Box Offi ce Nectar
PODHORETZ, JOHN
Box Offi ce Nectar These movies are making Hollywood millions— and without explosions. BY JOHN PODHORETZ The most discussed box offi ce story of the summer was the enormous success of The...
...Therefore, a movie made and marketed to males has a decent chance of getting females in the seats, while a movie made for women will be bereft of a male audience...
...most others have done disastrously, as was the case with Rent, The Producers, and Phantom of the Opera (which, like MM!, was already a worldwide brand when it was brought to the screen...
...John Podhoretz, editorial director of Commentary, is THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s movie critic...
...That is seven times its production cost of $65 million, which means it is not as dramatic a success as Mamma Mia...
...Even more impressive, its worldwide gross is $300 million...
...And since, it has long been believed, women will not go to movies on their own and without a signifi cant other, the fi nancial deck is stacked against them...
...will prove to be one of the most profi table movies ever made...
...Campbell...
...So, by the time it hits DVD, it will have made somewhere around $550 million, or 10 times its production cost of $52 million...
...Using this method of measurement, by the way, Titanic is only the sixth most popular fi lm of all time...
...Both movies, to be sure, came with ready-made audiences...
...Sex and the City has brought in $150 million here at home and $240 million internationally so far, and will top out over $400 million total...
...Marketing executives believe that, while women will agree to attend the films their boyfriends and husbands want to see, men will not return the favor...
...Just as teenage boys will travel in a pack on opening night to see The Dark Knight, and return in yet another pack again and again, women in their thirties, forties, and fi fties are showing similar tendencies with movies that appeal to them...
...BY JOHN PODHORETZ The most discussed box offi ce story of the summer was the enormous success of The Dark Knight, the Batman movie that, we were told incessantly, has made more money than any fi lm in history besides Titanic...
...In the end, then, The Dark Knight really isn’t all that meaningful a cultural phenomenon...
...Sex and the City was based on a popular television series, while Mamma Mia...
...it’s more like a book club outing...
...is the fi lm version of a phenomenally successful stage show featuring songs by the 1970s Swedish pop band ABBA and a plotline lifted baldly from the 1968 comedy Buona Sera, Mrs...
...I hated Sex and the City and loved Mamma Mia...
...Except that The Dark Knight cost just shy of $200 million, which means that it will have earned fi ve times its production cost...
...But there is a new wrinkle...
...These are fi lms about women either approaching middle age or smack-dab in the grip of it, and the only way a teenage boy would have seen even a minute of them is if he took a wrong turn in the multiplex lobby after a trip to the bathroom...
...They don’t form a pack...
...has earned $140 million in the United States, and will probably fi nish its run in the theaters with an overall gross of $160-$175 million...
...Strictly as a matter of return on investment, Mamma Mia...
...The only adaptation of a Broadway musical to score even modest success in the past five years is Hairspray...
...and they are not movies aimed at the supposedly golden audience of young males between the ages of 12 and 34...
...it is bested, surprisingly, by movies like The Sting, Thunderball, and Grease...
...Two movies released in the past few months have actually earned more as a return on investment than The Dark Knight or any other fi lm this year...
...Most movies deriving from TV programs have failed over the past decade, most recently an X-Files fi lm that cost $30 million and has made, worldwide, a grand total of $29 million...
...For decades, Hollywood has resisted this idea...
...But the knowledge, to which Hollywood must surely and at last be opening itself, that movies made for women are a decent bet, is a welcome development for anyone who thinks fi lms should have a plot and tell a story that remotely resembles real life...
...Only, in point of fact, it hasn’t...
...it is merely the latest in a series of profi table comicbook movies, following in the wake of the three Spider-Man pictures...
...By that standard, The Dark Knight’s $500 million in domestic box offi ce places it a mere 29th on the all-time box offi ce list...
...No, what is notable, and important, about these two profoundly forgettable and unimportant fi lms is that they are an unmistakable indication of a market-altering fact: Women, particularly women above the teenage years, are motion-picture ticket buyers, and if movies are made for them, they will make studios and producers rich beyond their wildest dreams...
...Most of this wisdom is demonstrably true...
...Gone with the Wind actually tops the list with earnings of $1.4 billion in 2008 dollars, followed by Star Wars, The Sound of Music, E.T., and, of all things, The Ten Commandments...
...The only honest way to compare the grosses of The Dark Knight with those of past blockbusters is to measure them in constant dollars...
...They are Sex and the City and Mamma Mia...
...By contrast, The Dark Knight will earn $1 billion worldwide, dwarfi ng Mamma Mia...
...To call these movies fl uff is to insult the Fluffernutter...
...to distraction—it’s like a menopausal Beach Blanket Bingo with Meryl Streep instead of Annette Funicello...
...Nonetheless, it is The Dark Knight that has been the subject of dozens of breathless works of illiterate fi nancial analysis, while the most culturally meaningful and interesting trend of the summer has gone undiscussed...
...but still a colossal triumph...
...Mamma Mia...
Vol. 14 • September 2008 • No. 2
