay doors, HAL." Dave Bowman Keir
Dullea 2001: A Space Odyssey 1968
79 Striker: "Surely you can't be serious!" Rumack:
"I am serious... and don't call me Shirley." Ted Striker and Dr.
Rumack Robert Hays and Leslie Nielsen Airplane! 1980
80 "Yo, Adrian!" Rocky Balboa Sylvester Stallone
Rocky 1976
81 "Hello gorgeous." Fanny Brice Barbra Streisand
Funny Girl 1968
82 "Toga! Toga!" John "Bluto" Blutarsky
John Belushi National Lampoon's Animal House 1978
83 "Listen to them. Children of the night. What music
they make." Count Dracula Bela Lugosi Dracula 1931
84 "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty
killed the Beast."[26] Carl Denham Robert Armstrong King Kong 1933
85 "My precious." Gollum Andy Serkis The Lord of
the Rings: The Two
Towers 2002
86 "Attica! Attica !"
Sonny Wortzik Al Pacino Dog Day Afternoon 1975
87 "Sawyer, you're going out a youngster, but you've
got to come back a star!" Julian
Marsh Warner Baxter 42nd Street
88 "Listen to me, mister. You're my knight in shining
armor. Don't you forget it. You're going to get back on that horse, and I'm
going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we're gonna go, go,
go!" Ethel Thayer Katharine Hepburn On Golden Pond 1981
89 "Tell 'em to go out there with all they got and win
just one for The Gipper." Knute Rockne[27] Pat O'Brien Knute Rockne, All
American 1940
90 "A martini. Shaken, not stirred."[28] James
Bond Sean Connery[6] Goldfinger[29] 1964
91 "Who's on First?" Dexter Bud Abbott The Naughty
Nineties 1945
92 "Cinderella story. Outta nowhere. A former
greenskeeper, now, about to become the Masters champion. It looks like a mirac...It's
in the hole! It's in the hole! It's in the hole!" Carl Spackler Bill
Murray Caddyshack 1980
93 "Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are
starving to death!" Mame Dennis Rosalind Russell Auntie Mame 1958
94 "I feel the need—the need for speed!" Lt. Pete
"Maverick" Mitchell and Lt. Nick "Goose" Bradshaw Tom
Cruise and Anthony Edwards Top Gun 1986
95 "Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives
extraordinary." John Keating Robin Williams Dead Poets Society 1989
96 "Snap out of it!" Loretta Castorini Cher
Moonstruck 1987
97 "My mother thanks you. My father thanks you. My
sister thanks you. And I thank you." George M. Cohan James Cagney Yankee
Doodle Dandy 1942
98 "Nobody puts 'Baby' in a corner." Johnny Castle
Patrick Swayze Dirty Dancing 1987
99 "I'll get you, my pretty, and your little dog
too!" Wicked Witch of the West Margaret Hamilton The Wizard of Oz 1939
100 "I'm king of the world!" Jack Dawson Leonardo
DiCaprio Titanic 1997
Top Movie Role Reversals
(By Andrew Banks,
News.com.au, June 2007)
To quote 1980’s pop-star Tiffany: "Could've been so
beautiful, could've been so right".
Then again, it could have been a bloody disaster. Have you ever wanted to go back in time and
right the wrongs of a movie classic? Or do you cringe at the thought of your
favourite film being played by a totally different cast? If you were directing,
what changes would you have made?
Through the beauty of hindsight (and considerable help from imdb.com)
NEWS.com.au has compiled a list of movies that might have turned out quite
differently had the original stars cast for the roles not passed on them.
In Pictures- How The Cinema Hits Could Have Looked:
Charlie's Angels: Thandie Newton turned down the role played by
Lucy Liu because she wanted to work with her husband Oliver Parker on a
low-budget British film instead.
Lord Of The Rings: Matthew Newton was considered to play
Frodo, but passed. The role was snapped up by Elijah Wood. Daniel Day Lewis was
offered several times and turned down the role of Aragorn (Strider), which
eventually went to Viggo Mortensen. Kate Winslet was offered the role of Eowyn,
played in the final film by Miranda Otto. Sean Connery turned down the role of
Gandalf because he didn't want to film down in New Zealand
Little Miss Sunshine:
Bill Murray turned down Steve
Carell's role, which reportedly became one of the few choices in his career
that he regretted.
The O.C. (TV): Chad Michael Murray was originally up for
the role of Ryan Atwood, but turned it down for One Tree Hill.
Star Wars: Nick Nolte, along with Christopher Walken
(second choice), were both considered for the role of Han Solo. Al Pacino
turned down the role, as did Burt Reynolds. Harrison Ford took the part. For
the prequels, Ryan Phillippe turned down the role of Anakin Skywalker because
of the age difference between Natalie Portman and himself. Leonardo Di Caprio
was also considered. The role went to Hayden Christensen instead.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
Ghost: Bruce Willis turned down the role of Sam
Wheat in Ghost (the role played by Patrick Swayze opposite Willis's now ex-wife
Demi Moore) "because he didn't think the plot would work and that playing
a ghost would be detrimental to his career". Ironically, he played a ghost
in The Sixth Sense. Molly Ringwald turned down Moore
Speed:
Saving Private Ryan: Edward Norton passed on Private Ryan.
Matt Damon got the gig.
Interview with the
Vampire: Julian Sands was novelist
Anne Rice's choice to play Lestat, but producers wanted a bigger box-office
draw, hence Tom Cruise was cast.
Christian Slater won the role of the interviewer after the death of
friend and fellow actor River Phoenix
Shakespeare in Love: Kate Winslet turned down Gwyneth
Paltrow's Oscar-winning role, as did Julia Roberts.
Man On The Moon: Edward Norton was considered for the role
of Andy Kaufman in Man on the Moon. Director Milos Forman could not decide
between him and Jim Carrey and left the decision up to the studio. The studio
decided to go with Carrey.
The Blue Lagoon: Matt Dillon had been the original choice
for the role of Richard, but turned the role down because of the nudity.
Christopher Atkins dutifully obliged. Lori Loughlin had the lead role as
Emmeline, but turned it down. John Travolta's wife Kelly Preston was turned
down for the role of Emmeline. This was Preston 's first film audition. It went to Brooke Shields.
American Psycho: Producers wanted Edward Norton to play Patrick Bateman. Leonardo Di Caprio was set to star, but had to drop it due to scheduling conflicts. Christian Bale won the role.
The Passion of the
Christ: Jason Patric turned down the
role of Jesus in the Mel Gibson epic. Jim Caviezel put his hand up.
Fatal Attraction: Miranda Richardson
Minority Report: Samantha Morton was actually the third choice to play Agatha; Cate Blanchett and Jenna Elfman both turned it down.
Carrie: Melanie Griffith auditioned for the title
role that eventually went to Sissy Spacek.
The Horse Whisperer: Natalie Portman turned down a role to act
in The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway. The film gave Scarlett Johansson her
start on the way to superstardom.
Silence of the Lambs: Michelle Pfeiffer was offered the role of
Clarice, which went to Jodie Foster.
Chronicles of Narnia:
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe: Michelle
Pfeiffer turned down the role of the White Witch - she was reportedly the only
major Hollywood star to be offered the role.
Tilda Swinton took up the role.
The Patriot: Ryan Phillippe was considered for Heath
Ledger's role.
Pretty Woman: Daryl Hannah turned down the role of
Vivian because she felt it was denigrating to women. She later appeared in
Dancing at the Blue Iguana as a stripper. Molly Ringwald also passed. Vivian's
role was snapped up by Julia Roberts and the rest is history. Al Pacino turned
down Richard Gere's role.
Lolita: This was a pretty volatile role,
eventually falling into the path of Dominque Swain. But not before Melissa Joan
Hart (Sabrina, The Teenage Witch) auditioned; Jennifer Love Hewitt and Claire
Danes were both considered, Natalie Portman turned it down due to her feelings
about young adult actors/actresses being exposed to sex in films. Christina Ricci was turned down four times
for the role.
Apollo 13: Brad Pitt turned down a role as an
astronaut to accept his role in Se7en. John Travolta passed too. John Cusack
turned down Bill Paxton's role.
Thelma & Louise: Brad Pitt was the third choice for J.D. in Thelma & Louise. William Baldwin, the first choice, left to star in Backdraft. George Clooney auditioned five times for Ridley Scott for Brad Pitt's role.
The Matrix: Brad Pitt was considered for the lead.
Will Smith turned down the role of Neo. Keanu Reeves did the honours. Chow
Yun-Fat turned down the role of Morpheus, later played by Laurence
Fishburne. Sean Connery turned down the
role of the Architect in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions.
The Graduate: Robert Redford turned down the role of
Ben Braddock because "he didn't feel he could project the right amount of
naivite". Dustin Hoffman didn't
have that problem.
The Godfather: Francis Ford Coppola suggested Warren
Beatty, Alain Delon and Burt Reynolds to play the role of Michael Corleone
(which went to Al Pacino). Paramount production chief Robert Evans had
suggested Robert Redford at the time, because he could be perceived as
"northern Italian."
Romancing the Stone: Superman's Christopher Reeve turned down
the role of Jack T. Colton, which eventually went to Michael Douglas.
American Gigolo: Richard Gere had to settle for second
best after Superman's Christopher Reeve passed on the part. Or maybe third
best, considering John Travolta was offered the role too, but passed.
The Terminator: Director James Cameron originally wanted
Arnold Schwarzenegger for the role of Kyle Reese, but when Arnie walked into
the restaurant to meet Cameron about the role, Cameron reportedly took one look
at him and said "You're a machine!" Famke Janssen was offered the
lead role in Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, but declined.
Die Hard: Bruce Willis made this movie his own. But
not before Richard Gere, Sly Stallone, Burt Reynolds and Arnold Schwarzenegger
had all passed on the role.
Wall Street: Richard Gere turned down the role of
Gordon Gekko, as did Warren Beatty. Gere has since said that was the role he
regrets passing on the most. Michael Douglas went on to star. Sean Connery
turned down the role of Simon Gruber in Die Hard: With a Vengeance (1995)
"due to the diabolical nature of the character".
X-Men: Can you imagine Mel Gibson as Wolverine
instead of Hugh Jackman? Someone thought it was a good idea at the time.
Thankfully, Mel passed. Russell Crowe, too was offered the part of
Logan/Wolverine, but he declined.
Rachael LeighCook was considered for the role of Rogue, but turned it
down due to having work with CGI costumes and effects. The role went to Anna
Paquin, her co-star from She's All That.
Girl, Interrupted: British actress Samantha Morton turned
down the role of Lisa, which later went to Angelina Jolie who went on to win
the Oscar.
Spider-Man: Kate Hudson turned down the part of Peter
Parker's girlfriend Mary Jane Watson for the role of Ethne Eustace in The Four
Feathers. Kirsten Dunst stepped into the breach.
Romeo + Juliet: Natalie Portman was the first choice to
play Juliet, but turned it down because of the scenes and the age difference
between her and Leonardo DiCaprio. Jennifer Love Hewitt lost the role of Juliet
to Claire Danes because the director felt she wasn't "modern" enough.
Basic Instinct: Good on Sharon Stone for taking a role
that nobody wanted (Meg Ryan, Kelly Lynch, Kim Basinger, Melanie Griffith and
Julia Roberts all passed) and forging a career out of her infamous Britney
Spears flash scene.
Buffy, the Vampire
Slayer (TV): Katie Holmes auditioned
for the role as Buffy Summers, but she was too young. Sarah Michelle Gellar
took the role.
As Good As It Gets: Helen Hunt got the lead after Holly
Hunter turned it down. Melanie Griffith was unable to star because she was
pregnant at the time.
Grease: Susan Dey (LA Law) turned down the role
of Sandy
Batman: Tim Curry was director Tim Burton's
second choice for the role of the Joker (played by Jack Nicholson). Kim
Basinger replaced Sean Young for the role of Vicki Vale. Marlon Brando was
considered by Tim Burton for the role of The Penguin in Batman Returns and Mel
Gibson had been considered for the role of Batman/Bruce Wayne in the original
Tim Burton film.
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