Tag Archive for 'Mamma Mia'

Rachel Abramowitz of the LA Times and Lisa Schwarzbaum of EW weigh in on what a Bigelow win means for women (and the business.)

Abramowitz’ piece In Hollywood, female film directors are still the exception lays out the stats on where women are and how far we still have to go:

Bigelow’s likely ascension to the podium at the Academy Awards has provided a jolt of adrenaline.

For instance, neither Warner Bros., the world’s largest studio, nor Paramount Pictures hired a single female director last year, while Walt Disney Studios and Universal Studios hired just one apiece. No woman has ever been hired to direct an event picture with a budget of more than $100 million, the kind of film most valued by the Hollywood machine.

One apparent growth arena for women is in working for other women. Streep, for instance, told The Times that she attributes her box office renaissance to the fact that she opted to do three films, “Mamma Mia,” “Julie & Julia,” and “It’s Complicated,” that were written and directed by women, as well as backed by studios with women as presidents of production or even higher in rank.

And Schwartzbaum’s piece Kathryn Bigelow: If she wins the Oscar for directing, does that mean it’s been a great year for women?

As a movie-lover, I hope Bigelow wins, because of, well, her great directing of The Hurt Locker. As a woman (and thus, apparently, an oracle for the purposes of his little pre-Oscar feature) I’m aware of and excited about the significance of such a win, since she’d be, oh, the first woman ever to take the trophy in that category (and only the fourth ever nominated). But as a movie-lover, I’d like to think that if a man had directed The Hurt Locker as well as Bigelow did, then he would win the Oscar. I’d like to think that if Bigelow wins, the biggest benefit for women who want to make movies in Hollywood — a Hollywood run, as most of the world is run, by men — would be greater industry-wide recognition that talent comes in all sexes, colors, and sizes. A woman can make an action flick or a war movie; a man can make a feminine romance. All we want is to see stories that move us, excite us, entertain us, challenge us. Sometimes those movies are about alien blue people. More often, those movies are about people with whom we can identify, characters who look as young or old as we are. And as male or female, too.

AMEN.

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.

I guess we should look at this moment as a glass half full moment.  Big congrats to Donna Langley the former president of production who recently returned from maternity leave to get promoted to a big new job co-chair of Universal Pictures.  Update: Langley is also the first British woman to run a studio.

While I think this is amazing and awesome, another woman with the ability to green light movies (and by the way if it weren’t for Donna Langley Mamma Mia never would have been made.  She was the one who championed it and made it happen and it has made potloads of money for the the studio), why was she made co-chair and Adam Fogelson made chair?

While this might be viewed as semantics because in all the press materials it is made to seem that they will be a team, every article has made it clear that Langley will report to Fogelson and he reports to Ron Meyer.

Here’s the quote from Meyer about Fogelson in Variety:

Adam is a natural leader with a unique ability to anticipate our audience, understand our business and collaborate with our filmmakers to give us a competitive advantage.

There is no quote about Langley’s leadership.

It’s not that they haven’t had a woman in the chair position before.  Stacey Snider was chairman of the studio for a number of years before she left to run Dreamworks.

So I guess my question is if Langley and Fogelson are going to be partners in running the studio operations, why don’t they have equivalent titles, and why is she reporting to him?

These things do matter.

Fogelson, Langley to top Universal (Variety)

Just a quick update on how Julie & Julia did this weekend.

It came in second grossing a little over $20 million on 2300 screens.  (The amount of screens kept changing and I apologize for the confusion.)  Word of mouth is great and according to Variety the film “skewed dramatically older and female, with 64% of the aud over the age of 35 and 67% female.”  The film cost $38 million to make so it is on its way to being very profitable.  It will probably have legs through the rest of this month through Labor Day.

A few other numbers for perspective.   Nora Ephron’s Sleepless in Seattle opened in 1993 on over 1700 screens to a approx $17 million gross.  It earned $126 million domestically.  You’ve Got Mail opened in 1998 on over 2600 screens and earned a little over $18 million.  Film went on to earn $115 million domestically.

And from Meryl Streep.  The Devil Wears Prada opened in 2006 on 2,847 screens and grossed $27 million.  The total domestic gross was $124 million.   This film made more overseas with a total box office cum of $326 million.  Mamma Mia opened on over 2900 screens and grossed approx $27 million on opening weekend.  The domestic gross topped out at $144 million and the worldwide total is an astounding $600 million.

These women makes hits (and also a couple of misses.)

Did you go out and see it?  What did you think?

While The Proposal with Sandra Bullock has exceeded expectations, we all know the one movie that women have been waiting for all summer is now only one week away — Julie and Julia.  I have a sense that women are going to come out and see this in droves and in groups with many leaving the hubby or partner at home.  The competition at the national level is pretty slim on opening weekend (GI Joe) so it will pretty much get every woman and hopefully men interested in an alternative.

Tracking shows the film opening at $20 million and I think that is a low estimate, but it is opening on 2,300 screens and not 3,000, so that will have an effect on the gross.  Looking back at Mamma Mia, last summer it opened on 2,976 screens and grossed almost $28 million on opening weekend and it was against the Dark Knight.  The Devil Wears Prada from the summer of 2006 opened on 2,847 screens and grossed $27 million on its opening weekend.  I guess I am surprised that the film is not opening on more screens to take advantage of past history.

UPDATE 8/6: Just checked the theatre counts for opening night and the film will be opening in almost 3,000 theatres.  I bet it clears $30 million for the weekend.

With all due respect to Amy Adams who is carving out a nice career for herself, the reason why people will see this film is because of Meryl Streep.  She is a movie star and if this film does well she’ll be one of the only stars to have had a good summer.   The guy stars (Russell Crowe, Denzel Washington, John Travolta) their films did not do well.

According to the Hollywood Reporter she got paid $5 million for Julie & Julia and her asking price has now gone up to $7 or $8 million and she gets first dollars off the back end gross. I know that $5 million and $8 million are awesomely huge figures but she should make $20 million just like the big boys.  She can open a movie.  If she wants to be in a movie the movie gets greenlighted.  Brad Pitt just had his latest movie collapse (from the same studio releasing Julie & Julia) so his presence did not guarantee the film will get made.

I know I’m a big Streep cheerleader but I also want to put it out there that she works with women A LOT.  Mamma Mia, directed by Phyllida Lloyd; Julie & Julia, directed by Nora Ephron; It’s Complicated (the newly released title of her next film coming out on Christmas day) is directed by Nancy Meyers.

I don’t want to heap the pressure on her but she gives women of all ages, especially Hollywood actresses, hope.

Streep is a walking rebuttal to the persistent ageism that sidelines so many actresses. As such female stars as Nicole Kidman, Julia Roberts, Naomi Watts and Sandra Bullock wade into their 40s — which conventional wisdom holds is a wasteland for “aging” actresses — surely there is promise in Streep’s longevity.

From Nora Ephron:

This thing of hers, where she is as hot as Will Smith, it’s hilarious, and it is such amazing news for those of us who write movies that she’s perfect for.”

Are you going to go see Julie & Julia on opening weekend?  Show some love for Meryl and make those plans now.  Anyone want to go with me here in NY?

Meryl Streep: Bankable Franchise (HR)
Streep, Adams, Ephron: Recipe for success in ‘Julie & Julia‘ (USA Today)

L-R: Writer Catherine Johnson, Director Phyllida Lloyd, Producer Judy Craymer

celebrated its 10th anniversary in London this week.  What I love about this show is that the same women who worked on the show did the film and that they really respect and seem to genuinely care for each other.  It doesn’t hurt that they’ve all become quite rich.

While we all might not have know about these women until the film last summer, I can guarantee that we will be hearing more from them.  Here’s what they are up to:

51 years old writer Catherine Johnson has returned to the theatre, with a new play Suspension in her hometown theatre Bristol’s Old Vic.  The play is “about a girl who is about to get married wondering if her special day can possibly be complete without the presence of her father, with whom she has never had any contact.”  (Sound a little familiar?)

Here’s what she says about the film expereince:

Even now, she says she would never have been the first choice to write the screenplay if her contract had not demanded that she get a shot at it, and that she would almost certainly have been sacked if producer Judy Craymer hadn’t stood by her. Right to the bitter end, it was a fight with the studio to defend her and Craymer’s vision of a movie about “real older women who are overweight, over-stressed, drunk and needing each other”. She fought hard for the movie’s ending, in which all the cast return for one last exuberant number. The studio felt this was “cheesy wotsits with knobs on” that would only be seen by cleaners sweeping up popcorn. How wrong they were.

Ten years ago producer Judy Cramyer didn’t have enough money to get her car fixed and had to sell her apartment to finance the show, but now everything is different.  Thanks to the millions of people who have seen the musical and film she put together (which everyone thought would be a flop) she never has to work again.  That doesn’t mean she won’t.

Respected theatre and opera director Phyllida Lloyd has Mary Stuart starring Janet McTeer and Harriet Walter in previews on Broadway now. Here’s the description:

Seduction, greed and deception lie at the heart of the bitter rivalry between Mary, Queen of Scots (Janet McTeer) and her cousin, Elizabeth I (Harriet Walter) of England. After being implicated in her husband’s murder, Mary turns to Elizabeth for help but finds her cousin distrustful of her motives. Thus begins a bloody feud that will threaten not just their family bond, but the crown of England… MARY STUART tells the story of two iconic women whose lust for power reveals one of the most thrilling displays of passion and politics the world has ever seen.

I’m seeing it next week.  Can’t wait.

Here I go again (The Guardian)

How Mamma Mia’s Judy Craymer became the £90m dancing queen (Daily Mail)