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      Netflix, Still Reeling, Bets Big on ‘The Gray Man’

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      Anthony and Joe Russo like to go big.In 2018’s “Avengers: Infinity War,” the directing brothers shocked fans when they erased half the global population and allowed their Marvel superheroes to fail. The next year, they raised the stakes with the three-hour “Avengers: Endgame,” a film that made $2.79 billion at the global box office, the second-highest figure ever to that point.And now there is “The Gray Man,” a Netflix film that they wrote, directed and produced. The streaming service gave them close to $200 million to trot around the world and have Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans portray shadow employees of the C.I.A. who are trying to kill each other.“It almost killed us,” Joe Russo said of filming.One action sequence took a month to produce. It involved large guns, a tram car barreling through Prague’s Old Town quarter and Mr. Gosling fighting off an army of assassins while handcuffed to a stone bench. It’s one of those showstoppers that get audiences cheering. The moment cost roughly $40 million to make.“It’s a movie within a movie,” Anthony Russo said.“The Gray Man,” which opened in select theaters this weekend and will be available on Netflix on Friday, is the streaming service’s most expensive film and perhaps its biggest gamble as it tries to create a spy franchise in the mold of James Bond or “Mission Impossible.” Should it work, the Russos have plans for expanding the “Gray Man” universe with additional films and television series, as Disney has done with its Marvel and Star Wars franchises.Ryan Gosling stars in “The Gray Man,” which Netflix will start streaming on Friday.NetflixBut those franchises, while turbocharged by streaming and integral to the ambitions of Disney+, are first and foremost theatrical enterprises. “The Gray Man” is coming out in 450 theaters. That’s a far cry from the 2,000 or so that a typical big-budget release would appear in on its opening weekend. And the film’s nearly simultaneous availability on Netflix ensures that most viewers will watch it on the service. Films that Netflix releases in theaters typically leave them much faster than movies from traditional studios.“If you’re trying to build a franchise, why would you start it on a streaming service?” asked Anthony Palomba, a professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business who studies media and entertainment trends, specifically how consumers’ habits change.The film comes at a critical time for Netflix, which will announce its second-quarter earnings on Tuesday. Many in the industry expect the results to be even grimmer than the loss of two million subscribers that the company forecast in April. The company’s first-quarter earnings led to a precipitous drop in its stock price, and it has since laid off hundreds of employees, announced that it will create a less expensive subscription tier featuring commercials and said it plans to crack down on password sharing between friends and family.Despite the current rough patch, Netflix’s deep pockets and hands-off approach to creative decisions made it the only studio that was able to match the Russos’ ambitions and their quest for autonomy.“It would have been a dramatically different film,” Joe Russo said, referring to the possibility of making “The Gray Man” at another studio, like Sony, where it was originally set to be produced. The brothers said going elsewhere would have required them to shave off a third of their budget and downgrade the action of the film.One person with knowledge of the Sony deal said the studio had been willing to pay $70 million to make the movie. Instead, the Russos sold it to Netflix in an agreement that allowed Sony to recoup its development costs and receive a fee for its time producing it. Sony declined to comment.The movie includes nine significant action sequences, including a midair fight involving emergency flares, fire extinguishers and Mr. Gosling’s grappling with a parachuted enemy as both tumble out of a bombed-out plane, Anthony Russo said.“Ambition is expensive,” Joe Russo said. “And it’s risky.”Netflix, even in this humbling moment, can pay more upfront when it isn’t saddled with the costs that accompany much bigger theatrical releases. And for Scott Stuber, Netflix’s head of global film, who greenlighted the “Bourne Identity” franchise when he was at Universal Pictures, movies like “The Gray Man” are what he has been striving to make since he joined the company five years ago.“We haven’t really been in this genre yet,” Mr. Stuber said in an interview. “If you’re going to do it, you want to deal with filmmakers who over the last decade have created some of the biggest franchises and the biggest action movies in our business.”“We’re not crazily reducing our spend, but we’re reducing volume,” Scott Stuber, the head of global film for Netflix, said.Philip Cheung for The New York TimesThe Russos are also producing the sequel to “Extraction” with Chris Hemsworth for Netflix and just announced that Netflix would finance and release their next directing venture, a $200 million sci-fi action film, “The Electric State,” with Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt.Mr. Stuber pointed to the “Extraction” sequel and a spy film starring Gal Gadot, “Heart of Stone,” both set for release next year, as proof that the company is still taking big swings despite its struggles. He did acknowledge, however, that the recent business realities have forced the company to think harder about the projects it selects.“We’re not crazily reducing our spend, but we’re reducing volume,” he said. “We’re trying to be more thoughtful.”He added: “We were a business that was, for a long time, a volume business. And now we’re being very specific about targeting.”Niija Kuykendall was hired from Warner Bros. late last year to oversee a new division that will focus on making midbudget movies, in the range of $40 million to $50 million, which the traditional studios have all but abandoned because their box office potential is less certain. And Mr. Stuber pointed to two upcoming films — “Pain Hustlers,” a $50 million thriller starring Emily Blunt, and an untitled romantic comedy with Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron — as examples of the company’s commitment to films of that size.In recent months, Netflix has also been criticized by some in the industry for how much — or how little — it spends to market individual films. Its marketing budget has essentially stayed the same for three years, despite a significant rise in competition from services like Disney+ and HBO Max. Creators often wonder whether they are going to get the full Netflix marketing muscle or simply a couple of billboards on Sunset Boulevard.For “The Gray Man,” Netflix has sent the Russos and their cast to Berlin, London and Mumbai, India. Other promotional efforts have included national television ads during National Basketball Association games and the Indianapolis 500 and 3-D billboards in disparate locations like Las Vegas and Krakow, Poland.“It’s very large scale,” Joe Russo said of Netflix’s promotion of “The Gray Man.” “We’re doing a world tour to promote it. The actors are going with us. It feels a lot like the work we did to promote the Marvel films.”Netflix released “The Gray Man,” which also stars Chris Evans, in theaters the week before it becomes available for streaming.NetflixFor the smaller-scale theatrical release, Netflix will put “The Gray Man” at some of the handful of theaters it owns — like the Paris Theater in New York and the Bay Theater in Los Angeles — and with chains like Cinemark and Marcus Theaters. And even though Joe Russo calls “The Gray Man” “a forget-to-eat-your-popcorn kind of film,” Netflix will not disclose its box office numbers.The theatrical side of the movie business is a conundrum for Netflix. The studio’s appetite for risk is often greater than that of traditional studios because it doesn’t spend as much money putting films in theaters and doesn’t have to worry about box office numbers. On the flip side, the lack of large-scale theatrical releases has long been a sticking point with filmmakers looking to display their creativity on as big a screen as possible and hoping to build buzz with audiences.And the strength of the box office in recent months for films as different as “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “Everything Everywhere All at Once” (which the Russos produced) has prompted many to rethink the influence of movie theaters, which the pandemic severely hobbled.Mr. Stuber acknowledged that a greater theatrical presence was a goal, but one that requires a consistent supply of movies that can connect with a global audience.“That’s what we’re trying to get to: Do we have enough of those films across the board consistently where we can be in that market?” he said.It would also require Netflix to reckon with how long to let its movies play exclusively in theaters before appearing on its service. While the theatrical window for the “The Gray Man” is very short, the Russos hope the film will show that Netflix can be a home for the type of big-budget crowd pleasers the brothers are known for.“Knowing that you have, ultimately, a distribution platform which can pull in 100 million viewers like it did on ‘Extraction,’ but also the potential for a large theatrical window with a commensurate promotional campaign behind it,” Joe Russo said, “you have a very powerful studio.” More

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      Tom Cruise Aims to Fly High at the Box Office With ‘Top Gun: Maverick’

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      The helicopter had the star’s name painted on it, the letters coming into focus as it landed on the retired aircraft carrier, which was adorned for the occasion with an expansive red carpet and a smattering of fighter jets. Tom Cruise. Top Gun. Maverick.It couldn’t have been anyone else.Decked out in a slim-fitting suit, his hair a little shaggier and his face a little craggier than when he first played Lt. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell more than three decades ago, Mr. Cruise took the stage on the U.S.S. Midway while Harold Faltermeyer’s iconic theme music played in the background.Gesturing to the spectacle around him, including the crowd of fans and media members, Mr. Cruise said: “This moment right here, to see everybody at this time, no masks. Everyone. This is, this is pretty epic.”Tom Cruise arrived at the world premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick” in a helicopter that he landed on an aircraft carrier in San Diego.Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesIt also felt like a time capsule. The three-hour promotional escapade — which included a batch of F-18 fighter jets executing a flyover to the sound of a Lady Gaga song from the film — harkened back to the halcyon days of Hollywood glamour. Days when Disney didn’t think twice about shuttling an aircraft carrier from San Diego to Hawaii for the premiere of Michael Bay’s “Pearl Harbor” in 2001. Or when the same studio built a 500-seat theater at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Fla., for the premiere of “Armageddon.” That kind of extravagance seems almost unthinkable today, when the streaming algorithm and its accompanying digital marketing efforts have replaced the old-fashioned boots-on-the-ground publicity tour with stars circumnavigating the globe, and studios spending millions to turn movie openings into cultural events.Making these events go were the film’s megastars. In Hollywood, stardom has an elastic definition. There are screen legends who are not box office stars. A global movie star is someone whose name is the draw. They have broad appeal, transcending language, international borders and generational differences. In short, they can get people of all ages into theaters around the world by virtue of their screen personas.They are the kind of stars — like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone — that box office blockbusters were built around for decades.And they are the kind of stars who no longer really exist. Actors like Dwayne Johnson, Zendaya, Tom Holland, Ryan Reynolds and Chris Pratt are ultra successful but they are also either closely tied to a specific franchise or superhero film or have yet to prove that multigenerational appeal.Now, it’s the characters that count. Three actors have portrayed Spider-Man and six have donned the Batman cowl for the big screen. Audiences have shown up for all of them. The Avengers may unite to huge box office returns but how much does it matter who’s wearing the tights?Yet there is Mr. Cruise, trundling along as if the world hasn’t changed at all. For him, in many ways, it hasn’t. He was 24 when “Top Gun” made him box office royalty and he has basically stayed there since, outlasting his contemporaries. He’s the last remaining global star who still only makes movies for movie theaters. He hasn’t ventured into streaming. He hasn’t signed up for a limited series. He hasn’t started his own tequila brand.The Great ReadMore fascinating tales you can’t help but read all the way to the end.A small Colorado town maintains the country’s only public outdoor funeral pyre. One man saw it as his own perfect ending.The singer-songwriter Ethel Cain has an elaborate vision of becoming a different kind of pop star. She’s doing it from rural Alabama.The #MeToo movement has swept through Hollywood studios and corporate boardrooms. But it has struggled to take root in places like the insular underground tattoo industry.Instead, his promotional tour for “Top Gun: Maverick,” which opens on May 27, will last close to three weeks and extend from Mexico City to Japan with a stop in Cannes for the annual film festival. In London, he walked the red carpet with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. (The tour would have been longer and more expansive if Covid protocols didn’t make things so complicated and if he wasn’t in the middle of finishing two “Mission Impossible” movies.)The actor still commands first dollar gross, which means that in addition to a significant upfront fee, he receives a percentage of the box office gross from the moment the film hits theaters. He is one of the last stars in Hollywood to earn such a sweetheart deal, buoyed by the fact that his 44 films have brought in $4.4 billion at the box office in the United States and Canada alone, according to Box Office Mojo. (Most stars today are paid a salary up front, with bonuses if a film makes certain amounts at the box office.) So if his movies hit, Mr. Cruise makes money. And right now, Hollywood is in dire need of a hit.Audiences have started creeping back to theaters since the pandemic closed them in 2020. The box office analyst David Gross said that the major Hollywood studios were expected to release roughly 108 films theatrically this year, a 22 percent drop from 2019. Total box office numbers for the year still remain down some 40 percent but the recent performances of “The Batman,” and “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” have theater owners optimistic that the audience demand is still there. The question is whether the business still works for anything other than special effects-laden superhero movies.“They just don’t make movies like this anymore,” Brian Robbins, the new chief executive of Paramount Pictures, the studio that financed and produced the $170 million “Top Gun: Maverick,” said in an interview. “This isn’t a big visual effects movie. Tom really trained these actors to be able to fly and perform in real F-18s. No one’s ever done what they’ve done in this movie practically. Its got scale and scope, and it’s also a really emotional movie. That’s not typically what we see in big tent-pole movies today.”A big box office showing for “Top Gun: Maverick,” would depend in no small part on the over-40 crowd. They are the moviegoers who most fondly recall the original “Top Gun” from 36 years ago — and they are the ones who have been the most reluctant to return to cinemas.To reinforce his commitment to the industry, Mr. Cruise sent a video message to theater operators at their annual conference in Las Vegas late last month. From the set of “Mission Impossible” in South Africa, standing atop an airborne biplane, Mr. Cruise introduced new footage from his spy movie and the first public screening of “Top Gun: Maverick.” “Let’s go have a great summer,” he said, before his director, flying his own biplane next to Mr. Cruise, shouted “action” and the two planes tore off across the sky.The release of “Top Gun: Maverick” was delayed because of the pandemic, but Mr. Cruise said putting it on a streaming platform was never an option.Paramount Pictures“Top Gun: Maverick” finished production in 2020 but its release was delayed for two years because of the pandemic. Mr. Cruise declined to comment for this article. But when asked during an interview on the stage of the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday (where eight fighter jets coursed across the skyline, blowing red and blue smoke to match the colors of the French flag) whether there was ever talk of turning the film into a streaming release, Mr. Cruise swatted the idea away. “That was never going to happen,” he said to applause.Now, theater owners across the country are keeping their fingers crossed that Mr. Cruise’s million-watt smile and his commitment to doing his own stunts — no matter the cost or the fact that he will turn 60 in July — will bring moviegoers back to theaters for what they hope will be a long and fruitful summer.“There’s been a lot of questions about the older audience and their affinity of going back to the theatrical experience,” Rolando Rodriguez, the chief executive of the Wisconsin-based Marcus Theatres, the fourth-largest theater chain in the country, said in an interview. “‘Top Gun’ is certainly going to bring out the audience of 40 and over and momentum builds momentum.”Audiences have remained loyal to Mr. Cruise through his offscreen controversies — his connection to Scientology, the infamous couch-jumping interview on “Oprah,” his failed marriages, including to the actress Katie Holmes. And he has remained focused on the process of making movies and then promoting them to as many people as possible — often through very controlled public appearances where he is unlikely to face any uncomfortable questions about his personal life that could embarrass him or turn off moviegoers.“He eats, sleeps and dreams this job,” said Wyck Godfrey, the former president of production for Paramount. “There is nothing else that takes his attention away. He outworks everyone else. He knows every detail.”The question now, in the world of streaming and superhero intellectual property, is does it still matter?‘We Don’t Create Movie Stars Anymore’In the 1980s, Mr. Cruise starred in a string of hits including, clockwise from top left, “Taps,” “Risky Business,” “Cocktail,” “Top Gun,” “Rain Man” and “The Color of Money,” cementing him as a bona fide movie star.Mr. Cruise came of age in Hollywood in the shadow of movie stars like Mr. Schwarzenegger and Mr. Stallone, where the name above the title meant everything. Show up to see Mr. Schwarzenegger play a cyborg assassin? Sure. How about a cop forced to play with kindergartners? Absolutely. What about a twin separated at birth from an unlikely Danny DeVito? Why not? In those days, the genre didn’t matter. Moviegoers showed up for the actors.That is not the case today.“We don’t create movie stars anymore,” said Mr. Godfrey, adding that studios have been pulling back on marketing and publicity commitments for years. “As a result, there are less and less meaningful names who will help open a movie.”Mr. Robbins agreed that it was much more difficult today to become a global star in the vein of Mr. Cruise, not because of the studios’ commitments but rather the state of the industry.“It’s Batman. It’s Spiderman. It’s very different,” he said in an interview from Cannes. “And it’s not just because a lot of these characters are hidden by a mask and tights and a cape. It’s a very different type of filmmaking. And the world is different because of streaming, and all of the other content, the fight for attention is just much more fierce than ever before. Thirty-six years ago when ‘Top Gun’ came out, there was no streaming, there was no cellphone. There was no internet. We went to the theater to be entertained. There’s just so much choice now.”The entertainment world has undergone seismic change. But Mr. Cruise’s success also owes a debt to his tirelessness. Will Smith, in his 2021 memoir, affectionately called Mr. Cruise a “cyborg” when it came to his endurance on the promotional circuit. Reminiscing about his own efforts to reach the pinnacle of stardom, Mr. Smith said that whenever he’d land in a country to hype a new movie, he would ask the local executives for Mr. Cruise’s promotional schedule, which often included four-and-a-half-hour stretches on a red carpet. “And I vowed to do two hours more than whatever he did in every country,” Mr. Smith wrote.Mr. Cruise tirelessly promotes his films, often through public appearances that are tightly controlled.Emmanuel Wong/Getty ImagesMr. Smith wasn’t the only one to notice. Studio executives have come to rely on Mr. Cruise’s commitment to promotion as his superpower.“He’s one of a dying breed that will literally work the world and treat the world as though each region is massively important. Because it is,” said Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of domestic distribution. “So many others roll their eyes. ‘I don’t want to do that.’ With Tom, it’s always built in. It’s a massive undertaking. But it pays off. It’s why he has legions of fans around the world.”Some would argue that the age of the movie star died when the Marvel Cinematic Universe took over pop culture and movies based on known intellectual property seemed to be the only way to get large numbers of people into theaters. Mr. Cruise has not been immune to these changes.In the past decade, Mr. Cruise starred in original titles like “American Made,” “Oblivion,” and “Edge of Tomorrow”— all movies that played up his action bona fides. None were hits. His reboot of “The Mummy,” which was supposed to jump start Universal Pictures’ monster movie series, was a disappointment for the studio, generating only $80 million in domestic receipts. The series never took off.Mr. Cruise has had box-office success playing the homicide investigator Jack Reacher and in the “Mission: Impossible” series.Chiabella JamesBut while not taking part in any superhero franchises, Mr. Cruise has managed to capitalize on intellectual property that he’s already successfully exploited. Roles like the homicide investigator Jack Reacher, and the secret agent Ethan Hunt in “Mission Impossible,” have performed well at the box office. He’s hoping to pull that off again with “Top Gun: Maverick.”“I think there is so much choice in the world right now with the amount of content that is produced that every movie has turned into a bull’s-eye movie,” said David Ellison, chief executive of Skydance, the producer of “Top Gun: Maverick” and a number of other films with Mr. Cruise. “The opportunity to have something work and be anything less than A-plus is simply not the marketplace that we’re living in.”Glen Powell, one of Mr. Cruise’s co-stars in “Top Gun: Maverick,” cites him as one of the reasons he pursued acting. Mr. Cruise is also the reason Mr. Powell is in the film. Mr. Powell initially tried out for the role of Rooster, the tough guy son of Maverick’s former wingman Goose — a part that went to Miles Teller. Disappointed when he was offered the role of the cocksure daredevil Hangman instead, Mr. Powell only took the part after Mr. Cruise gave him some advice: Don’t pick the best parts, pick the best movies and make the parts the best you can.“I will never forget that moment,” Mr. Powell said in an interview. “He asked me, ‘What kind of career do you want?’ And I’m like, ‘You man, I’m trying to be you.’”Mr. Cruise’s 44 films have made more than $4 billion at the Canadian and U.S. box offices.Isa Foltin/Getty ImagesAs such, he’s studied Mr. Cruise’s career and is trying to emulate it. He’s shied away from the superhero genre, so far, and has some theories on what makes Mr. Cruise unique.“He is the guy that’s not trying to occupy the I.P. He’s trying to tell a compelling story that just ends up becoming the I.P. because it’s so good,” Mr. Powell said. He sees a substantive difference there — the difference between going to the movies to see Tom Cruise, the movie star, or going to see other I.P. Or, as Mr. Powell puts it: “There’s a difference between stepping into fandom rather than creating your own fandom.”He knows he’s learned from the master. “Even if I pick up a little of what Tom taught me,” he said, “I’m going to be way more prepared than any other actor out there.”He might. Or he might be learning from an outdated playbook.There is a moment in “Top Gun: Maverick” where Ed Harris, playing Maverick’s superior, tells him, “The end is inevitable. Your kind is headed to extinction.”And Mr. Cruise, still holding on to that brash self-confidence that made him a movie star four decades ago, grins at him and replies, “Maybe so, sir. But not today.”There are plenty of people in the movie industry who hope he’s right. More

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      in Theater

      Will the Virus Cooperate With Broadway’s Spring Rebound?

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      Listen to This ArticleTo hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android.After a gloomy winter in which the Omicron variant shriveled Broadway’s lucrative holiday season, New York’s vaunted theater industry has been betting on a big spring, nearly doubling the number of shows on offer as the pandemic-battered business thirsts for a rebound.Adding all those plays and musicals — 16 new productions plus three returning from hiatuses are opening over a five-week stretch — was always going to be a gamble, since no one knows, in this not-yet-post-pandemic era, whether there are enough tourists and theatergoing locals to sustain that many shows.And now the stubborn persistence of the coronavirus is complicating matters even further. A rising number of cases in New York City, coinciding with the arrival of the virus’s BA. 2 subvariant, has once again rocked Broadway, infecting some of its biggest stars, including Daniel Craig, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick, and forcing four shows to temporarily cancel performances.“Our hope is that this isn’t a moment, but rather this is the way we will function now,” Parker said as she reflected on the high number of spring Broadway openings.OK McCausland for The New York Times“What we thought we were entering into this spring, which was always going to be busy and crowded, over the last week has changed dramatically,” said Greg Nobile, the lead producer of a new farce, “POTUS,” which, while still in rehearsals, has had to adapt as four of its seven actresses tested positive for the coronavirus. “Somehow it feels like, ‘This again?’ The answer is yes, but this time, we need to ask the question, how do we truly keep the show on, and what are the ways we are adjusting to what is a new normal?”Broadway’s big spring began on a cold night in late March with the opening of a revival of “Plaza Suite,” a Neil Simon comedy starring Parker and Broderick that was initially scheduled to start performances on March 13, 2020. Broadway shut down for the pandemic the day before that performance, and the Hudson Theater remained vacant, with the married co-stars’ names on the marquee and the set on the stage, for two full years before they returned to try again.“Every time I can walk a red carpet, I know it’s going to bring green currency to our city,” Mayor Eric Adams of New York said at the “Plaza Suite” opening.OK McCausland for The New York Times“Our hope is that this isn’t a moment, but rather this is the way we will function now,” Parker, in a pink satin gown with a beaded tulle overlay, said opening night at the end of an 80-foot-long preshow red carpet. “We have restaurants waiting to reopen still, we have hotel employees waiting to come back, we have delis that have been hit, we have ushers who are wanting to work the front of the house.”The crowd that came out to cheer her on, which included Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laura Linney, Cynthia Nixon and Martin Short, was buoyant.Broderick, finished with the gauntlet of camera crews arrayed inside a translucent tent, remarked how much he had enjoyed returning to the theater as an audience member, and now as a performer. “We’re learning to live with the pandemic or endemic — whatever you want to call it now — so the stronger theater and everything New York gets, the more normal life is,” he said. “This is part of the world coming back.”But eight days later, he tested positive, and two days later, so did she.Broadway openings remain starry, even in an era of few parties. Among those at the “Plaza Suite” opening: Anna Wintour, the longtime Vogue editor. OK McCausland for The New York TimesThe crowd that came out to cheer Parker and Broderick on included Mikhail Baryshnikov and his wife, Lisa Rinehart.OK McCausland for The New York Times“Plaza Suite” has been closed since Thursday, as has “Paradise Square,” a new musical which was already struggling at the box office and can ill afford the lost revenue. Craig’s show, a revival of “Macbeth,” canceled 10 days of its preview period. And “A Strange Loop,” a new musical which won the Pulitzer Prize based on its Off Broadway run, has postponed the start of its previews. All cited positive coronavirus tests among company members as the reason; all hope to resume performances this week.The latest virus-related cancellations were all at new shows; shows that have been running longer had more time to prepare for cast absences, and have been able to soldier on with understudies. Most notably, a revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company” that opened last December temporarily lost six of its principals to positive coronavirus tests in April, including its lead actress, Katrina Lenk, but the show went on. (Its best known performer, Patti LuPone, was not among those stricken, possibly because she had tested positive in late February and missed 10 days then.)And the effects are not limited to Broadway: Off Broadway, shows including “Suffs,” at the Public Theater, and “At the Wedding,” at Lincoln Center Theater, have also temporarily canceled performances.The industry is undergoing a stress test of sorts, as the annual crush of Broadway openings, which tend to cluster just before an end-of-April deadline to qualify for the Tony Awards, is even bigger than usual because some productions postponed their start dates in the hopes of avoiding the peak of the Omicron variant. This month features the highest number of Broadway openings in any April for more than a decade.So many shows are opening that Times Square rehearsal space is scarce, so the farce “POTUS” turned to Union Square. Among those in the cast are Julianne Hough, front left, and Vanessa Williams, front right.OK McCausland for The New York TimesBroadway is always a risky business, in which far more shows fail than succeed. Some producers acknowledge that having a glut of new shows vying for attention and audience at the same fraught time is less than ideal, but they tend to be optimists, and each seems to believe that theirs is the show audiences have been waiting for.“You can play a bit of chicken-and-egg,” said Jordan Roth, the president of Jujamcyn Theaters, which runs five Broadway houses. “Should we wait until every tourist is in town? But why is every tourist going to be in town if we wait? At some point we have to decide that we’re going to live.”This is actually Broadway’s second attempt at a rebound. The first began gradually last June, with the return engagement of Bruce Springsteen’s wildly popular evening of songs and storytelling. The first play began performances last August, and in September, with a moment of hope and celebration, the biggest musicals returned.Julie White, right, was among the members of the “POTUS” cast who tested positive during rehearsals. On White’s first day back, still coughing and wearing a mask, the play’s director, Susan Stroman, helped silence prop watches.OK McCausland for The New York TimesEarly box office grosses and attendance were encouragingly robust. But then the Omicron variant arrived in New York, contributing to the premature closing of nine shows and crushing attendance at the worst possible time of year: Only 62 percent of Broadway’s seats were occupied during the week ending Jan. 9.Through late winter, there were only 19 shows running in Broadway’s 41 theaters. With little competition, many of those left standing — mostly established hits or shows with famous titles — did quite well. By the week ending March 20, 92 percent of seats were occupied.Now, as the number of shows grows, and untested titles join the hits, average attendance is slipping, with 85 percent of seats filled during the week ending April 3. Overall, 224,053 people were at the 31 shows running that week, which is the highest number of ticket holders this year, but is substantially lower than the 315,320 who attended the 38 shows running during the comparable week in 2019.“The reopening of these shows is a real celebration of moving forward,” said Tom Harris, the president of the Times Square Alliance, which is marking this busy spring with a display of 10-foot-tall Playbill monoliths erected on a theater district pedestrian plaza. He noted that while Times Square was growing livelier, it is still quieter than it used to be: In March there were about 255,000 people passing through the neighborhood on an average day, he said, down from about 365,000 daily visitors before the pandemic.The play did not miss a day of rehearsals, despite cast absences; in this scene, Anita Abdinezhad, seated, filled in for Rachel Dratch. OK McCausland for The New York TimesUntil the pandemic, Broadway was booming, with 14.8 million ticket holders spending $1.8 billion at the box office during the 2018-19 season, which was the last full season before the coronavirus. But travelers to New York City, who before the pandemic accounted for two-thirds of the Broadway audience, have not returned in prepandemic numbers; the city’s tourism agency is projecting 56.4 million visitors this year, down from 66.6 million in 2019.That helps explain why Mayor Eric Adams had been celebrating Broadway at every opportunity — showing up at the openings of “The Music Man” and “Paradise Square” and attending a student performance of “Hamilton” in recent weeks.“Every time I can walk a red carpet,” Adams said in an interview at the “Plaza Suite” opening, “I know it’s going to bring green currency to our city.”On Sunday, he too tested positive for the coronavirus.The play is a comedy by Selina Fillinger about seven women who try to shore up a problematic president. OK McCausland for The New York TimesNow, as the city has dropped vaccine mandates at restaurants and other public spaces, Broadway must decide whether to do the same. Its current safety protocols, which require that all ticket holders show proof of vaccination to enter theaters and remain masked while inside, except when eating or drinking, are in place through April 30. Theater owners and operators had planned to announce by April 1 whether they would extend those rules, but they postponed that decision until April 15 as case counts rose.At the same time, the new shows keep coming. So many are opening this month that “POTUS,” whose stars include Julianne Hough and Vanessa Williams, wound up rehearsing at the Daryl Roth Theater, in Union Square, because the production could not find suitable space in the theater district.On a recent Saturday, the cast gathered to work on scenes on a makeshift White House set. One of the stars, Rachel Dratch, was still out with the coronavirus, so her part was rehearsed by an understudy, Anita Abdinezhad, while another star, Julie White, was back for the first time since finishing her isolation period. White, who had kept an eye on rehearsals via video while recuperating, was still coughing beneath a mask, but had her lines down cold, and she leaned in to the comedy.As she arrived, she was visibly delighted to be back at work. She noted her relief at finally seeing negative results on her daily coronavirus test, saying, “It was so good to see that single line this morning.”Audio produced by More

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      ‘Music Man’ Sets Box Office Record for a Reopened Broadway

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      The Hugh Jackman-led revival has 76 trombones, 110 cornets, and took in $3.5 million in ticket sales last week, more than any show since the pandemic began.Broadway has a new box office leader: A starry revival of “The Music Man” grossed $3.5 million last week, the most of any show since theaters reopened after the long pandemic shutdown.The musical, with a cast led by the ever popular Hugh Jackman, is outselling “Hamilton” and every other show, triumphing over tepid reviews as it plays to full houses and sells tickets at top-tier prices.Data released Tuesday by the Broadway League showed that “The Music Man” had grossed over $3 million for five weeks in a row.The industry’s three big mainstays remain strong: Last week, “Hamilton” brought in $2.3 million, “Wicked” was at $1.9 million and “The Lion King” at $1.8 million.The box office numbers were the first for individual shows to be publicly released by the League since March of 2020, and suggested, as expected, that the relatively small number of mostly big-name shows that survived the Omicron spike of the coronavirus late last year are fairly hardy, and most appear to be bringing in more money than they are spending on a week-to-week basis. The industry faces another stress test ahead, as the number of shows increases; no one knows whether there is enough audience to support the newcomers as well as the established productions.Among the highlights, according to the new information: A revival of the Neil Simon comedy “Plaza Suite” starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick is starting very strong, reflecting the enormous appeal of the two stars, who are married to each other and have not appeared together onstage for years. The play, still in previews, grossed $1.7 million last week, which is a huge number for a small-cast play in a modest-size venue.“The Music Man,” which also stars the gifted Sutton Foster, had the highest average ticket price, at $283, and the highest premium ticket price, at $697. “Plaza Suite” was also selling notably high-priced premium seats, at $549, reflecting Parker’s popularity.The numbers do show signs of concern for some shows. “Tina — The Tina Turner Musical,” played to houses that were only 55 percent full last week, grossing $778,000. And a new musical, “Paradise Square,” started slow in previews — the show drew large audiences (it was 97 percent full) but with unsustainably low ticket prices (it grossed just $355,000, with an average ticket price of $47). And sales for shows including “Dear Evan Hansen,” “Come From Away” and “Chicago” have notably softened since before the pandemic.But there is also good news for other shows. In particular, the newly released box office data suggests that “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” has benefited from its decision to consolidate from a two-part play to one part during the pandemic. The show grossed $1.7 million last week; the two-part version had been bringing in around $1 million during non-holiday weeks before the pandemic.By the end of last week there were 22 shows running in the 41 Broadway houses, up from a low of 19 earlier in the year. The average ticket price was a healthy $136, and 92 percent of all seats were occupied, although there were fewer spots to fill overall because so many theaters did not have shows in them. More

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      Private Data Shows Broadway’s Hits and Misses After Reopening

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      Big shows did well when they returned in the fall after the long pandemic shutdown but new plays struggled, previously undisclosed industry data shows.During the long dark months when the coronavirus pandemic kept Broadway shuttered, a hypothesis took hold in parts of the industry: Once theaters reopened, the audience would include more New Yorkers and fewer tourists, and the result could be a more receptive marketplace for ambitious new plays.It did not turn out that way.Previously undisclosed data about the financial performance of individual Broadway shows reveal that the fundamental modern economics of the industry, in which big brands dominate and adventurous new works struggle to break through, were reinforced, rather than upended, as the industry reopened last fall.The good news: In the months between the reopening of Broadway and the upheaval caused by the arrival of Omicron, the biggest prepandemic hits were doing reasonably well. The disappointment: Many new and unfamiliar plays, including a much-heralded wave of work by Black writers and a pair of experimental plays by white writers, struggled to sell tickets, much as plays have often done in recent seasons.The information about the shows’ financial performance was collected by the Broadway League, a trade association representing producers and theater owners, and distributed to the association’s membership in mid-January. The League, in a break with past practice, has decided not to make show-by-show box office data public this season, saying the circumstances are so unusual that the data cannot fairly be compared to that of other seasons, but The New York Times has obtained access to the numbers.The data, which begins in mid-September, when some of the biggest musicals reopened, runs only through Dec. 12, just before a spike in positive coronavirus tests among theater workers forced as many as half of all Broadway shows to cancel performances. In the weeks since, Broadway has taken a tumble — even though the wave of cancellations has stopped, attendance has been soft and multiple shows have closed.Before Omicron hit, Broadway’s return was going better than some had feared, especially for big-brand musicals. Plays had a harder time.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesBut before the Omicron variant, Broadway’s box office was doing far better than pessimists had feared, given the dearth of visitors and office workers, ongoing concerns about public health, and uncertainty about the effect of vaccine mandates and mask requirements. During the final week covered in the data — the week that ended Dec. 12 — about one-third of the shows running grossed more than $1 million, which has often been seen as a sign of strength. Among them: the musicals “Hamilton,” “Wicked,” “The Lion King,” “Moulin Rouge!,” “Tina,” “Six,” “Aladdin,” “The Book of Mormon,” “Hadestown” and “The Phantom of the Opera,” and the plays “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” “To Kill a Mockingbird” and “The Lehman Trilogy.”Notably, the club of top grossers included two newcomers, “Six” and “The Lehman Trilogy,” both of which were well-reviewed, small-cast shows that were in previews in 2020 when the pandemic hit, and then finally opened last October. “Six” is still running on Broadway; “The Lehman Trilogy” ended its Broadway run as scheduled on Jan. 2 and on March 3 it plans to begin a monthlong run in Los Angeles.Also noteworthy: “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,” which during the pandemic shutdown was trimmed from a two-part play to a more traditional one-part show, appears, at least initially, to have benefited from the reconstructive surgery. The shorter version impressed critics and reduced running costs, and its weekly grosses in early December were about $1.7 million, which is significantly better than it was doing during that same period in 2019.During the industry’s best fall stretch — Thanksgiving week — “Hamilton” grossed over $3 million, and “The Lion King,” “Wicked” and “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” each grossed over $2 million.The effect of the Tony Awards, which were held Sept. 26 in an effort to showcase the reopening of Broadway, is difficult to discern. “Moulin Rouge!,” which won the best musical Tony, sold well through the fall, but less well than it had in the fall of 2019 (the week before Thanksgiving last year, the musical grossed $1.5 million; during that same week in 2019, it had grossed $2 million).The fall was especially tough for plays, which often struggle in an era when Broadway is dominated by big musicals. Critically acclaimed plays like “Pass Over,” “Is This a Room” and “Dana H.” played to houses that were at times between one half and two-thirds empty.The average ticket prices for all the new plays other than “The Lehman Trilogy” were well below the industry average, suggesting that the plays were resorting to steep discounts. During Thanksgiving week, the average ticket price at “Hamilton” was $297, while at “Chicken & Biscuits” it was $35.Other than “Lehman,” the strongest selling of the new plays was “Thoughts of a Colored Man,” which grossed over $400,000 in some weeks. It has since closed, as has every other play that was running on Broadway last fall other than “Cursed Child.”There were also, as there always are, musicals that struggled too. The new musical “Diana,” which opened to harsh reviews and closed a month later, played to 51 percent capacity houses and grossed $374,000 (for seven performances) during the week that ended Dec. 12. “Girl From the North Country,” which has closed but says it plans to reopen in the spring, played to 47 percent capacity audiences that week and grossed $310,000, and “Flying Over Sunset,” which ended its run early, played to 69 percent capacity audiences and grossed $323,000 that week.“Jagged Little Pill,” the musical featuring songs by Alanis Morissette, did better than those shows, but not well enough to sustain a long run. The show was playing to houses that were about four-fifths full in the late fall, and it grossed $768,000 the week of Dec. 12. It closed a week later.Broadway is now in the midst of a particularly grim winter, and there are currently only 19 shows in the 41 theaters, which is lower than it has been for years. But producers say their daily wraps (that’s their net ticket sales) are picking up and they are optimistic about spring; there are already 14 openings scheduled in April. More

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      Quiet Awards Season Has Hollywood Uneasy

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      LOS ANGELES — Steven Spielberg directing a dance-filled musical through the streets of New York. Lady Gaga channeling her Italian roots. Will Smith back on the big screen. This year’s award season was supposed to celebrate Hollywood’s return to glitz and glamour. No more masks, no more socially distanced award shows or Zoom acceptance speeches, no more rewarding films that very few people had seen.Now, between the Omicron spike and NBC’s decision not to televise the Golden Globes on Sunday because of the ethical issues surrounding the group that hands out the awards, Hollywood’s traditionally frenetic — and hype-filled — first week of the calendar year has been reduced to a whisper. The AFI Awards were postponed. The Critics’ Choice Awards — scheduled to be televised Sunday night in hopes of filling the void left by the Globes’ absence — were pushed back. The Palm Springs Film Festival, an annual stop along the awards campaign trail, was canceled. And most of those star-driven award favorites bombed at the box office.The Academy Awards remain scheduled for March 27, with nominations on Feb. 8, but there has been no indication what the event will be like. (The organization already postponed its annual Governors Awards, which for the past 11 years have bestowed honorary Oscars during a nontelevised ceremony.) Will there be a host? How about a crowd? Perhaps most important, will anyone watch? The Academy hired a producer of the film “Girls Trip” in October to oversee the show but has been mum on any additional details, and declined to comment for this article.Suddenly, 2022 is looking eerily similar to 2021. Hollywood is again largely losing its annual season of superficial self-congratulation, but it is also seeing the movie business’s best form of advertisement undercut in a year when films desperately need it. And that could have far-reaching effects on the types of movies that get made.Many were hoping to return to an awards season this year like those of the past, but Covid continues to upend major events.J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times“For the box office — when there was a fully functioning box office — those award shows were everything,” said Nancy Utley, a former co-chairman of Fox Searchlight who helped turn smaller prestige films like “12 Years a Slave” and “The Shape of Water” into best-picture Oscar winners during her 21-year tenure. “The recognition there became the reason to go see a smaller movie. How do you do that in the current climate? It’s hard.”Many prestige films are released each year with the expectation that most of their box office receipts will be earned in the crucial weeks between the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards. The diminishing of the Globes — which collapsed after revelations involving possible financial impropriety, questionable journalistic ethics and a significant lack of diversity in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which administers the awards — had already hobbled that equation. If the Hollywood hype machine loses its awards season engine, it could prove devastating to the already injured box office. The huge audience shift fueled by streaming may be here to stay, with only blockbuster spectacles like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” drawing theatergoers in significant numbers..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-1kpebx{margin:0 auto;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-1kpebx{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1kpebx{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1gtxqqv{margin-bottom:0;}.css-1g3vlj0{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-1g3vlj0{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-1g3vlj0 strong{font-weight:600;}.css-1g3vlj0 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1g3vlj0{margin-bottom:0;margin-top:0.25rem;}.css-19zsuqr{display:block;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“The movie business is this gigantic rock, and we’re close to seeing that rock crumble,” said Stephen Galloway, the dean of Chapman University’s Dodge College of Film and Media Arts and a former executive editor of The Hollywood Reporter. “People have gotten out of the habit of seeing movies on a big screen. Award season is the best single tub-thumping phenomenon for anything in the world. How many years can you go without that?”William C. Demille, the president Of The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences, handing the Oscar for Best Actress to Mary Pickford for her role in “My Best Girl” and Best Actor to Warner Baxter, right, for “Old Arizona,” in 1929. Hans Kraly, left, received the award for Best Screenplay for “The Patriot.”Keystone-France/Gamma-KeystoneThe Academy Awards were created in 1929 to promote Hollywood’s achievements to the outside world. At its pinnacle, the telecast drew 55 million viewers. That number has been dropping for years, and last year it hit an all-time low — 10.4 million viewers for a show without a host, no musical numbers and a little-seen best picture winner in “Nomadland.” (The film, which was released simultaneously in theaters and on Hulu, grossed just $3.7 million.)Hollywood was planning to answer with an all-out blitz over the past year, even before the awards season. It deployed its biggest stars and most famous directors to remind consumers that despite myriad streaming options, theatergoing held an important place in the broader culture.It hasn’t worked. The public, in large part, remains reluctant to return to theaters with any regularity. “No Time to Die,” Daniel Craig’s final turn as James Bond, was delayed for over a year because of the pandemic, and when it was finally released, it made only $160.7 million in the United States and Canada. That was $40 million less than the 2015 Bond film, “Spectre,” and $144 million below 2012’s “Skyfall,” the highest-grossing film in the franchise.Well-reviewed, auteur-driven films that traditionally have a large presence on the awards circuit, like “Last Night in Soho” ($10.1 million), “Nightmare Alley” ($8 million) and “Belfast” ($6.9 million), barely made a ripple at the box office.And even though Mr. Spielberg’s adaptation of “West Side Story” has a 93 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it has earned only $30 million at the domestic box office. (The original grossed $44 million back in 1961, the equivalent of $409 million in today.)According to a recent study, 49 percent of prepandemic moviegoers are no longer buying tickets. Eight percent say they will never return. Those numbers are a death knell for the midbudget movies that rely on positive word of mouth and well-publicized accolades to get patrons into seats.Some believe the middle part of the movie business — the beleaguered category of films that cost $20 million to $60 million (like “Licorice Pizza” and “Nightmare Alley”) and aren’t based on a comic book or other well-known intellectual property — may be changed forever. If viewing habits have been permanently altered, and award nominations and wins no longer prove to be a significant draw, those films will find it much more difficult to break even. If audiences are willing to go to the movies only to see the latest “Spider-Man” film, it becomes hard to convince them that they also need see a movie like “Belfast,” Kenneth Branagh’s black-and-white meditation on his childhood, in a crowded theater rather than in their living rooms.“All of this doesn’t just affect individual films and filmmakers’ careers,” Mr. Galloway said. “Its effect is not even just on a business. It affects an entire art form. And art is fragile.”“Dune” was the only likely best-picture contender with a major theatrical release to gross over $100 million at the box office last year.Chiabella James/Warner Bros.Of the other likely best-picture contenders given a significant theatrical release, only “Dune,” a sci-fi spectacle based on a known property, crossed the $100 million mark at the box office. “King Richard” earned $14.7 million, and “Licorice Pizza” grossed $7 million.“The number of non-genre adult dramas that have cracked $50M is ZERO,” the film journalist and historian Mark Harris wrote on Twitter on Thursday. “The world of 2019, in which ‘1917’ made $160M, ‘Ford v. Ferrari’ made $120M, and ‘Parasite’ made $52M, is gone.”Still, studios are adjusting. MGM is slowing down its theatrical rollout of “Licorice Pizza” after watching other prestige pictures stumble when they entered more than 1,000 theaters. It is also pushing its release in Britain of “Cyrano,” starring Peter Dinklage, to February to follow the American release with the hope that older female moviegoers will return to the cinema by then. Sony Pictures Classics is redeploying the playbook it used in 2021: more virtual screenings and virtual Q.&A.s to entice academy voters while also shifting distribution to the home faster. Its documentary “Julia,” about Julia Child, hit premium video-on-demand over the holidays.Many studios got out in front of the latest pandemic wave with flashy premieres and holiday parties in early December that required proof of vaccination and on-site testing. But so far in January, many of the usual awards campaigning events like screenings and cocktail parties are being canceled or moved to the virtual world. “For your consideration” billboards are still a familiar sight around Los Angeles, but in-person meet-and-greets are largely on hold.Netflix, which only releases films theatrically on a limited basis and doesn’t report box office results, is likely to have a huge presence on the award circuit this year with films like “Tick, Tick … Boom,” “The Power of the Dog” and “The Lost Daughter” vying for prizes. Like most other studios, it, too, has moved all in-person events for the month of January to virtual.“Last year was a tough adaptation, and it’s turning out that this year is also going to be about adapting to what’s going on in the moment,” Michael Barker, a co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, said in a telephone interview last week. He spoke while walking the frigid streets of Manhattan instead of basking in the sunshine of Palm Springs, where he was supposed to be honoring Penélope Cruz, his leading lady in the Oscar contender “Parallel Mothers.”“You just compensate by doing what you can,” he said, “and once this passes, then you have to look at what the new world order will be.” More

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      The Oscars Want Crowd-Pleasers, but Where Are the Crowds?

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      As contenders like “West Side Story” and “Belfast” struggle for audiences, can a blockbuster like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” swing into the Oscar race?After last year’s Oscar ceremony honored a group of small, challenging movies and tanked in the ratings, you can bet that this year, the academy is eager to nominate films that audiences can get excited about. Indeed, this year’s crop of awards movies includes several old-fashioned crowd-pleasers to choose from.There’s just one problem: The crowds are remaining stubbornly hypothetical.Just look at “Belfast.” The Kenneth Branagh-directed family drama, considered a top best-picture contender, has petered out with a domestic box office gross under $7 million. Best-picture winners usually hail from far more successful stock: Among recent winners, only last year’s “Nomadland” made less, and it was released at a time when vaccines were scarce and theaters were just barely beginning to reopen.“King Richard” hasn’t fared much better: Though it was released simultaneously on HBO Max, you’d still expect stronger box office results for an inspirational drama that stars Will Smith as the father of the tennis legends Venus and Serena Williams. Instead, “King Richard” has made just $14.7 million in North American theaters, the lowest gross for a Smith movie in decades.And then there’s Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel,” which feels like it could have been the biggest hit of a bygone Oscar season. This medieval drama boasts huge stars (including Matt Damon, Adam Driver and Ben Affleck), weighty themes and top-tier production values. Now that it’s available on demand, not a day goes by without someone on my Twitter timeline discovering the film and announcing, “Hey, this is actually pretty good!” Maybe they’re surprised because “The Last Duel” famously bombed during its wide release in October, earning only $10.8 million domestically.Adam Driver, left, and Matt Damon in “The Last Duel,” which in a bygone era might have been the hit of Oscar season.Patrick Redmond/20th Century StudiosIt’s true that many of these Oscar contenders are aimed at older moviegoers, who have proved difficult to lure back to theaters during a prolonged pandemic. A smaller film like “Belfast” used to debut in a handful of cities, carefully building word of mouth with that core demographic as it expanded to new theaters every week. Now, distributors are so skittish about the absence of older audiences that many specialty films are shoved into hundreds of theaters right off the bat, expected to draw huge crowds from scratch.Still, the underwhelming performance of these movies can’t be blamed on older moviegoers alone. Over the past few weeks, “Spider-Man: No Way Home” has earned a staggering $621 million domestically, a total you simply can’t reach without every available demographic turning out in record numbers. If older adults are willing to go see “Spider-Man,” it becomes harder to make the argument that they can’t be wooed at all.Marvel’s rising tide, though, has not lifted any boats: Instead, every other title is drowning. Are audiences really so skittish about seeing the most acclaimed films of the year? Or have these movies simply struggled to make the case that they’re worth watching?I believe the latter issue bedeviled “West Side Story,” which seemed to have so much going for it when it debuted in December: Directed by Steven Spielberg, the movie received rapturous reviews and is adapted from one of the most famous stage musicals of all time. Though “West Side Story” was originally intended to come out last winter, Disney executives delayed this exhilarating film a full year, expecting a four-quadrant smash.They didn’t get it. “West Side Story” made just $10.5 million in its opening weekend and has struggled to reach $30 million in its first month of release. For a movie from Hollywood’s most reliable hitmaker, that is a disastrous result: You’d have to go all the way back to “Empire of the Sun” from 1987 to find a Spielberg movie that did this poorly, and that film didn’t cost north of $100 million, as “West Side Story” did.The usual suspects have come in for blame — the pandemic’s winter surge, the paucity of older moviegoers — but I lay this failure squarely at the feet of the marketing campaign, which missed crucial opportunities. The posters for this romantic musical were oddly grim, and the trailers and TV spots remained way too bashful about selling Spielberg, the movie’s biggest name. The trailers should have emphasized his iconic films like “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Jurassic Park” and “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” positioning “West Side Story” as part of an impressive theatrical lineage: The obvious message being, “Those were events worth leaving the house for and this will be, too.”Tom Holland as Spider-Man. Will the box office success of his new film matter to Oscar voters?Sony PicturesUltimately, that may prove to be the most significant lesson of this awards season: If you can’t make your movie feel like a big event, people simply won’t go. It’s clear that the only film this winter that has really managed that feat is “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” and because its astonishing box office returns dwarf everything else in theaters, power players involved with the Marvel-Sony movie have begun making the case that it should be nominated for best picture.Does Spidey have a shot? I’m not so sure: Oscar voters have shown they’re willing to nominate a big blockbuster, but they prefer the kind of impeccably crafted tentpole that can compete in a host of categories: Think of “Black Panther,” which won Oscars for its score, production design and costumes; or “Mad Max: Fury Road,” which prevailed in just about every tech category it was nominated for. This year, “Dune” will be a major player in those below-the-line races, boosting its ultimate bid for best picture, but the flatly shot “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is more of a storytelling and scheduling feat than some sort of artistic stunner.Still, there’s no denying the movie’s huge box office success. If adult dramas continue to underperform as the pandemic sprawls into its third year, they may vanish from cinemas entirely, and the theatrical experience will simply become a high-end way to watch Marvel movies. The Oscars are supposed to forestall that sort of thing: They lend buzz to the smaller, artier films that desperately need it. But if all these nonfranchise crowd-pleasers can’t manage to entice people into theaters on their own, the movies have a bigger problem than just another low-rated Oscars show. More

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      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