News
NY Times-Hollywood Abandons Female Audience?
Note from author Robert Marich. A New York Times article lays out a case that Hollywood has abandoned the female audience, which if so would be a decision driven by marketing. However, I think this article is off the mark because it looks for high-profile female roles in the wrong places—frothy summer action films. Those are always male oriented.
Remember that Fox Searchlight’s teen pregnancy comedy drama Juno was a big hit. A few years ago, New Line hit the jackpot with weeper The Notebook. Looking at the audience, females watch more TV than males, so that’s where one finds gobs of female-oriented programs. That is a reality that Hollywood marketers know well. Finally, there is the tendency of out-of-Hollywood critics to view the movie business as an art form, instead of a commercial enterprise that tailors products to the expected audience.
May 4, 2008 – Reviewing upcoming films, a New York Times article concludes Hollywood has turned its back on the female audience, after reviewing summer films. “Nobody likes to admit the worst, even when it’s right up there on the screen, particularly women in the industry who clutch at every pitiful short straw, insisting that there are, for instance, more female executives in Hollywood than ever before,” notes the article by Manohla Dargis. “As if it’s done the rest of us any good.” The article suggests Warner Bros. Pictures, which made a string of films with female leads such as The Invasion (Nicole Kidman) and The Brave One (Jodie Foster), is backing away after those films fizzled.
The article notes a few female summer films: Wild Child, Kit Kittredge, Mamma Mia!, Wanted, What Happens in Vegas and And Sex and the City. But it concludes “the girls of summer are few in number, and real women are close to extinct.
For full text, click link below:
www.nytimes.com/2008/05/04/movies/moviesspecial/04dargi.html