Archive for the 'Box Office' Category

You know things are shifting a bit when Entertainment Weekly has a column that spotlights female directors at the box office the week after Kathryn Bigelow won at her Oscar.

They note in the that Betty Thomas (former actress on Hill Street Blues) who has been a director since the late 80s first on TV and then in films, had her latest film, Alvin and the Chipmunks – The Squeakquel recently cross the $200 million mark at the US box office.  In fact, as of March 11, according to boxofficemojo the film has grossed $217,501 here and pratically the same amount overseas.

Betty Thomas is also a very interesting director to look at because she has never been relegated to the girl director ghetto.  She’s always made commercial mainstream family comedies (Dr. Dolittle and the Brady Bunch movie) with a little raunch thrown in with the Howard Stern film Private Parts.

Her venture into traditional drama — 28 Days with Sandra Bullock — did not fare as well but it is an interesting film.  I’m guessing she got that film made post the success of Dr. Dolittle.  Wondering what film she’s going to do next.

Just another reminder of the diversity of female talent out there.

You know that whole conversation about how women don’t go to the movies and are not a film market?  You know that conversation that we hear over and over as the big reason why we are inundated with crappy boy films week in and week out.

Well thanks to the statistics that we released by the MPAA with barely a blip yesterday, (thanks David Poland for the heads up) the news is that not only do women go to movies, we go more than men.  Yes, folks — women go to the movies more than men do.

This news should rock each and every executive in Hollywood more than the Bigelow Oscar win.  Cause this is something they understand.  This is money and women are delivering the money.  Big time.

So I am officially holding a funeral for the term “women are not a film market.”  I never want to hear it uttered again.  I am going to keep these statistics next to my computer (or maybe make them my screensaver but that would mean removing my picture of Kathryn Bigelow holding two Oscars) because every time someone says that women don’t go to the movies I’m just going to throw the stats in their faces.

I know exactly why the 2009 numbers increased.  If you follow the business it’s not too hard to figure it out.  The reasons are New Moon and The Blind Side with a side of The Proposal (now Sandra Bullock’s Oscar makes even more sense.)  Maybe folks are going to try and say that it is a fluke because there were two female centric successes and we don’t have those frequently.  Friends, that is the whole fucking point.  It’s like that line from Field of Dreams – “if you build it they will come.”  It is only looked at as a fluke because of the shortsightedness of people who won’t believe that women will continue to go to the movies.  There is nothing in any of the data that I have looked at the gives me any indication that women won’t go to the movies in the future.  In fact, I would venture to say that if they continue to make movies that attract women we will continue to be there.

Another line that I want to bury for good is that young men go to the movies more than anyone else.  That’s just bullshit.  Younger men don’t go to the movies more than younger women.  Younger people in general go to the movies more, but based on the MPAA numbers of frequent moviegoers (ones who go more than once a month) in the coveted demographic of 18-24, women make up 3.4 million filmgoers while men make up 3.1 million.  Suck on that Hollywood!

Don’t believe me, check out the numbers from the MPAA:

See the yellow?  That’s the women.

Here are the other stats:

• In 2009 there were 217 million moviegoers.  The total admissions was 1.4 billion dollars.
• Women are 113 million of the moviegoers and bought 55% of the tickets.
• Men are 104 million of the moviegoers and 45% of the tickets.

Here’s the money quote from the MPAA:

“A higher percentage of women than men are moviegoers in all categories of frequency.”

In. All. Categories. of. Frequency.

Women make up 9 million more filmgoers than men.

Bottom line: The future is female.  The upside is great.  The market is there ready to be tapped.  The only issue is who will take advantage of it.

At the end of 2009 the big story was the fact that women are the new “men” at the box office, so to speak.  The news was that women are now making films successful at the box office.  I have always believed — and written a lot about — women as a viable market for films.  But Hollywood has a short memory, and if you lose momentum you are a fluke.  The Wrap has a piece this week about “The Rise of the Female Driven Blockbuster” talking again about the box office numbers of The Blind Side, The Proposal and It’s Complicated (which has made $176 million worldwide.)   Hollywood is also taking notice of the success of Dear John a $25 million budgeted movie that opened at $30 million and was driven by women.

So based on what happened, even just last week, 2010 should be a great year for women at the box office.  Right? The problem is based on an early overview of the of the big films coming out this year, very few are targeted at women and even fewer have female leads.

Based on a list from CNN, of 25 big blockbusters coming out this year only 3 have women as the leads.  Moviefone looked at the top 50 of the year and only 5 are women led (and one is animated.)

Here they are:

Sex and the City 2 – May 28

Eclipse- the third film in the Twilight saga- June 30

Salt- Angelina Jolie kicks ass- August

Eat Pray Love- Julia Roberts as Elizabeth Gilbert- August 13

Rapunzel- animated- Novemever 24

(I also might list Alice in Wonderland that opens in March, but we all know the star of the film is Johnny Depp)

That’s not a lot of love for women.

On the one hand, I love that women are being taken seriously at the box office, but if you want to build on the successes of 2009 you need to give us films we want to go and see.  I worry that women will get blamed again for “not going to the movies” based on all the male centric and male targeted films coming out this year.

Blockbuster bonanza: Big movies to look out for in 2010 (CNN)

BIG in 2010: The Best Movie Bets This Year (Moviefone)

Sex Change: The Rise of the Female-Driven Blockbuster (The Wrap)

Nicholas Sparks is box office gold, especially for women.  Remember The Notebook?  That movie played really well (it made about $115 million worldwide) and made Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams movie stars.  Seems like lighting hit again last weekend even with the Super Bowl and the smowmageddon in many states on the east coast.

Dear John starring Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum took in $32.4 million (and had a budget of $25 million according to box office mojo) and pushed Avatar out of the top slot after 8 weeks and making it the top grossing film ever on a Super Bowl weekend.  (PS Titanic was in the top spot for 15 weeks.)  It was a comeback of sorts for director Lasse Hallstrom best known for The Cider House Rules and What’s Eating Gilbert Grape who got his biggest opening yet, who has not had either critical or commercial successes of late.  I like him as a director and would be glad to see him getting back into the game in a bigger way.

Women, especially younger ones fueled Dear John’s success making up 84% of the audience on opening weekend with 64 percent of the ticket buyers below 21 (according to The Wrap.)

Who says women aren’t a market?  (I decided that I am going to end every story of women’s box office prowess with that question from now on.)

‘Dear John’ dethrones box office king ‘Avatar’ (AFP via Yahoo)

Screen Gems’ Box Office Diamond: ‘Dear John’ Tops With $32.4M (The Wrap)

Here’s a definition we came up with.  What do you think?

In order to be considered a women centric film, this film would have to focus on one or more female characters – one protagonist and/or other female characters – at the center of the narrative. A female protagonist or female lead constitutes therefore the main characteristic of women centric. It is her story, told from her perspective.

Women centric film differs from definitions such as woman’s film or chick flick in that it does not refer to a specific genre of films. In other words, it includes animated films, horror films, (romantic) comedies, fantasy and action films. What matters is that the story is told from her perspective – be it an animated female character or girl in the horror film.

Furthermore, women centric does not necessarily imply a feminist protagonist neither does it guarantee that a feminist ‘message’ is contained (although it might).

Numbers matter. So we here at Women & Hollywood are going to try and put out as many numbers as we can.  (Just keep in mind that none of these are scientific studies)

Women & Hollywood intern Eva Krainitzki (all the way from England- how cool is that?) took a look at the 2009 box office numbers and also put forward a definition of what is a womencentric film.

Overview

2 of the top 10 grossing films are women centric;

9 of the top 50 grossing films (two of them are animated – The Princess and the Frog, Coraline);

18 of the top 100 grossing films;

26 of the top 150 grossing films

The Films, Their Rank and Total Gross

4 The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($293,897,327)

8 The Blind Side ($238,430,210)

—————————————————————————————————————-

16 The Proposal ($163,958,031)

31 It’s Complicated ($104,782,080)

32 The Princess and the Frog* ($100,352,358)

34 Julie & Julia ($94,125,426)

37 The Ugly Truth ($88,915,214)

39 Hannah Montana The Movie ($79,576,189)

42 Coraline* ($75,286,229)

—————————————————————————————————————-

56 Bride Wars ($58,715,510)

63 My Sister’s Keeper ($49,200,230)

66 Precious: Based on the Novel “Push” by Sapphire ($45,506,888)

67 Confessions of a Shopaholic ($44,277,350)

69 The Unborn (2009)** ($42,670,410)

70 Drag Me to Hell** ($42,100,625)

71 Orphan** ($41,596,251)

74 The Lovely Bones($38,647,080)

94 The Uninvited** ($28,596,818)

—————————————————————————————————————-

115 New in Town ($16,734,283)

116 Jennifer’s Body** ($16,204,793)

126 Amelia ($14,245,415)

129 Whip It ($13,043,363)

132 Sunshine Cleaning ($12,062,558)

144 An Education ($8,795,228)

146 My Life in Ruins ($8,665,206)

150 The Young Victoria ($7,673,21)

[1] Based on Box Office Mojo, domestic grosses for 2009.  As of February the 4th 2010.

* Animated Film

** Horror Film

I find it really funny — and telling — how the success of The Blind Side is still making people in Hollywood scratch their heads.  This past weekend the LA Times took a long look at the making of the film.

First, it seems that Julia Roberts was the only woman considered for the part.  When she passed the geniuses at Fox (where the film was at the time and now I’m sure are feeling pretty stupid) told John Lee Hancock (the writer and director) that he should rewrite the script and make it into a father-son story.

Why not change the leading part from a pistol-packing Southern supermom to a man and redraft the film as a father-son story?…If Roberts didn’t want to do the movie, they would only make it with a male lead.

Didn’t matter one bit that it was based on a true story.  At least they are not only asking women to rewrite female leading roles.  Guys can’t write women leads either.  Even funnier now is that due to the success of The Blind Side for Sandra Bullock and the failure of Duplicity with Julia Roberts that conversation about Julia Roberts would probably not happen today.  Now all that could change again this summer once Eat Pray Love comes out.

John Lee Hancock thought that the film would be a success precisely because it appealed to a wide range of people, yet that is exactly what made the studio nervous.

“The Blind Side” was “a feathered fish” that didn’t fit their marketing pigeonholes. “It’s not really a sports movie, although it’s got sports in it. It’s also not a chick flick,” though it was written for a female star. “My take on it was . . . there was something for everybody.

Interesting confirmation that any film that stars a woman is a chick flick. But, I’m really impressed that Hancock (now on the top of the world with a huge success) was this honest about the bullshit that goes on in Hollywood when deciding what movies to make:

Hancock, 52, thinks there is a lesson here for a film industry fixated on “event” movies and multi-film “franchises.”

“To the studios, it’s an anathema. It can’t be a real movie unless it cost hundreds of millions of dollars and has to have all the effects, and 16-year-old boys need to want to see it to be successful. That simply isn’t true.”

Amen.

Turns out that Sandra Bullock will get an even bigger pay day for this film because when the script passed to Alcon they had to keep the budget low (cause you know, it stars a woman) so she took less up front ($5 million versus her usual $10 million) for a bigger back end deal.  She might make upwards of $25 million on the film which just got her a Golden Globe and will get her an Oscar nomination.

And, while the film has had incredible broad appeal with a wide diversity of audiences including Evangelical Christians and African Americans it was women — especially those over 35– who got the film off to a strong start on the same weekend that New Moon dominated the box office.

But there is still a lack of confidence about women showing up at the box office and it’s going to take more time and more hits to get over it.

Here’s a kicker quote from Stacy Snider who run Dreamworks:

But “The Blind Side” is a “good reminder,” she says, “that if you find something that moves you deeply on a personal level and offers something novel, despite the fact that it is a genre that is not popular — drama — driven by a demographic you mistrust — adult women — you should cast those concerns aside.”

The Blind Side is a good lesson to Hollywood and to all of us that sometimes you need to think outside the box.  It always astounds me that trusting women means thinking outside the box.

The Making of Blind Side A Real-Life Drama (LA Times)

Back in November The Lovely Bones was on all awards watchers list just due to Peter Jackson previous pedigree.  No one had seen it, yet it was based on a best selling book and had awards potential written all over it.  Then people starting seeing it and the awards buzz virtually disappeared aside for Stanley Tucci in the supporting actor category.

But one thing that Paramount discovered in screenings is that young women — teen girls, you know the audience for Twilight — really liked the movie.

What happened with The Lovely Bones reminds me of that William Goldman quote- “nobody knows anything” when talking about Hollywood.

“The Lovely Bones” exemplifies how studios sometimes believe they have a firm understanding of what they are selling but are later surprised when moviegoers in focus groups and early screenings weigh in with contrary opinions.

You gotta give Paramount and Peter Jackson credit for getting on the girl wagon.  It’s not like they had any choice, it was pretty much that or nothing. They had the elements, a PG-13 film starring a young woman Saoirse Ronan.  So instead of just writing the picture off they changed their campaign.  They put a trailer for the film on New Moon.  They pulled back from the awards focus and waited until after the holidays for a wider released.

This past weekend they released the film on 2800 screens to a gross of over $20 million, way better than expected.  72% of the audience was female and 40% were under 20.  That means that young women went to see The Lovely Bones while their guy friends probably went to see Avatar again.

There are two lessons here.  One is that you can really make success from failure.  I think that Paramount didn’t give up because it was Peter Jackson and they want to be in business with him again.  I’m sure filmmakers without Jackson’s stature would never have gotten the same treatment.

Second, don’t underestimate young women and women in general.  This film was not a franchise film, it didn’t have a rabid fan base built in and it still did decent numbers.  That means that success can be found outside of fandom.  Just make a movie that people want to see and then sell it to them.  It really makes me want to see it now and before I was indifferent.

Paramount Digs Up Bones’ Audience (LA Times)

Lovely Bones Does About Face (Variety)

I participated in the blog talk radio show called Tomatoes in the Trenches which focuses on women over 40.

We talked about women, Hollywood and the Oscar season.

Please listen:

I totally LOVED Avatar.  It was a great forward thinking film with tons of passion and made me excited to be in a movie theatre.  I can’t wait to see it again (my friend and I tried several times last weekend but were sold out.)  Next time I am seeing it in 3-D.  I loved the fact that it was basically an anti-corporate movie paid for by one of the biggest corporations in the world – Fox Corp.  This kind of makes me laugh.

For those of you under a rock for the last several weeks the story is basically a revisiting of American history when the white European settlers wiped out the native Americans.  But it’s been updated to the moon Pandora and the army wants a valuable resource and they are willing to destroy the natives who are blue and huge and called Na’vi to get what they want.

The thing I love about Sci-fi is that it affords creative people like James Cameron to be forward thinking about gender.  Just like in Battlestar Galactica, gender doesn’t matter in Avatar.  There was nothing in the film that gave any indication of the bullshit gender constraints that usually populate Hollywood flicks.  The women were everywhere and they were strong, smart and bold (thank you Girls Inc.)

Let’s start with Sigourney Weaver as Dr. Grace Augustine.  Grace is the person who created the way to communicate with the Na’vi.  She has dedicated her life to trying to gain the Na’vi’s trust and from what I can tell she is the one who created the technology for the Avatars.

Zoe Saldana — who we never see as a human — plays Neytiri the daughter of the leaders of the Na’vi.  She is charged with showing the ropes to soldier, Jake Sully and is a kick ass warrior on her own.  She is one of the few who has tamed a mangoose (did I get that right?) and is clearly a leader among her people.

Michelle Rodriguez plays a kick ass (I know I repeated that description but it is appropriate) helicopter pilot who questions authority and will not shoot and kill just because she is told.  She sees the bigger picture and is willing to die for it.

And I can’t forget CCH Pounder as the queen Moat, Neytiri’s mother who becomes the leader after the death of her husband.

So I give props to James Cameron a man who has been married to several of the strongest women in Hollywood including Gale Ann Hurd, Kathryn Bigelow and Linda Hamilton.  While none of those marriages worked out something clearly rubbed off on him.

While most Americans (and the world) are struggling financially, Hollywood had a great year.  Box office revenue topped  $10.6 billion, up 10 percent from 2008 (according to Hollywood.com) and many of the year end stories have talked about women both at the box office and as directors.

Here what IndieWIRE had to say:

This was truly a landmark year for women and film.  Female-centered options dominated the indie landscape, with “Precious,” the year’s top grossing specialty release, leading the way.  The film may have been directed by a man, but it featured an almost entirely female cast and most certainly raked in its box office due in large part to female audiences hungry for options.  And beyond “Precious,” there were surprisingly many. Christine Jeffs’ “Sunshine Cleaning,” Lone Scherfig’s “An Education,” Jane Campion’s “Bright Star,” Anne Fontaine’s “Coco Before Chanel,” Claire Denis’s “35 Shots of Rum,” Pedro Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” Cédric Klapisch’s “Paris,” Sebastian Silva’s “The Maid,” Cherien Dabis’s “Amreeka”…  It’s an incredibly long list of often fantastic cinema.

And on top of all of it, these movies are making money. Of the top ten grossing limited released narrative films of 2009, four were directed by women (“Hurt Locker,” “Sunshine Cleaning,” “Coco Before Chanel,” and “An Education”), and three more (”(500) Days of Summer,” “Precious” and “Away We Go”) were most certainly aimed at female audiences, and feature either a female co-lead (“Summer” and “Away”) or a nearly all female cast (“Precious”).

And don’t forget the earlier pieces from the Wrap: Look Who’s Winning the B.O Battle of the Sexes and CNN.com: Yes, Hollywood, Women Do Go to the Movies

So 2009 had a confluence of good movies that were directed by women that made money and movies about women that people wanted to see.

So 2010 should be a year to build on these successes.  Here’s the problem.  All the women who make movies at the studios released movies last year.  It’s not a big list to begin with.  It includes Anne Fletcher, Nora Ephron, Betty Thomas and Nancy Meyers (am I missing anyone?)  All those women were in action last year and none of them (except maybe Fletcher) releases a movie each year.  On the indie from we also had films from other high profile women like Jane Campion, Mira Nair, Karyn Kusama, Sally Potter, and of course Kathryn Bigelow.

The question is how to we keep building on the success of 2009 when they won’t be any big movies directed by women?  There will be some strong women centric films like Sex and the City 2, the third Twilight installment as well as films from Julia Roberts, Reese Witherspoon, Katherine Heigl and an action pic from Angelina Jolie.

But those are movies directed by guys about women.  We need those and several of them will be great, but we also need to see movies by women about women (and also about guys and other things.)

From what I can tell there are only a couple of women with films already scheduled for release in 2010 and they are all indies.  We will have films like Please Give from Nicole Holofcener, Toe to Toe from Emily Abt, Fish Tank from Andrea Arnold (January 15), Last Night from Massy Tadjedin (March 19), The Runaways, from Floria Sigismondi (March 19).  Other women with completed films but without a release date include Julie Taymor ’s The Tempest, Niki Caro’s The Vinter’s Luck, Jodie Foster’s The Beaver and Sophia Copolla’s Somewhere.

There are a bunch more films that will roll out starting at Sundance including Lisa Cholodenko’s The Kids Are All Right and Gurinider Chadha’s It’s a Wonderful Afterlife.

So the thing we all need to wrap around our heads early this year is that most all the women directed flicks will have smaller releases so we will all need to be vigilant and get our asses out to the theatres.

I don’t want to give the powers that be (whoever the fuck they are) any ammunition to say that 2009 was a fluke either from a box office or a behind the scenes perspective.

Is anyone else concerned about this?  Are there other movies coming out that I don’t know about?  Please share.

Box Office 2.0: The Biggest Stories of the 2009 Indie Box Office (IndieWire)

Look Who’s Winning the B.O. Battle of the Sexes (The Wrap)

Yes, Hollywood, women do go to movies (CNN.com)

Here’s the link to the radio show from this morning where we talked about women’s box office successes of 2009, can a woman get a best director nomination and win, with three amazing creative artists, playwright Theresa Rebeck, TV writer and director Nell Scovell, and feature writer and director Katherine Dieckmann. about how we shift the conversation about getting more women into creative positions on power in Hollywood (and other areas of pop culture.)

Would love to hear people’s thoughts on the conversation.

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Bios on the Guests

Theresa Rebeck is one of the most accomplished playwrights in America today.  Her newest work The Understudy is currently playing in NYC through January 17th.  She is also a novelist.  Her first book Three Sisters and Their Brother is now available in paperback and her newest novel Twelve Rooms with a View will be published in May by Random House.  She is also writing a pilot for USA TV.

Katherine Dieckmann has written and directed three feature films most recently Motherhood starring Uma Thurman.  She was also a journalist and a director of music videos.  She currently is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University’s Graduate School of the Arts, where she teach screenwriting.  She also directed music videos for R.E.M., Aimee Mann, Wilco, and Everything but the Girl, among others.

Nell Scovell is a TV writer and director who created the show Sabrina the Teenage Witch.  She caused a bit of a stir with a recent piece on Vanity Fair’s website about her experience as a female writer on Late Night with David Letterman.

Sandra Bullock started out 2009 pretty much off the Hollywood radar screen.  She hadn’t made a movie for two years, and since most people never thought a woman over 40 could score box office successes, her upcoming films weren’t taken very seriously.  Part of the reason is because her films are romantic comedies and are starring vehicles for her so they don’t get a lot of love or buzz in the blogosphere.  Nobody had really high expectations for The Proposal,  All About Steve looked terrible (and did terrible), and The Blind Side wasn’t yet registering at all.

But then The Proposal hit — and hit big — with an opening weekend of $33 million on a $40 million budget.  It has now grossed $163 which puts it at number 13 for the year.

The Blind Side has propelled Bullock into a serious power position.  The success of the film, it opened with $34 million on a budget of $29 million, made Bullock 2009’s box office star in a survey of theatre owners.  The last time a woman was at top of the list was Julia Roberts in 1999.  The film is now the 8th top grossing film for 2009.

And to to top it off according to EW: “Bullock is now the only actress ever to have a film marketed with her name solely above the title (i.e. based on her star power alone, and not a franchise or tentpoll picture) pass the $200 million mark in domestic gross.”

Congrats Sandra but it is a sad testament to how far we have to go.

Sandra Bullock is top star of ‘09 boxoffice (Yahoo)

Check out my appearance on a year end movie segment on GRITtv hosted by Laura Flanders.

Nancy Meyers gets the cover of the NY Times magazine this Sunday with a very long piece by Daphne Merkin.  I have no qualms about admitting that I am a big Nancy Meyers fan.  There are many different reasons for my admiration of Nancy, one big one being the fact that she makes the movies she wants to make.  There are lots of people who have issues with Nancy Meyers movies.  Among the reasons people give are that her films are light, fluffy, stupid, make women act stupid, are horribly written, unrealistic, and too white.

Yes, Nancy Meyers creates a rich, white world populated by women (and men) but focused on women that none of us are ever going to live in.  I look at the houses in Nancy Meyers movies (and the houses are so important they are like characters themselves) and I see the beautiful throw pillows, the gorgeous bedrooms and bathrooms, and I know I am on Fantasy Island.  But honestly, I don’t think it’s any different than the world of Sex & the City.

But what Nancy Meyers does better than anyone is make these women relatable to other women, and those women go out and buy tickets to her films.  That’s why she gets paid the very big bucks and has final cut of her films. (According to the article she makes $12 million a movie not including movie she makes on the grosses.)  Of course I know that I won’t be able to write a play in the throes of a breakup and then have it produced on Broadway…but knowing that didn’t make me like the film (Something’s Gotta Give) any less.  I think it made me like the film MORE because Diane Keaton’s character was so competent.

Here’s what Diane Keaton said about her:

“She’s a pioneer with regard to representing older women,” Diane Keaton said over lunch at the Beverly Hills Hotel. “She’s the only one delivering the fantasy for women over 55. You’re beautiful, charming and you get two guys instead of one.”

Fuck yeah.

I think that’s one of the hidden gems (and many one of the reasons why people hate Meyers) is that she portrays middle aged white women and competent and complex.  She shows women as multi-layered and that’s refreshing.

Meyers is supposedly a very difficult director.  She does a lot of retakes.  It takes a long time to make her films.  So she does a lot of takes.  The only reason why this gets so highly scrutinized is because there are so few other women working at her level.  And other women in Hollywood know that she is paving the way for the future.

Here’s a quote from Callie Khouri:

“Nancy inspires a tremendous amount of hope in me,” she says. “She’s defied the conventional wisdom that women are over — both societally and professionally — past a certain age. I root for her in the way I do for all women who are trying to sledgehammer a hole into the wall of an audience and an output that’s almost exclusively male-dominated.”

Here are some other tidbits from the piece that I found interesting:

And this being a Nancy Meyers movie, men are as subject to critical scrutiny via the female gaze as women are subject to the male gaze.

I also found it very interesting to note that since she broke up with Charles Shyer over a decade ago, she has grown in stature as she moved into directing and he has well, not done as well (ie Alfie- need I say more?)

She is valued first and foremost for her track record at the box office; each of her post-Shyer movies has surpassed $200 million in revenue worldwide.  Meyers is also paid for generating “creative value for the studio,” says Jeff Berg, chairman of I.C.M. and her longtime agent. “Studios like to have success,” Berg says, “and then they like to have the halo effect, whereby the films reflect positively on the taste of the studio.”

This woman has clout, power and respect in Hollywood.  That is something we need to note and to learn from.  She is another woman who used her writing to propel her into directing and most of the successful female directors have been going that route.

I am the first one to admit the soft spot in my heart for all things Nancy Meyers.  The woman has written some of movies that I can watch over and over again.  I can’t tell you how many times I have watched Baby Boom.  I can’t tell you how many times I have watched Something’s Gotta Give.  Even the Father of the Bride films are rewatchable and I tell everyone that The Holiday is a misunderstood gem especially the relationship between Eli Wallach and Kate Winslet.

See you at the theatre on Christmas Day!  Can’t wait.

Can Anybody Make a Movie for Women (NY Times Magazine)

Zoe Saldana is in a unique position.  She is poised to be in not 1 — Star Trek — but two — Avatar — of the top grossing movies of the year.

Not bad.  She recently spoke to the Wall Street Journal’s Speakeasy blog and had some great feminist things to say about the state of women and hollywood.

How bad is the landscape out there for decent female roles?

They’re out there — people just aren’t investing in them. We can sit here forever discussing it, because it has a chicken vs. the egg quality. Bottom line, producers are business people. Hollywood is a money-making machine. At the end of the day, they have to produce numbers that will help them keep their jobs and companies alive. But we as consumers have a lot more power than we think. Women need to demand better roles and get audiences to see their films. Because if a film doesn’t make $150 million, producers and studios aren’t going to bankroll a similar film next time. If there were more filmmakers that were female, trust me, it would be all about women.

Avatar” Star Zoe Saldana on the State of Women in Hollywood (Wall Street Journal)

The awards are starting to dominate the conversations but not lose sight of the fact that women are still ruling the box office.

The Princess and the Frog, the first Disney film with an African American princess lead (I’m going to let the whole princess thing go here) won the weekend box office with a little of $24 million. 

The Blind Side was number 2 and is still strong having earned almost $150 million in 4 weeks.  Astounding.

New Moon is still going having now earned $267 million in 4 weeks and by the way was still the top film overseas making its total worldwide gross over $627 million.

By now everyone has seen the Manohla Dargis’ piece in the NY Times Women in the Seats but Not Behind the Camera which is a solid but late to the party piece about how even though women are buying tickets they still have few opportunities to direct.  I guess people care more about the lack of directors this year because a) women are actually making a difference at the box office and must be reckoned with, and b) for the first time a woman could potentially take home the best director statuette at the Oscars.

It’s not news to me or anyone who reads this site that women have been full and equal participants at the box office buying 50% of the tickets (according to MPAA stats).  And according to a piece in The Wrap last week, women won the battle at the box office this year, Look Who’s Winning the B.O. Battle of the Sexes:

“This is the year of the woman,” Paul Dergarabedian, a box-office analyst with Hollywood.com, told TheWrap. “Female stars or female-driven movies have been unexpectedly dominant. I mean, Meryl Streep is just as vital today as ever.”

But here is where the disconnect comes in.  Women buy tickets, yet still don’t get directing gigs.  As Dargis writes:

Women need to develop their own muscles.  I’m not talking about those buff babes who pop up in adolescent fantasies, licking their lips as they lock and load; I’m talking about movies made for and with women. I’m also talking about movies directed by women.

Why is it so hard for women to get the gigs?  Women spend the money to go to film school and want to direct, yet for reasons that no one has really figured out how to assess (because hardly anyone will talk on the record about it) women do not get the big studio directing gigs.  They just don’t.  You can blame it the old boy’s club.  You can say that men don’t want to see the type of movies women direct.  You can call it whatever you want.  But to me it’s plain old bullshit sexism.  For some reason the studio executives — male and female — don’t want to buy what women have to sell.

If we as women (and men) went out and supported films like Whip It the studios would make more of them.  Nobody went to see Whip It which was an awesome film.  We can blame that on marketing issues but if we don’t go see the good films by women the studios won’t make them.  It’s really simple and yes it is a double standard.  We need to support films by women more than we need to support the film by men.  That’s just the way it is.

Here are some more of the depressing stats:

Of the almost 600 new movies that will be reviewed in The New York Times by the end of 2009, about 60 were directed by women, or 10 percent.

Of the major and mini major studios, here’s what women have directed in 2009:
20th Century Fox: Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama) and Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (Betty Thomas)
Fox Searchlight: Amelia (Mira Nair), Post Grad (Vicky Jenson) and Whip It (Drew Barrymore)
Disney: The Proposal (Anne Fletcher)
Sony: Julie & Julia (Nora Ephron)
Sony Pictures Classics: An Education (Lone Scherfig), Coco Before Chanel (Anne Fontaine) and Sugar (Anna Boden, directing with Ryan Fleck).
Universal Pictures: It’s Complicated (Nancy Meyers)

Miramax Films, Focus Features, Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers Pictures released no films directed by a woman.

Look Who’s Winning the B.O. Battle of the Sexes (The Wrap)

Women in the Seats but Not Behind the Camera (NY Times)

Women are second class citizens in Hollywood and the best way to illustrate it is to look at the money — how it’s earned and how it’s distributed.  Two very different pieces, Actress Salary Report in The Hollywood Reporter and BO of the ’00’s: The Top Grossing Female Helmed Film Women in IndieWire help illustrate the issue.

IndieWire points out that of the 241 films in the last decade that have grossed over $100 million only five! of them are directed by women.  (Two more Shrek and Shark Tale — both animated — had women as co-directors.)

Here are the five:

Twilight directed by Catherine Hardwicke

What Women Want directed by Nancy Meyers

The Proposal directed by Anne Fletcher

Mamma Mia directed by Phyllida Lloyd

Something’s Gotta Give directed by Nancy Meyers

And to add insult to injury: “only 31 films directed or co-directed by women grossed over $20 million.  Over 1,000 films directed by men did the same.”

WTF?  I do like a Nancy Meyers film but please!  I know it’s very complicated to dissect why women directed films don’t perform as well as films by men.  Some of the reasons include subject matter and the fact that men would rather die than see a romantic comedy, and that in 2009 most of the women directed films still fall into the romantic comedy category.

This has got to change.  Everyone knows it’s abysmal and unacceptable yet there are no clear strategies EVER put forward by people with power to improve the situation.

And compounding the issue is the release of the annual salary list of top Hollywood actresses.  We all know that women make less money than men because most of the films that women star in (except for Angelina Jolie) have lower budgets because not too many things blow up which in turn leads to less marketing and advertising which in turn leads to lower grosses and then the outcome is: women’s movies don’t make money so let’s not make any movies that star women.

On the one hand I think that we are going to need many women to blow shit up to get any respect in Hollywood but then look at The Hurt Locker where Kathryn Bigelow blows lots of shit and people up.  It still has not made a lot of money.  So you can’t really win.  Maybe an Oscar nomination will help.  On the other hand I say fuck it.  Let’s just make the movies we want to see and be better about figuring out how to get women to see them.

The list of the top earning actresses is quite predictable and all white.  Most of the women are desperate for a hit.  The general theme to me is that these women need better scripts.  I’m tired of watching the same crappy movies rewritten over and over again.  Give me a Kate Winslet or a Cate Blanchett film any day (and by the way neither of them is on this list.)

The list and my thoughts:

Julia Roberts – took a pay cut for her next film Eat, Pray, Love but is only one hit away from being back on top.

Katherine Heigl – all I know is that she has one more chance to save herself after the misogynistic The Ugly Truth.  (I recently was watching the early episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and she is so good.  She needs to find a movie worthy of her and worthy of us.

Cameron Diaz – she stays on the list because of Shrek, but please she needs a serious hit.

Reese Witherspoon – I kind of miss her.  Where the hell has she been?  Oh yeah, hanging out with Jake.

Jennifer Aniston – I expect to see more boring romantic comedies from her for another 10 years.

Kate Hudson – if anyone needs a career counselor it is Kate Hudson who is still riding on her one hit wonder performance in Almost Famous.

Meryl Streep – hope she’s buying a big truck to haul all the backend dollars she’s getting because they won’t pay her enough up front.

Sandra Bullock – The Blind Side and The Proposal move her back up to the top.  Now no one remembers All About Steve.

Amy Adams – love her but Leap Year looks like a retread of the bad Hilary Swank film PS I Love You.  It’s another January release and you know what that means.  But I have only seen the trailer and it includes the line “I’m not going to die without getting engaged” which always makes me want to run screaming from the theatre

Rachel McAdams – I want her to star in a film DESPERATELY.

So here’s a crazy thing that happened this weekend, The Blind Side beat New Moon to become the number one movie in its third weekend of release.  A movie that did not open in the number one slot rarely then climbs to number one.  Just doesn’t happen.

But it happened with The Blind Side, an undermarketed and underappreciated movie before its release.  It became a success in spite of minimal studio support because people are really liking it and lots of them are women and those women tell their friends and that my friends is how word of mouth works.  This is a perfect example of the power of women at the box office.  It might take us a little longer, but if it is good and people recommend it to us, we will make see it.

The Blind Side has now grossed $129 million domestically and looks to continue to play through the holidays.  Just a little perspective, 2012 the Roland Emmerich world is ending calamity movie cost $200 million to make and is in its 4th week of release.  It has grossed almost $149 million.  The Blind Side cost somewhere between $29 and $35 million to make and it will probably beat the domestic gross of 2012.  So tell me, what’s the better investment?

Slowly, quietly, Sandra Bullock has turned out to be the most successful box office star this year.  She has two films in the top 20 and both will wind up grossing over $150 million each.

Also, New Moon is on its way to being one of the top five grossing films for the year, and worldwide it has now grossed over $570 million.