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Audience Research: Worrying Cheers For 'Kingdom'?

Entertainment Weekly, Aug. 14, 2007 -- Director Peter Berg was taken aback by a favorable audience reaction in a pre-release test screening of The Kingdom—scheduled for Sept. 28 premiere by Universal Pictures. The preview audience from a California farm community enthusiastically cheered a scene in which Middle East terrorists are gunned down by Americans, according to an Entertainment Weekly magazine article. “I was nervous it would be perceived as a jingoistic piece of propaganda, which I certainly didn’t intend,” Berg told the magazine. The $70 million production – which stars Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Garner – is loosely based on the FBI’s investigation of the 1996 bombings of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia.

Full article

http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,20051361_20051365_20051629,00.html

Note from author Robert Marich. What’s this guy worrying about? While being too pro American may be deemed deplorable in today’s Hollywood political scene, in general films that portray Yanks as heroic are boxoffice hits, as evidenced by Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down and Rambo. Interestingly, Foxx also starred in first Iraq war drama Jarhead – with a not too subtle anti-war theme – that was a box office disappointment. In any case, Kingdom can be positioned as a thriller and thus downplay any political connotations.  Separately, a Variety story Sept. 7 said that test audiences registered approval of Kingdom's unusual opening sequence that presented historical information. Marketing to Moviegoers devotes a whole chapter to audience research (see Chapter 2 at right).

Update Sept 28. Here's what Wall Street Journal reviewer Joe Morgenstern said of the aforementioned opening sequence when he reivewed the film: "The main titles offer a lesson in the history of the Middle East, and especially Saudi Arabia, where the action is set. The lesson, brief enough to avoid any risk of education, is conveyed mostly by snazzy graphics and cut to the rhythms of a music video: essentially it's oil, sheiks, oil, alien culture, oil, Shell-Exxon-Mobil, shaky sheiks and extremist Wahabi militants threatening our supplies of oil. Once the title sequence ends, MTV history gives way to Hollywood present -- horror depicted powerfully, as only a feature film can do, and a fevered response out of formula TV."