October 20, 2005

Niche Wars:
Episode III - The Year Of The Oversell
Part I: Niche, Niche, Niche
Part II: The Niche Is Back

If you look at the Top Twenty movies in America this year, the one true mark of consistency was that they were sold without reservation on that basis of what they capital-w Were and to the audience for which they were built. As you move down the list, you can see some flinching.

There is nothing that cannot be sold. Nothing. But that doesn't mean that choices don't have to be made and that those choices - like the choices of every filmmaker on the planet - cannot be wrong.

That said, with every movie able (with very, very rare exceptions, mostly based on outside issues… see: Gigli) to be sold, not every movie can be sold to the numerical tune that its backers crave.

The cheap answer about this involves shit and Shinola or a silk purse and a sow's ear. But that lets everyone off the hook far too easily. You cannot - except in the rarest cases - blame a movie for the opening weekend or blame the marketing for the weekends after the opening. The job of maintaining a movie over weeks is an art and some do it better than others. But the job of a studio marketing department is now "The Launch" of a new product… in most cases, more than one a month. There is less pressure, perhaps, when the movie is good and the opening target is a decent sampling so that the film can play on its merits. But then again, there is more risk there than in the quick hit of a big opening and letting nature take its course.

Regardless, a movie like Bewitched is the classic example. The television remake evolved into something more complex as it was developed and developed and developed. And while the concept became more complex, the need for stars that secured the box office situation increased. But then, when the stars were added, both in front of and behind the camera, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars, the new budget was impossibly out of line with the "more sophisticated" approach of the film.

What to do?

Well, then you have the problem of talent having signed up to do one movie and not wanting it to change that much. And, besides, are we really sure that an old TV show has the kind of appeal needed or shouldn't it be somehow different?

So you have a concept that would feel most at home at a film festival in a tiny budgeted meta movie, most likely by a gay filmmaker who would engage the sexual subtext of the series in some terribly witty way. But uh oh! … no one believes that you're $30 million in above-the-title talent would ever actually engage in sex with one another? Dang.

It could have been that $60 million Ben Stiller-style revamp, with funny people throwing jokes at the wall endlessly, hoping to hit with 20% of them and grossing $80 million. But a higher production budget means that $80 million is not enough.

So… now you have the movie. Can't stop it from being what it is. How do you sell it?

Well, you can't just sell it like the TV show because the pretty, but somewhat bland woman character in the middle is a movie star and her very bland husband, a pure reactor on the show, is now a comic whirlwind. And the sidekick characters, who really drove the series - along with Endora - aren't that marketable.

So instead of Dead Poets Society, you have Club Paradise.

I know… invoking Robin Williams movies is a little mean. But you get the point. If you prefer, use Ghostbusters vs. Ghostbusters II. The first film was all concept, then loaded with the perfect comic actors. The second film was all about selling those guys again.

But I've digressed into the production side…

Sony had another problem movie withLords of Dogtown, which was a teen boy movie that seemed intent on trying to make itself accessible to more than that one group. There is no way of knowing whether they would have found the film, but with a budget at least double what would be considered reasonable by most, $20 million would not have made the studio thrilled… so they went for more and got less.

Who was The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy for? The book is a twenty-five year old classic. But that also means it is not a cult smash for today's teens the way to was for the Boomer/Gen X demo. And even for them… cult book. Niche.

Who was Kingdom of Heaven for? Orlando Bloom appeals to teen girls. Teen girls don't much care for people getting chopped up in period battles.

In the successful bait and switch camp was The Exorcism of Emily Rose, which offered up a fairly dry film and sold to it hard to teenaged girls who wanted to be scared by an experience being had by another young girl. It wasn't the movie, but it was a relentlessly focused sell.

Diary of a Mad Black Woman… smash hit grossing $51 million.

Coach Carter… $67 million in the niche.

An,d most surprisingly, WIP found the family niche with March of the Penguins and got the best press of the year.

And as we come to award season, we get to the more complicated tweeners…

Are The Constant Gardener and A History of Violence meant for teen boys or for awards voters… or neither? There has been a popular philosophy at studios this time of year in recent times… sell the movie commercially first and then worry about the awards season.

However, in the last three years, there has not been a Best Picture nominee that did not have a very clear and specific awards strategy going into the game. The closest thing to an exception is Sideways, which went for the money with an October release and then turned in its heel and strategized a wide expansion three months later in mid-January, after nominations.

But even more troubling, it seems to me, is that the marketing of these movies is having a real impact on how critics and journalists (and hybrids of both) experience the movies and end up writing about them.

Would you have seen reviews of A History of Violence that called it "obvious" if the advertising had not, essentially, given away the late second act turn that we are chewing on throughout the entire picture up until then?

Would The Constant Gardner be taken more seriously if it focused more on the love story in the marketing?

Conversely, is Good Night, And Good Luck, an excellent but slight film, being given more credence because the marketing from Warner Indie makes it look bigger than it is, using a lot of modern style tricks to disconnect trailer viewers from thinking about the lack of color and period settings in the film, even throwing some red into the poster?

The "ring-finger up" poster for The Family Stone grabs attention. But can anyone see past it to think about the film as an Oscar movie?

How closely will New Yorkers and Angelenos connect the Vanity Fair style photos being used for the Walk The Line campaign with the Vanity Fair Oscar issue?

And will the single image of Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Capote on their ad materials (created, I gather, by the UA team) cause people to think of Capote as "just" a Best Actor movie?

I know that no one wants to admit that they can be swayed by images that they don't feel terribly impacted by. But there is a reason why ad materials exist. And it is to create a feeling that lingers as you pass by.

November is the next testing ground. Can Chicken Little appeal to teens? Can Get Rich or Die Tryin' find white people who are no intense fans of 50 Cent? Can Rent get past its cult?

How will Walk The Line play in the South… and how will it play in the North?

Because it's now the award season, the tendency to overreach may be on hold for now. Honestly, I don't see this phenomenon happening with any of the films being released over the holidays. That doesn't mean that some movies won't flop. But with the exception of Aeon Flux, which just seems like it cannot find its feet and Pride & Prejudice and maybe the "ohmigod how do we sell this" Bee Season… movies seem to be selling on point this month and into the end of the year.

And is long as a lot of these films are satisfied with niche business, everyone will live happily ever after…

E-ME.