Hollywood abandons fanboys for baby boomers

In the aughts, it seemed that Hollywood's darling demographic was fanboys. They were considered responsible for the huge increase in superhero movies over the years. Now that Disney owns Marvel and the next Iron Mans and Avengers are planned through 2015, Hollywood is looking for the latest trend. Movie like Bridesmaids have given a kick to the female-driven box office, which is now fielding a number of female friendship-focused movies (like this year's Bachelorette and For a Good Time, Call...). But one demographic hasn't gotten too much credit for their steady movie attendance. They're the baby boomers and retirees who attend movies regularly. Today, THR has a lengthy piece on how Hollywood is finally taking note of the older audience.

THR points out that sometimes the differences can be parsed by region, pointing out retirement communities in Florida that have done tremendous business with Hope Springs and aging-actioner The Expendables 2. Over my years at Film Journal, I've interviewed a couple of theatre owners who revealed their core demographic was the 50+, retiree crowd. Both lean toward indie fare, though they show wide releases from time to time. I think the older market has been overlooked in part because many movies appeal to a broad demographic, so the 50+ people are just one slice of the pie. As journalists, we receive information that's broken down differently each time, either as older/younger than 25, 35, or, for a movie already presumed to have an older audience, over/under 50. That's not good information to deduce trends.

Movies like Red, Something's Gotta Give, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and Hope Springs only have older stars as draws, so when those movies succeed, people take notice, because they couldn't have been successes without the support of older viewers. But so many more movies use old-young casting, like thirtysomething Amy Adams and sexagenarian Meryl Streep in Julie & Julia. That movie drew just as many older viewers as Hope Springs, but because the movie had an age-diverse cast, it was easy to overlook the demographic breakdown.

However, the dependability of older moviegoers has a downside. Hollywood needs to cultivate those same habits in younger audiences. THR quotes Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore, who says of the boomers, "This is a group that grew up going to the movies. It was before cable TV, before the VCR...At times, Hollywood forgets them but invariably comes back and realizes how steady and dependable they are." While the baby boomer effect will last for decades, especially as people live longer and longer, there's also a young audience to consider, one that has not only cable TV and VCRs, but on-demand, illegal downloading, iTunes, Amazon, smartphones, and social media to entertain them on Friday nights.

'Hope Springs' will be a hit with older moviegoers, but it works with all ages

Older moviegoers are a force to be reckoned with at the box office. They are the demographic that has driven the success of indies like The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel and Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. As theatre owners tell it, seniors are some of the most dependable moviegoers of all, able to enjoy a growing amount of free time unhindered by obligations of children.

Hope Springs heads straight into their wheelhouse, offering a gentle, funny tale of a long-married couple who are trying to bring the love (and sex!) back into their marriage. The script and actors (Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, and Steve Carell) manage to dance around most explicitness in a way that will appease more conservative viewers. They also get a lot of laughs out of Jones' discomfort with anything related to matters of the heart or body. He gets uncomfortable enough for the rest of us.

Streep and Jones are closer to the age of my parents than my peers, but Hope Springs shows that demographics don't matter. It's hard not to get drawn into rooting for the characters' marriage, and doesn't everyone want to believe in a happy-ever-after? As our critic Shirley Sealy puts, it, "The pitch-perfect chemistry of Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones makes Hope Springs a must-see for anyone who’s been in a relationship, or hopes to be."

The role is yet another home run for Streep's career. Movies like  The Devil Wears Prada, Julie & Julia, and Mamma Mia! appealed to both the young and old. She's not exactly Betty White, who has amassed a following of younger viewers enamored with the former "Golden Girls" star specifically because she combines old age with a incongruously sharp humor; rather, Streep has an ageless appeal. If the old adage for a successful star was "men want her, women want to be her," perhaps the update is "older people want to be her, younger people want her to be their friend/boss/mother." Younger viewers shouldn't discount Hope Springs because its stars are greying around the temples, because everyone can be touched by the sweet, hopeful story within.

 

Trend: Older woman/younger woman movies

By Sarah Sluis

Today in pickup news, Fox announced it will develop 29: A Novel, a soon-to-be-published novel by Adina Halpern. The author's previous novel, The Best Ten Days of My Life, was also picked up by Fox, with Amy Adams attached to star and Shawn Levy to direct. 29 centers on a 75-year-old woman who has employed every means possible to look younger. She wishes to be 29, just for a day, and gets her wish. With the

help of her granddaughter, she has a magical, youthful day, while her own daughter and her similarly aged best friend search for the "missing" woman. This kind of story, let's be clear, is not original. It's a little bit of Freaky Friday, 13 Going On 30, 17 Again, and every other age-reversing tale out there. But instead of someone wanting to be a teenager again (or out of the angst-filled

teen years), the story will target one retirement-age woman and another the age of the young

urban professional. This project continues a trend that's led to box-office success as of late: the pairing a 20 to 30-something actress with a 50+ actress.

2008's Mamma Mia! teamed up Meryl Streep with rising star Amanda Seyfried. Sure, European audiences were drawn in by the ABBA soundtrack, but younger audiences (like myself) came for the younger heroine, but, of course, were charmed by Streep's wonderful performance and fabulous rendition of "Dancing Queen." The movie ended up earning over five times its opening weekend. Streep also filled the position of the older actress in The Devil Wears Prada, which co-starred Anne Hathaway. The movie grossed $125 million, also five times its opening weekend.

Seyfriend repeated the gig of playing opposite an older woman in this May's Letters to Juliet, which teamed her up with Vanessa Redgrave (age 73!). The

movie opened small but quintupled its opening weekend gross over several weeks (making the five-times-opening-weekend formula pretty standard among this genre of films), and generating a tidy profit for Summit.

Last week, I wrote about the development of Mommy & Me, which will pair Streep with Tina Fey, and bring in a wide age range of female audiences. Streep also did this with Julie & Julia, which co-starred thirty-something Amy Adams. Because so many of these old-young movies co-star Streep, it's tempting to attribute it all to her, but this analysis doesn't hold up. Streep's female-centered films that did not include a prominent younger co-star didn't do as well at the box office. It's Complicated also didn't quite achieve the level of success of Streep's films that featured a younger star significantly involved in the plotline. Evening may be the black sheep here, or the exception that proves the rule. The small film that cast Toni Collette and Claire Danes in its "younger" roles, didn't do as well (even though I saw it in theatres, true to form, with my mother and aunt!), perhaps because the younger actresses Collette and Danes were past their twenties and no longer rising stars, or perhaps because the talent roster, which also included older stars Glenn Close and Vanessa Redgrave alongside Streep, was too weighted on the older end of the spectrum.

These younger-older woman stories are perfect for mother-daughter movie dates, but they also seem to attract audiences that are exclusively younger or older. Young audiences have embraced older actresses like Betty White, who was the recipient of a youth-driven, Facebook campaign for her to host "Saturday Night Live" (It worked). Coincidentally, White herself will soon appear as a grandmother in another younger woman/older woman movie, You Again, coming out in September. Kristen Bell plays a woman whose brother is marrying her high school enemy, and it turns out the mothers (50+ actresses Jamie Lee Curtis and Sigourney Weaver) also are high school enemies. Of course, Hollywood can only repeat a formula so many times before the audience begins to tire of it, but for now the young-old pairings are the hot way to draw in both female quadrants to the box office.

Meryl Streep and Tina Fey are 'Mommy & Me'

By Sarah Sluis

What? Is that another original project I'm hearing about? No doubt inspired by the success of Julie & Julia, Sony has put together another movie intent on replicating the success of the foodie, women-centered adaptation. Entitled Mommy & Me, the project will center on the ups and downs of the mother-daughter relationship. As a woman's film, specifically a female comedy, the movie, will have a narrower appeal than

Julie & Julia, which captured the attention of food-loving audiences. However, the movie will most likely appeal to both old, middle-aged, and young audiences, and have a long-tail run. Both Julia & Julia and Tina Fey's Date Night had small opening weekends compared to their eventual cumulative grosses, so pairing these two actresses together will likely lead to another robust run at the box office.

Stanley Tucci may be better-known to mainstream audiences for his roles alongside Streep in Julie & Julia and The Devil Wears Prada (oh--and for playing a rapist and murderer in The Lovely Bones), but for this film he will be behind the director's chair. He last directed Blind Date, in which he also had a leading role. Since he usually acts in the films he directs, I wouldn't be surprised to see him cast in a supporting role.

Provided the movie is quality--and older audiences and female audiences are both known for the attention to quality (Twilight notwithstanding)--Sony has a leg up on this movie from the get-go. Female audiences are underserved at the box office, a situation that has improved in recent years. Most "female" films are romantic comedies that focus on dating and stylized, artificial gag situations. Movies that are based in reality, and comedies that don't have a romance front-and-center are rare. For that reason, Mommy & Me has a built-in audience ready to see this "unusual" film that doesn't involve, say, a woman going to extreme lengths to get married (like Leap Year, which involved a woman running around Ireland, trying to find her boyfriend to propose to him on the "only" day she can, February 29th). Now when does it come out?

Monopoly, Meta-mockery, Michael Moore, Iowa library kittens, and Paris Hilton: Coming soon!

By Sarah Sluis

A movie based on a theme park ride seemed like a terrible idea, but Pirates of the Caribbean IV is already in development.  So it should come as no surprise that the board game Monopoly will serve as the
narrative anchor for a screenplay to be written by Pamela Pettler.  Those expecting a top hat and monocle, do not pass go:  Ridley Scott will direct the project, and plans to add some Blade Runner touches to the idea to update the Depression-era board game.  Maybe they live in a futuristic society where everyone gets one "Get out of Jail Free" card, and drawing from the "Chance" deck is mandatory?  "Monopoly" joins Battleship, Ouija Board,"and G.I. Joe as other games receiving the feature treatment under a Universal-Hasbro development deal.

The series of Not Another Teen/Disaster/Scary Movies inspires groans among critics; review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes frequently tallies a 0% rating for these movies, a sort of accomplishment in itself given that the movies keep on getting green-lighted.  Finally, an answer to the success of "Not Another Movies": Not Another Not Another Movie.  The tertiary critique stars Chevy Chase and chronicles a struggling production studio that attempts to make a spoof of spoof movies--which actually makes the film fourth-removed from what it is actually mocking.  The "indie comedy," in all probability a synonym for "low-budget, direct-to-video," sounds so terrible that it might just inspire a rental among those burned out of films with a high production value.

Michael Moore plans to make his sequel to Farenheit 9/11 less
about foreign policy and more about the current American outrage over
the economy.  Sensing that a change in regime could weaken demand for a government critique, The Weinstein Company passed on the project months ago, but Paramount Vantage and Overture have high hopes for the film, which is currently shooting.  Certainly, with the volatility of the markets, there's a strong chance that Moore can draw an obsolete conclusion.  After all, didn't McCain get into huge trouble for stating "The fundamentals of the economy are strong" on the eve of the collapse of major financial institutions?

Perhaps receiving an extra push due to the recent success of doggie picture Beverly Hills Chihuahua, Meryl Streep signed on to the project Dewey the Library Cat, an adaptation of a pet memoir about an
orphaned cat who takes refuge in a library, influencing the lives of the residents of a small Iowa town.  The project follows an unusual wave of pet pictures--yesterday at the movie theatre I saw two side by side posters for December's Marley and Me, also based on a pet memoir, and kid picture Hotel for Dogs ("No stray gets turned away").  Woof.

Paris Hilton will appear in Todd Solondz's sequel to Happiness.  The pairing of the two seems unusual, but just might work.  If anything, the casting reminds me of Tara Reid's brief cameo as Bunny in the Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski.  The widely lauded role gave a glimpse to how Reid could have worked her clueless party girl image to her advantage, but, unreplicated, it's the one bright spot in a career otherwise noted for Reid's botched plastic surgery and a decade-old role in American Pie.  Hilton recently starred in horror camp film Repo! The Genetic Opera, which, though I've yet to see it, seems to play Paris as kitsch, instead of straight--anticipating the mockery and eye-rolling that frequently accompany her presence.  Whoever is in charge of her career is doing an excellent job.

'Wall Street' sequel in the works; Steve Martin third man in Meyers'-directed love triangle

By Sarah Sluis

 It was only a matter of time.  Fox plans to fast-track a sequel to Wall Street, that glorious Michael

Douglas and Charlie Sheen epic that made "Greed is Good" a catchphrase for years to come--with some using the phrase more facetiously than others.

As long as this film fulfills these three requirements, I would be sold:

1. Provide a delicious villain for the audience to burn in effigy.  The film plans to start with the Michael Douglas character back from jail.  I certainly don't want him to be "reformed" and just end up in cahoots with another bad guy.  Right now Americans are in no mood for redemption; I think most would prefer him to remain evil.



2. Explain the financial crisis.  Credit default swaps are tricky things.  The first Wall Street did a good job of explaining (what seemed to me) a complicated inside trading deal.  If nothing else, it provided technical "bomb defusing" dialogue that conveyed the degree of complexity of their deals.



3. Showcase Wall Street excess.  Everyone's heard about the AIG "top earners" spending $440,000 at the St. Regis after the bailout; I want to see that scene in the movie.

Steve Martin added to cast of Nancy Meyers comedy
The untitled Nancy Meyers romantic comedy has added Steve Martin to complete the love triangle between him, Alec Baldwin, and Meryl Streep.  Each of these three actors has a signature style and humor, but will all three be able to build off each other and not cancel each other out? 

Meyers' latest work The Holiday also juggled stars (four A-listers), but its young, half-Brit cast proved much more bankable abroad than at home.  Diane Keaton-Jack Nicholson picture Something's Gotta Give, was a huge hit, so it looks like Meyers is dialing up the age of her stars to replicate the success of the romantic comedy unique for NOT targeting twenty and thirtysomethings.