nytimes
Movies
From Now On, Women Save the World
Hollywood Has Realized That Movies Starring Women Can Make Money
LOS
ANGELES — Hollywood has long known that women are better customers
than men. It’s right there in the annual reports from the Motion Picture
Association of America: Moviegoing in the United States and Canada was
52 percent female last year. Just as it was five years earlier.
So why are studios only now pumping out female-focused megamovies?
Over the past year, “Gravity,” “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” “Frozen” and “Maleficent”
have taken in a combined $3.6 billion worldwide, according to the
database Box Office Mojo. Coming up, Warner Bros. is finally taking a
flier on Wonder Woman, and Columbia Pictures is hot on an all-female remake of “Ghostbusters.” Disney has enormous hopes for a live-action “Cinderella,” arriving March 13.
Lionsgate, meanwhile, has decided to turn its fledgling “Divergent” series, which stars Shailene Woodley, into at least four films. More modest coming examples of female-aimed movies include the male stripper sequel “Magic Mike 2,” the musical comedy “Pitch Perfect 2,”
an action extravaganza called “Expendabelles” and the bondage romance
“Fifty Shades of Grey.” (One notable outlier: Marvel has not yet
responded to fan clamor for a movie anchored by a female protagonist.)
All
of this estrogen is not rolling through Hollywood because there are
more women than ever in senior studio jobs, even though there are. And
studios are not spending hundreds of millions of dollars to make event
movies with female protagonists because cries of neglect have finally
soaked in. “I wish that was the case,” said Catherine Paura, the movie
industry market researcher. “I’ve been pointing to the potency of the
female moviegoer since the 1980s.”
No,
the shift is happening because female ticket buyers — finally given the
opportunity — have shown studios the big money, producers say. Women
have finally proved to Hollywood’s satisfaction that they can power not
just a single film (with the occasional sequel) but an entire
world-dominating film series. The five “Twilight”
action romances took in $3.6 billion, after adjusting for inflation.
The first two “Hunger Games” movies, which star Jennifer Lawrence as the
archer Katniss Everdeen, took in $1.6 billion; two more are ahead,
starting with “Mockingjay — Part 1,” which opens Nov. 21.
Even Paramount’s light-horror “Paranormal Activity”
series, which has taken in $867 million across five microbudgeted
installments, has been primarily supported by female fans. That was not
true of the gorier horror franchises (“Saw”) of the past. A sixth “Paranormal Activity” is scheduled for 2016.
Hollywood prizes these kinds of franchises above anything else, noted Lynda Obst, a producer whose credits include “Adventures in Babysitting” (1987) and Christopher Nolan’s coming “Interstellar.”
Not only are franchise films easier to market and thus less risky, she
said, but they also tend to throw off profits in the form of merchandise
and other tie-ins. “Everyone is trying to find a formula here, and
right now, ‘The Hunger Games’ is an awfully compelling one,” Ms. Obst
added.
Aside from the films, Lionsgate has a “Hunger Games” video game and a traveling exhibition
of costumes and is working on theme-park rides. Oh, yes: “We’re deep
into conversations with prospective partners on four continents,” Jon
Feltheimer, Lionsgate’s chief executive, told Wall Street analysts in
mid-August.
“Frozen”
may not get a sequel — at least not anytime soon, given the long
gestation time for animation — but the film, a musical about a pair of
fearless princesses, is nonetheless showering Disney in franchise cash. A
traveling ice show has just opened, a huge Christmas merchandising push is planned, and a Broadway version is on a fast track.
Over the years, underserved female ticket buyers have occasionally grabbed Hollywood by the throat by turning a “Mamma Mia!” (2008) or a “Titanic” (1997) or a “Clueless”
(1995) into a juggernaut. But these hits were easy for studio bosses to
dismiss as anomalies. They turned on a special circumstance: an
adaptation of a Broadway musical, an epic love story, a witty
contemporization of a classic novel.
Or
they were not optimal sequel candidates, executives would explain,
because their audience was too skewed toward one gender. In 2001, Disney
released “The Princess Diaries,” which took in $222.4 million worldwide, after adjusting for inflation, and led to “The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement” in 2004. Grand total: $392.3 million. Not bad for two movies that drew a minuscule number of men.
Also in 2001, by comparison, Universal released a testosterone-fueled movie called “The Fast and the Furious.”
Five sequels and $3 billion in ticket sales later — and an audience
almost evenly split between men and women, according to the studio — the
franchise is still going. Universal is getting a seventh installment
ready for an April release.
Better to concentrate on that testosterone.
“Women
will go to a male-oriented movie, but men have to be dragged to a
female-oriented one,” said Ms. Paura, chief executive of Capstone Global Marketing
& Research. That old industry saw is a huge generalization that
makes some people angry to hear, Ms. Paura noted, “but it has been true
more often than not.”
A
swing started to occur in 2008, with the first “Twilight” movie, which
notably came from a small movie company, Summit Entertainment, after
major studios had held their noses. A big-screen “Sex and the City”
also arrived in 2008, generating roughly $460 million in ticket sales.
But both “Twilight” and “Sex and the City” were dismissed by many studio
executives as flashes in the pan. One sprouted from a popular book and
the other from a popular TV show; both had opening-weekend audiences
that were 75 percent or more female, according to studio exit polls.
“Sex and the City 2”
wilted — no gender expansion, partly because it was a terrible movie —
but turnout for the second “Twilight” movie was surprisingly balanced
between male and female ticket buyers, and the grosses grew accordingly.
The second chapter, “New Moon,”
took in $788.3 million, 81 percent more than the first one. Maybe that
old theory about men avoiding “girl” movies needed to be retired? Maybe
moviegoing was starting to reflect a shifting definition of masculinity?
(This was the dawn of the era of “manscaping,” after all.) And what
about changing female tastes in entertainment?
Whatever the reason, evidence started stacking up: “Bridesmaids” became a smash hit in 2011, and “The Hunger Games” opened in 2012. Pixar’s first princess movie, “Brave,”
also succeeded that year. (Universal would love a “Bridesmaids” sequel,
by the way, but Kristen Wiig, who starred in and was a co-writer of the
first film, has refused.)
By the time Angelina Jolie’s “Maleficent” rolled into theaters in May,
selling $748.7 million in tickets and becoming the No. 1 nonfranchise
film of the summer worldwide, the boom could not be denied.
You guessed it: Disney is working on ideas for “Maleficent 2.”
A version of this article appears in print on September 7, 2014, on page AR52 of the New York edition with the headline: From Now On, Women Save the World.
