A new wave of intelligent films is proving a box office flop, says christopher goodwin in LA |
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A deep gloom has settled over Hollywood, and it's not just because of
the strike by Hollywood writers, which is gradually bringing all
television and film production to a halt. What's much more worrying in
the long-term is that after years of complaints that Hollywood wasn't
making intelligent movies for sophisticated audiences, it's now making
them in droves but no-one wants to see them.
Every weekend this autumn films that in previous years would have been
sure-fire Oscar contenders have been dying on the vine, even those
that feature major stars. The Assassination of Jesse James by the
Coward Robert Ford, for instance, a dreamy, well-reviewed $30m
western starring Brad Pitt (right), has made just over $3m at the box
office in six weeks, barely enough to pay for Pitt's hair stylist.
There are dozens of other examples: In the |
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Every weekend films that once would have been sure-fire Oscar contenders have been dying on the vine
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Valley of Elah, a crime
drama about an Iraq war veteran directed by Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning director of Crash, has taken just $6.5m in about two
months; Rendition, starring Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, a
$50m thriller set in the turbulent world of the war on terror,
has taken less than $10m since it was released in the middle of
October.
Executives at the specialty divisions of the major Hollywood studios
are reeling.
"We're all suffering. It's the entire business," says James Schamus,
chief executive of Focus Features which is owned by Universal. "At
least someone should be succeeding. It's as bad a fall as
I've ever seen."
Executives like Schamus have been especially shaken because the
audience for these kind of thoughtful films had been buoyant in the
last few years. Last year, for example, Little Miss Sunshine took $60m in the US, The Queen made $56m, while even Babel
grossed $35m. The year before Brokeback Mountain took $83m and Crash made $56m. In the current climate most  |
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