Basinger, Jeanine

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    Highbrow Films Aimed at Winning Oscars Are Losing Audiences

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    The kind of critically praised dramas that often dominate the awards season are falling flat at the box office, failing to justify the money it takes to make them.A year ago, Hollywood watched in despair as Oscar-oriented films like “Licorice Pizza” and “Nightmare Alley” flatlined at the box office. The day seemed to have finally arrived when prestige films were no longer viable in theaters and streaming had forever altered cinema.But studios held out hope, deciding that November 2022 would give a more accurate reading of the marketplace. By then, the coronavirus would not be such a complicating factor. This fall would be a “last stand,” as some put it, a chance to show that more than superheroes and sequels could succeed.It has been carnage.One after another, films for grown-ups have failed to find an audience big enough to justify their cost. “Armageddon Time” cost roughly $30 million to make and market and collected $1.9 million at the North American box office. “Tár” cost at least $35 million, including marketing; ticket sales total $5.3 million. Universal spent around $55 million to make and market “She Said,” which also took in $5.3 million. “Devotion” cost well over $100 million and has generated $14 million in ticket sales.Even a charmer from the box office king, Steven Spielberg, has gotten off to a humdrum start. “The Fabelmans,” based on Mr. Spielberg’s adolescence, has collected $5.7 million in four weeks of limited play. Its budget was $40 million, not including marketing.What is going on?The problem is not quality: Reviews have been exceptional. Rather, “people have grown comfortable watching these movies at home,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box office numbers.“The Fabelmans,” directed by Steven Spielberg, has gotten off to a slow start at the box office.Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin EntertainmentEver since Oscar-oriented films began showing up on streaming services in the late 2010s, Hollywood has worried that such movies would someday vanish from multiplexes. The diminishing importance of big screens was accentuated in March, when, for the first time, a streaming film, “CODA” from Apple TV+, won the Academy Award for best picture. ‘Tár’: A Timely Backstage DramaCate Blanchett plays a world-famous conductor who is embroiled in a #MeToo drama in the latest film by the director Todd Field.Review: “We don’t care about Lydia Tár because she’s an artist; we care about her because she’s art,” our critic writes about the film’s protagonist.An Elusive Subject: Blanchett has stayed one step ahead of audiences by constantly staying in motion. In “Tár,” she is as inscrutable as ever.Back Into the Limelight: The film marks Field’s return to directing, 16 years after “In the Bedroom” and “Little Children” made waves.The Song of the Fall?: A 120-year-old symphony by the composer Gustav Mahler is finding new life with unlikely listeners after a star turn in the film.This is about more than money: Hollywood sees the shift as an affront to its identity. Film power players have long clung to the fantasy that the cultural world revolves around them, as if it were 1940. But that delusion is hard to sustain when their lone measuring stick — bodies in seats — reveals that the masses can’t be bothered to come watch the films that they prize most. Hollywood equates this with cultural irrelevancy.Sure, a core crowd of cinephiles is still turning out. “Till,” focused on Mamie Till-Mobley, whose son, Emmett Till, was murdered in Mississippi in 1955, has collected $8.9 million in the United States and Canada. That’s not nothing for an emotionally challenging film. “The Banshees of Inisherin,” a dark comedy with heavily accented dialogue, has also brought in $8 million, with overseas ticket buyers contributing an additional $20 million.“While it is clear the theatrical specialty market hasn’t fully rebounded, we’ve seen ‘The Banshees of Inisherin’ continue to perform strongly and drive conversation among moviegoers,” Searchlight Pictures said in a statement. “We firmly believe there’s a place in theaters for films that can offer audiences a broad range of cinematic experiences.”Still, crossover attention is almost always the goal, as underlined by how much film companies are spending on some of these productions. “Till,” for instance, cost at least $33 million to make and market.And remember: Theaters keep roughly half of any ticket revenue.The hope is for results more in line with “The Woman King.” Starring Viola Davis as the leader of an all-female group of African warriors, “The Woman King” collected nearly $70 million at domestic theaters ($92 million worldwide). It cost $50 million to produce and tens of millions more to market.“The Woman King,” starring Viola Davis, is one of the few Oscar-oriented films this year that has struck a box office chord, bringing in about $70 million.Ilze Kitshoff/Sony PicturesOscar-oriented dramas rarely become blockbusters. Even so, these movies used to do quite well at the box office. The World War I film “1917” generated $159 million in North America in 2019 and $385 million worldwide. In 2010, “Black Swan,” starring Natalie Portman as a demented ballerina, collected $107 million ($329 million worldwide).Most studios either declined to comment for this article or provided anodyne statements about being proud of the prestige dramas they have recently released, regardless of ticket sales.The unwillingness to engage publicly on the matter may reflect the annual awards race. Having a contender labeled a box office misfire is not great for vote gathering. (Oscar nominations will be announced on Jan. 24.) Or it may be because, behind the scenes, studios still seem to be grasping for answers.Ask 10 different specialty film executives to explain the box office and you will get 10 different answers. There have been too many dramas in theaters lately, resulting in cannibalization; there have been too few, leaving audiences to look for options on streaming services. Everyone has been busy watching the World Cup on television. No, it’s television dramas like “The Crown” that have undercut these films.Some are still blaming the coronavirus. But that doesn’t hold water. While initially reluctant to return to theaters, older audiences, for the most part, have come to see theaters as a virus-safe activity, according to box office analysts, citing surveys. Nearly 60 percent of “Woman King” ticket buyers were over the age of 35, according to Sony Pictures Entertainment.Hollywood considers anyone over 35 to be “old,” and this is who typically comes to see dramas.Maybe it is more nuanced? Older audiences are back, one longtime studio executive suggested, but sophisticated older audiences are not — in part because some of their favorite art house theaters have closed and they don’t want to mix with the multiplex masses. (He was serious. “Too many people, too likely to encounter a sticky floor.”)Grim dramas have struggled, but sparkly ones have succeeded. “Elvis,” starring Austin Butler, took in $151 million in North America.Warner Bros.Others see a problem with the content. Most of the movies that are struggling at the box office are downbeat, coming at a time when audiences want escape. Consider the successful spring release of the rollicking “Everything, Everywhere All at Once,” which collected $70 million in North America. Baz Luhrmann’s bedazzled “Elvis” delivered $151 million in domestic ticket sales. .“People like to call it ‘escape,’ but that’s not actually what it is,” Jeanine Basinger, the film scholar, said. “It’s entertainment. It can be a serious topic, by the way. But when films are too introspective, as many of these Oscar ones now are, the audience gets forgotten about.“Give us a laugh or two in there! When I think about going out to see misery and degradation and racism and all the other things that are wrong with our lives, I’m too depressed to put on my coat,” continued Ms. Basinger, whose latest book, “Hollywood: The Oral History,” co-written with Sam Wasson, arrived last month.Some studio executives insist that box office totals are an outdated way of assessing whether a film will generate a financial return. Focus Features, for instance, has evolved its business model in the last two years. The company’s films, which include “Tár” and “Armageddon Time,” are now made available for video-on-demand rental — for a premium price — after as little as three weeks in theaters. (Before, theaters got an exclusive window of about 90 days.) The money generated by premium in-home rentals is substantial, Focus has said, although it has declined to provide financial information to support that assertion.Some films, like “Armageddon Time,” now become available for digital rental after they spend just three weeks in theaters.Anne Joyce/Focus FeaturesThe worry in Hollywood is that such efforts will still fall short — that the conglomerates that own specialty film studios will decide there is not enough return on prestige films in theaters to continue releasing them that way. Disney owns Searchlight. Comcast owns Focus. Amazon owns United Artists. The chief executives of these companies like being invited to the Oscars. But they like profit even more.“The good news is we’ve now got a very large streaming business that we can go ahead and redirect that content toward those channels,” Bob Chapek, Disney’s former chief executive, said at a public event on Nov. 8, referring to prestige films. (Robert A. Iger, who has since returned to run Disney, may feel differently.)Others continue to advocate patience. Mr. Gross pointed out that “The Fabelmans” will roll into more theaters over the next month, hoping to capitalize on awards buzz — it is a front-runner for the 2023 best picture Oscar — and the end-of-year holidays. Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon,” a drug-and-sex induced fever dream about early Hollywood, is scheduled for wide release on Dec. 23.“I think movies are going to come back,” Mr. Spielberg recently told The New York Times. “I really do.”Steven Spielberg, on the set of his production “The Fabelmans.” Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment More

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      in Theater

      Hollywood Star Gives Broadway a Much-Needed Boost. Sound Familiar?

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      A Broadway comeback is a box-office triumph: Parallels abound between two starry shows, more than 80 years apart.It was as dark a time as Broadway had ever seen. Multiple stages were shuttered, uncertainty abounded, and a beleaguered theatrical season was limping along, desperate for a hit. But then a Hollywood movie star — who was also a uniquely magnetic performer on the musical stage — rode into town, bestriding a vehicle perfectly suited to his outsize talents. He had retreated to a film career for nearly a decade, and frequently hinted at a Broadway return, but then, in his 50s, he finally did so — and it didn’t hurt that a beloved musical comedy ingénue was at his side.Consumers tossed money over the box-office transom by the sackful, creating one of the biggest box-office advances in memory. It was a triumph that prompted one critic to conclude: “Broadway is beginning to look like Broadway again.”While this may sound an awful lot like Hugh Jackman’s highly anticipated return to Broadway in “The Music Man” (co-starring the captivating Sutton Foster), this précis also captures another Broadway comeback: Al Jolson’s star turn in “Hold On to Your Hats,” a long-forgotten show that took a forlorn town by storm 82 years ago. And, though “The Music Man” grossed $3.5 million the other week — the most of any show since theaters reopened after the long pandemic shutdown — Jolson, it should be noted, got better reviews.Sutton Foster as Marian Paroo and Hugh Jackman as Professor Harold Hill in the Broadway revival of “The Music Man.”Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesBy the end of the 1930s, Jolson’s eight-cylinder performance persona had been idling over in Hollywood. Although he had dominated Broadway in the late teens and the 1920s, usually in rickety vehicles that accommodated his performances in blackface, the phenomenon of talking pictures — which he had exploded with “The Jazz Singer,” the first feature-length “talkie” with musical sequences, in 1927 — had changed over the following decade.“His kind of all-devouring star personality was no longer the kind that would thrive on film; Jolson was instrumental in creating the movie musical, but it had left him behind by then,” Richard Barrios, the musical film historian, recounted in a phone interview. His earlier films had been commercial blockbusters, showing off his ebullient and narcissistic way with a musical number, but Hollywood musicals were pivoting from such personality-pounding packages to more ensemble-driven stories and gentler stars such as Fred Astaire or Judy Garland. This transition made Jolson feel as if he was being put out to pasture on the West Coast — not to mention his fraying marriage to Warner Bros.’s tap-dancing ingénue Ruby Keeler. As the new decade began, Jolson’s primary passion was for playing the ponies out at Santa Anita Park.And it was a pony that would carry him back to the East Coast.The producer Alex Aarons had an idea for a stage show that would star Jack Haley, who had just starred as the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz.” The show’s concept was pretty clever by the standards of the day: a Western action hero for the Nationwide Broadcasting Company, named the Lone Rider (and his faithful companion, Concho — get it?), is recruited by denizens at the Sunshine Valley Rancho to defend them against bandits; they don’t realize he’s a radio entertainer playing a fictional character. The scenario provided for plenty of high jinks and heroism for the performer playing the Lone Rider, who’s “so tough, he uses a rattlesnake for a whip.” Spoiler alert: in real-life, he’s not. (This is an original concept, though, “borrowed” subsequently for such films as “Three Amigos” and “Galaxy Quest.”)Aarons recruited the “Wizard of Oz” lyricist, Yip Harburg, and the composer Burton Lane, who was also working in Hollywood at the time, to collaborate with the “Anything Goes” writer Guy Bolton (abetted by a few errant gag men). When Haley bowed out, Jolson was immediately interested, piqued by the comic and musical potential offered by the Lone Rider character. (Jackman, of course, has his own resonance with an action hero, having played Wolverine in the “X-Men” movies.) He signed on for a fall 1940 Broadway opening of “Hold On to Your Hats” and agreed to front 80 percent of the show’s nearly $100,000 investment.Ruby Keeler, Jolson’s wife, took on the ingénue role in the show even though she had filed for divorce.Lucas & Monroe, via Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public Library
      for the Performing Arts
      That meant Jolson was calling most of the shots, and he cannily shaped the new musical around his strengths. Thankfully, he eschewed any of his blackface routines (though, typical of its time, the show’s script embraced the casual racist stereotypes of Mexicans, Native Americans and Jews). But Jolson — for whom the fourth wall was a mere inconvenience — managed to stop the show each night, usually at its climax, to sing a medley of his popular hits. Audiences were given a vague context for such digressions — the Lone Rider was a radio entertainer, after all — and his interpolations so offended Harburg and Lane that they refused to leave Hollywood to watch Jolson’s antics once the show hit Broadway. (They would return to New York in 1947 for “Finian’s Rainbow.”)Another of Jolson’s creative decisions was downright deranged: He offered the ingénue role to Keeler, who had just filed for divorce back in California. According to Lane, in an interview decades later, Jolson “expressed this: ‘She’s never been on the stage with me. I think that if she works with me on the stage, she’ll see how wonderful I am and she won’t want to divorce me.’” Somehow, Keeler agreed to sign on for the thankless role and off the show went to out-of-town tryouts in the summer of 1940.“Thankless” seemed to have been the key word in the Jolson-Keeler marriage; there was a 24-year age difference between the two, and Barrios recalled a comment made by Keeler to a commentator in the 1970s: “Al was the world’s greatest entertainer. He used to tell me so every day.” Jolson’s anxiety about the incipient rapprochement got the better of him during the Chicago leg of the tryout; during their duets, Jolson would make cracks about their marriage, Keeler’s talent, Keeler’s mother. That was it. Keeler stormed off the stage, quit the show and divorced Jolson within months.None of this mattered to the cheering throng that greeted Jolson when he sidled up to Broadway’s Shubert Theater on Sept. 14, 1940. (He had wanted his cherished Winter Garden Theater — where Jackman’s “The Music Man” is currently playing — but it was occupied by the manic comedy “Hellzapoppin.”)“Al Jolson is back on the home grounds,” wrote John Anderson of the New York Journal-American, “in celebration whereof I toss my own critical headgear over the moon and over the dictionary.”10 Movies to Watch This Oscar SeasonCard 1 of 10“Belfast.” More

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      in Movies

      Hollywood Turns Up Star Power in Search of Audiences

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      Boldface names have always mattered at the movies, but a number of recent casts have been full of them. That hasn’t always helped at the box office.LOS ANGELES — On Friday, Netflix began streaming “Don’t Look Up,” a big-budget satire starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Jennifer Lawrence, Tyler Perry, Ariana Grande, Jonah Hill, Meryl Streep, Cate Blanchett and Timothée Chalamet.It sure seemed like a must-watch event, mixed reviews be darned. Casts so ultra-celestial — embarrassments of celebrity riches — don’t come along every day.Except that now they do.One star playing Spider-Man? How quaint. “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” released in theaters on Dec. 17, has three A-listers in Spidey spandex: Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Tobey Maguire. “No Way Home,” a runaway hit at the global box office, taking in $1.05 billion for Sony Pictures Entertainment as of Sunday, also stars Zendaya, Jamie Foxx, Benedict Cumberbatch, Alfred Molina, Marisa Tomei, Willem Dafoe and Jon Favreau. About 43 percent of opening-weekend viewers in the United States cited the cast as the reason they bought tickets, according to PostTrak surveys. Twenty percent specifically cited Zendaya.Guillermo del Toro’s latest art film, “Nightmare Alley,” stars Bradley Cooper, Ms. Blanchett, Toni Collette, Mr. Dafoe, Richard Jenkins, Rooney Mara, Mary Steenburgen and David Strathairn. (They have 22 Oscar nominations for acting and three wins among them.) Other recent examples of star ensembles include “The French Dispatch,” “Red Notice,” “House of Gucci,” “The Harder They Fall” and the superhero story “Eternals,” which Disney marketed with 11 names above the title. (Angelina Jolie! Kumail Nanjiani! Salma Hayek!)Angelina Jolie was one of the 11 actors whose names were above the title when Disney marketed “Eternals.”Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images For DisneyIn the months ahead, Universal will release “The 355,” a spy thriller anchored by five female stars, including Lupita Nyong’o, Penélope Cruz and Jessica Chastain. Disney will roll out a starry “Death on the Nile” remake, and Focus Features is preparing “Downton Abbey: A New Era,” which reassembles the franchise’s ensemble cast. Netflix is working on “The Adam Project,” a science-fiction adventure (Ryan Reynolds, Jennifer Garner, Mark Ruffalo, Zoe Saldana, Catherine Keener), and “The Gray Man,” a thriller starring Chris Evans, Ana de Armas, Ryan Gosling, Billy Bob Thornton and Regé-Jean Page of “Bridgerton” fame.“Someday, someone will decide to make one movie with two Batmans — oh, wait, it’s happening,” Terry Press, one of Hollywood’s top marketers, said with signature dryness. She was referring to “The Flash,” a superhero movie from Warner Bros. that is scheduled for late next year; Ben Affleck’s Batman will appear alongside Michael Keaton’s Batman.Explore the Marvel Cinematic UniverseThe popular franchise of superhero films and television series continues to expand. ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’: The web slinger is back with the latest installment of the “Spider-Man” series.‘Hawkeye’: Jeremy Renner returns to the role of Clint Barton, the wisecracking marksman of the Avengers, in the Disney+ mini-series.‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’: The superhero originated in comics filled with racist stereotypes. The movie knocked them down.‘Eternals’: The two-and-a-half-hour epic introduces nearly a dozen new characters, hopping back and forth through time.Taken one film at a time, star amassment is nothing new. “Grand Hotel” (1932), “Thousands Cheer” (1943), “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” (1963), “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), “The Towering Inferno” (1974) and the entire “Ocean’s 11” franchise come to mind, not to mention Marvel’s recent “Avengers” movies.All of a sudden, though, they are everywhere.Why?“Thousands Cheer,” from 1943, is one in a long line of Hollywood films with a host of stars.Warner Bros. Archives“Stars matter — always have, always will — and Hollywood retreats to them, leans harder on them, when it gets nervous about a wandering audience,” said Jeanine Basinger, a film scholar and the author of Hollywood histories like “The Star Machine,” which examines the old studio system. “Stars are insurance — for studio executives who want to keep their jobs, certainly, but also for viewers: ‘Is this movie going to be worth my time and money?’”Describing Hollywood’s customer base as “wandering” is rather kind. AWOL might be more apt.The pandemic seems to have hastened a worrisome decline at the box office for bread-and-butter dramas, musicals and comedies — everything except leviathan fantasy franchises and the occasional horror movie. “Spider-Man: No Way Home” collected $260 million in the United States and Canada on its opening weekend. Total ticket sales for the two countries totaled $283 million, according to Comscore. That means “No Way Home” made up 92 percent of the market. “Nightmare Alley,” which was released on the same weekend, played to virtually empty auditoriums. It took in $2.7 million.The vast majority of opening-weekend ticket buyers for “No Way Home” were under the age of 34, according to Sony.Between Friday and Sunday, the Spider-Men remained the biggest domestic draw, taking in roughly $81.5 million. The animated “Sing 2” (Universal-Illumination) was second, with $23.8 million in ticket sales. Warner Bros. failed to generate much interest in “The Matrix Resurrections,” which took in a feeble $12 million in third place; it was also available on HBO Max.“The King’s Man” (Disney), the third movie in Matthew Vaughn’s action-comedy series, collected $6.4 million, a result that one box office analyst described as a franchise “collapse.” (“American Underdog,” a faith-based sports drama from Lionsgate and Kingdom Story Company, managed $6.2 million on Saturday and Sunday alone.)“Spider-Man: No Way Home” collected $260 million in the United States and Canada on its opening weekend.Jordan Strauss/InvisionStreaming services have picked up a big portion of the audience, particularly older people. But competition among the services has grown extreme, with Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime Video, Paramount+, Apple TV+, HBO Max, Peacock, Hallmark Movies Now, BritBox and dozens more fighting for subscriber growth. Stars help: Netflix is writing megachecks for A-list actors ($30 million to Mr. DiCaprio for “Don’t Look Up”) and ensemble franchises ($465 million for two “Knives Out” sequels).“Stars matter more than ever,” said Bryan Lourd, the Creative Artists superagent who orchestrated the “Knives Out” deal. “When stars meet material that is their fastball, it cuts through all the noise.”There are other explanations for the barrage. In a severely disrupted marketplace, stars are seeking safety in numbers; no one person can be held responsible for failing to deliver an audience, as with “Nightmare Alley.” Movie marketing has also changed, becoming less about carpet-bombing prime-time TV with ads and more about tapping into social media fan bases. Ms. Grande has 284 million Instagram followers. (Pity Mr. DiCaprio and Mr. Holland, with only about 50 million apiece.)Ms. Basinger, who founded Wesleyan University’s film studies department, noted that individual star power has faded. Studios have become fixated on intellectual property — pre-existing franchises and characters. As a result, there has been less of a need to manufacture new stars and keep the older ones burning hot; Iron Man, Dominic Toretto, Wonder Woman and Baby Yoda are the stars now.“In the old days, movie stars were the brands,” she said. “They reached the whole audience. Not a slice of the audience. Everybody. But that all fell apart. Now, it’s about adding up niches.”In other words, few stars remain bankable in and of themselves, requiring Hollywood to stack casts with an almost absurd number of celebrities. Flood the zone.And don’t forget Hollywood’s favorite game: Follow the leader. “The Avengers: Endgame,” which packed its cast with Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Chadwick Boseman, Jeremy Renner, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Olsen and a dozen other boldface names, became one of the highest-grossing movies of all time in 2019. On a much different scale, an all-star remake of “Murder on the Orient Express” in 2017 was also a box office winner.“It’s trendy at the moment,” Tim Palen, a producer and former studio marketing chief, said of what he called an “all skate” approach to casting. “Not new but certainly symptomatic of the battle for attention that’s raging.” More