The Hunger Games

Female-Driven Films Profit, So Why Aren’t More Being Made?

January 26, 2016 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Kaiti Hsu for “Variety

“It’s good business to cast strong women in lead movie roles. Last summer’s opening weekend was a master class on femi-nomics when “Mad Max: Fury Road” and “Pitch Perfect 2” faced off on May 15 — and both films came out ahead.

“Mad Max: Fury Road,” directed by George Miller, starred Charlize Theron as Imperator Furiosa, a rebel opposite Tom Hardy’s Max. No distressed damsel, the character with her own story arc was so tough the choice ignited a backlash that the franchise had gone fanatically feminist. As for “Pitch Perfect 2,” the sequel directed by co-star Elizabeth Banks featured Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson and Hailee Steinfeld in a femme-friendly musical comedy.

By the numbers, “Mad Max” cost an estimated $150 million to make. Opening weekend reaped $44 million, with worldwide grosses at $375 million and $153 domestically. Meanwhile, “Pitch Perfect 2” cost an estimated $29 million to make, opened to a $70 million weekend, grossed $285 million worldwide and $183 million domestic. Both films had strong female stars but represented very different genres — and the more female-focused of the two had the better return on investment.

More recently, Emily Blunt proved her box office chops in “Sicario,” in which she stars as an FBI agent who gets a crash course in the drug war, with Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro as her dubious mentors. Lionsgate Entertainment opened the $30 million thriller on Sept. 18 in platform release in six venues with a whopping $65,000 per-theater average.

“The numbers speak for themselves. Period. Worldwide grosses for ‘Pitch Perfect 2’ and ‘Cinderella’ were over $800 million. Clearly women aren’t the only ones going to see these movies,” says Academy member Peggy Rajski, associate arts professor/head of producing, NYU Graduate Film Program.

Looking back in 2015, whether we love or love-to-hate “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the female-directed (Sam Taylor-Johnson), female-led (Dakota Johnson) literary adaptation of the bondage bestseller had a benchmark year. On an estimated $40 million budget, the movie grabbed a worldwide gross of $570 million, with a $94 million opening weekend.

“Fifty Shades of Grey” is a sexy potboiler that could not be more different from “Mad Max,” “Pitch Perfect 2,” “Cinderella” or “Sicario.” In short, the house of female-driven cinema has many, many rooms — most of them as yet unexplored. Meanwhile, two novel-based, female-driven sequels are already in development: “Fifty Shades Darker” is in the script stage and slated for 2017, while “Fifty Shades Freed” has been announced for a 2018 release.

The massive success of “Fifty Shades of Grey” reflects the way in which the movie industry has put bias before good business practices. The book industry has long-known that women are among their most avid readers with the household purchase power behind them. It’s not news that the “Twilight Saga” was an established literary franchise long before it made Kristen Stewart famous and, in four films, grossed over a billion dollars.

“The Hunger Games” trilogy, stretched to four movies, made Jennifer Lawrence a major star by keeping true to the novels’ winning female-driven recipe. With the final installment, “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 2” opening on Nov. 20 in time for the Thanksgiving sweep, the franchise has grossed Lionsgate $2.2 billion so far.

Beyond the event movies, female-driven comedies are on the rise. Both Melissa McCarthy’s “Spy” (worldwide $236 million) and Amy Schumer’s “Trainwreck” (worldwide $138 million) were R-rated summer hits. Amy Poehler and Tina Fey hope to capture Christmas with the upcoming “Sisters.”

It comes as no surprise that given the opportunity, female-driven films connect with audiences. Rajski raises the question: “Over half the world’s population is female. Why wouldn’t you target that audience more aggressively?”

The gender gap is bad business: as Oscar winner Meryl Streep pointed out in 2012: “Why? Why? Why? Don’t they want the money?” Her question echoes three years later, begging for a shareholders’ revolt. Female-driven movies make money. In an era when movies are beset by competition from quality television, video games and alternative entertainment, the industry can’t afford to be biased.

{This story first appeared in the October 06, 2015 issue of Variety.)

Outtakes: Julianne Moore on Doing ‘The Hunger Games’ — Thanks to her Kids

May 27, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Jennifer Lawrence, Julianne Moore looking into the future: it isn’t pretty but they are.

De-cluttering the cutting-room floor — this time from my interview with Julianne Moore in the New York Observer that ended up concentrating on her race to the Best Actress Oscar.

Ms. Moore’s drive to be attached to quality material extends beyond the Oscar circuit. Regarding being cast in the box office hit The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, Ms. Moore confessed: “which I did call about.” She credited her children for the discovery five years ago. “I’m like here, Caleb, here’s the third volume in the series you like (because you always want 12-year-old boys to read.) And then a few years later my daughter, who’s now 12, was reading The Hunger Games. We were on vacation and I had nothing to read. I picked it up. I was like ‘this is great.’ I downloaded the other two and I read them really fast. Then in the last book there’s this character Alma Coin and I’m, like, go for that part. She was the only character I could play. And that’s how that happened. I met the director, Francis Lawrence. That was one of those projects I pursued because it was interesting.”

In the case of Mockingjay, the material was more attractive than the actual part of the severe President of District 13, a powerful figure that does not carry the narrative thread like Jennifer Lawrence’s Katniss Everdeen. The book interested Ms. Moore because “it’s political allegory with adolescent overtones whereas a lot of things that you read in YA are simply adolescent. There’s nothing wrong with that… but what the author Suzanne Collins did is she really wrote about political systems and ideology and rebellion turning into revolution and civil disobedience and what class systems do to people and what totalitarianism does. I read it and I was like, Jesus! And the character of Alma Coin is thin in the book. She’s not fully fleshed out in the movies either because the movie’s not about Alma Coin but she’s an interesting character with an interesting evolution.”

Julianne Moore’s Long Red Carpet to the Oscars

May 21, 2015 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Julianne Moore sighs over a mondo coffee cup in ‘Maps to the Stars’ and wins Best Actress at Cannes 2014

Can it be only a year since Julianne Moore owned the red carpet at Cannes — and won the festival’s Best Actress — for playing a diva on the verge of a nervous breakdown in Maps to the Stars? And then David Cronenberg’s bitter little Hollywood pill lost its way to the theaters and what had once seemed like Julianne’s yearstumbled. And then came Alice, Still Alice and Moore was back in play. Here’s my interview of Moore for the New York Observer that appeared on January 21st on finding Oscar without a map:

It was a lunch at Le Cirque, it was star-studded, and actress Julianne Moore was at Table One. The star of Still Alice—a tough, raw portrait of an academic, wife and mother coping with the disintegration of her identity due to early-onset Alzheimer’s—looked, at 54, terrific. Friends surrounded her: Kate Capshaw, wife of Steven Spielberg, on her right; Ellen Barkin to her left. The mood was hopeful, even giddy, with a side of wood-knocking: Ms. Moore was and is the frontrunner for the Best Actress Academy Award. Last week, she received her fifth nomination and, if it happens February 22, this would be her first win.

It’s no coincidence that Cate Blanchett held down that same circular table last year on her juggernaut to the Oscar for Woody Allen’s Blue Jasmine, also, not coincidentally, distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. But while Ms. Blanchett held the Best Actress lead from a midsummer release to the Oscars, it’s not an easy position to maintain. Ms. Blanchett’s frontrunner status could easily have been torpedoed by the abuse scandal surrounding director Woody Allen [Read more…]

‘The Hunger Games’ Love Triangle: The odds aren’t in their favor

April 13, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment

Peeta & Katniss & Gale (photo by Lionsgate)

The romantic power of three dominates the latest mega-cultural franchises, “The Hunger Games” included. In “Twilight,” Team Jacob and Team Edward battle for the moody pixie dream girl Bella. Can anyone really see Bella living happily ever after with either predator?

In “Harry Potter,” the three best friends Harry, Ron, and Hermione weave in and out of love, with Harry at the center. OK, it gets a little weird when Harry breaks out of the triangle only to date Ron’s look-alike ginger sister.

And, now, Katniss bounces between Gale and Peeta in the romantic tussle at the heart of “The Hunger Games.” The relationships often seem more fraternal than passionate — at least so far. These are still early days for the movie audience. Get ready for the slow build. With the end of the first installment, we are in the click-click-click uptick of a roller coaster — in many ways the romantic ride is yet to come.

How does the Katniss-Gale-Peeta postapocalyptic love triangle differ from the soft-core YA romances that preceded them? In “The Hunger Games,” Katniss remakes the love triangle trope because she’s an alpha girl, unlike Bella or Hermione.

Katniss stands out as Artemis the Huntress — she pulls the strings. And she owns the consequences of her mistakes. When her father died in a mine explosion, Katniss filled the void. She stepped up to become the family leader when her emotionally fragile mother shut down. Although assuming this adult responsibility so young angers Katniss, she would be uncomfortable any other way. She likes to be in control — and, among the Capitol’s many afflictions, it poaches control from the individual.

Romance also requires surrendering some control, which may be why Katniss is so reticent to yield her heart. In both the movie and the book, Katniss’s love choices are between another alpha, Gale, and Peeta’s beta male. That Peeta stands a chance reflects changing roles between the sexes in our society (and Panem, too). Will Katniss end up in an alpha-alpha relationship, or an alpha-beta pairing? Only time (and the final chapter of “Mockingjay”) will tell.

Gale, like Katniss, supports his family after his father’s death in the mines. He contributes to their survival through his physical strength — by poaching and protecting. He is at one with nature in a world where nature has been quarantined beyond the electrified fence erected by the Capitol. Katniss and Gale are mirror images of each other: They share the same fire, the same anger, and the love of the hunt. Their companionship peaks when they are silently taking action. They are the intake of breath before the arrow flies. And their physical passion, because this is YA, never pushes them out of the kissing zone. Like a seasoned trapper, Gale is waiting for Katniss to fall into his net of her own accord.

Peeta could not be more different from Gale — and Katniss. He’s a gatherer, not a hunter. He has never stepped beyond the village of District 12. He works toward consensus. He knows how to follow orders. He bakes and paints and uses words to knit people together. It’s Katniss who reminds Peeta in the training camp that he’d better display his physical strength because the other tributes have begun to view him as if he were their next meal. In other words, man up! Peeta displays more traditionally feminine attributes than Katniss. At the same time, he presents a more complementary option, and one that has the potential to complete her as a person.

“The Hunger Games” sets into motion a battle between an alpha and a beta male for an alpha female’s thorny heart, which contrasts with “Twilight,” “Harry Potter” — and most of the familiar love triangles. In some sense, Katniss’s attraction to Gale is narcissistic, and promises the least growth. Her affection for Peeta comes gradually — but does that make it any less real?

Avid readers know the answer to the riddle of Katniss’s tortured love life — it lies in the final chapter of “Mockingjay.” But there’s no need for a spoiler alert to say that Katniss’s true passion is her independence. That’s why she remains such a tough-love heroine, and the odd woman out in conventional love triangle stories that promise happily ever after.

“Battle Royale” Trailer

March 31, 2012 By Thelma Leave a Comment