The Background:
An unruly mob of more than 70 movies will fight for filmgoers’ fancies during the lucrative, seven-week window from just before Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day. The rewards are great for holiday pictures that successfully capture our attention, but others are inevitably crushed in the stampede of audiences to glossy hits and serious films in search of award nominations.
Holiday films captured 17 percent of last year’s total box office revenue, compared to the 15-week summer season’s 37 percent, according to HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s box office analyst Brian Fuson. During the average 2001holiday week, Americans bought 1.6 times as many movie tickets than they did during the typical non-holiday, non-summer week.
Attendance is irregular during the holiday period, with crowds congregating at cinemas around Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s—when the biggest and best films are hyped hardest. In the first half of December, on the other hand, folks are generally too busy shopping and partying to seriously sample Hollywood’s holiday product.
Holiday movies tend to fall into three somewhat overlapping categories: blockbusters, nomination-hunters and family fare. While summer is the best time for the biggest films to find large audiences—it’s more than twice as long as the holiday season—November and December releases can get the powerful launches that lead to mucho moolah. The all-time box office champ,
TITANIC, opened on Dec. 21, 1997 and ended up grossing more than $1.8 billion worldwide. Number two is HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER’S STONE, which bowed Nov 16, 2001 and brought in more than $968 million.
LORD OF THE RINGS: FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING ($860 million), HOME ALONE ($534 million), TOY STORY 2 ($485 million), A BUG’S LIFE ($358 million) and DR. SEUSS’ HOW THE GRINCH STOLE CHRISTMAS ($340 million) were other holiday winners with strong youth appeal.
The top 23 films that opened between Nov. 2 and Dec. 28 in 2001 ended up grossing more than $2.17 billion domestically. However, the top 20 pics debuting between Aug. 31 and Nov. 1 of that year grossed less than a third as much ($680,000), and the top 20 films of the three-month period Feb. 9-May 3 ended up bringing in less than half as much ($1.02 billion). (The top 23 summer films debuting from May 4-Aug. 30, grossed more than $2.63 billion.)
Experience has proven that holiday films stay fresh in the memories of Oscar and other awards voters, so studios tend to save their best for the last pages of the calendar. In March 2002, holiday films from 2001—including
ALI, AMELIE,
A BEAUTIFUL MIND, GOSFORD
PARK, I AM SAM, IN THE
BEDROOM, IRIS, LORD OF THE
RINGS, and MONSTER’S BALL—took four of the five Best Picture Academy Award nominations, earned 40 other nominations and won 14 Oscars. In the eight most prestigious categories—best picture, performers, director and screenplay—holiday pictures earned 30 of the 40 nominations and nabbed seven of the eight statuettes.
The Buzz:
This season, once again, the holiday schedule is crowded with biggies, kid stuff and statue bait. According to HOLLYWOOD REPORTER’s chief film critic Kirk Honeycutt, 2002 holiday releases with serious Oscar chances include:
ABOUT SCHMIDT
ADAPTATION
EVELYN
GANGS OF NEW YORK
THE HOURS
LOVE LIZA
MAX
NARC
NICHOLAS NICKLEBY
THE PIANIST
Among the other big movies targeted at teens and adult pocketbooks are:
ANALYZE THAT
ANTWONE FISHER
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN
CHICAGO
DIE ANOTHER DAY
THE GUYS
MAID IN MANHATTAN
STAR TREK: NEMESIS
Big summer and holiday weekends keep getting more and more crowded—sending lots of pricey pics down in flames—so studio execs go through major agonies deciding which dates to gamble their jobs on. Their torment is exacerbated by the common multiplex practice of screening the biggest hits at staggered times in several auditoriums—squeezing out smaller, smarter stuff and causing films that don’t catch on fast to be rapidly replaced.
Although the adult audience continues to grow, Hollywood still primarily targets 15-25 year-olds, usually with unimaginative, derivative, gory, gross, loud and/or explosive actioners, horror flicks and sex comedies. Because major moviemaking is really expensive today, studio execs usually seek to reduce their risks by recycling old ideas, titles and plots—in remakes and sequels—hoping to clone previous successes. Despite their heavy reliance on audience testing, these gambles fail as often as they succeed, because what audiences really want is something new.
My Advice: This holiday season, my wife Sherry and I are looking forward to sampling several of the 70-odd holiday contenders. ABOUT SCHMIDT is widely said to offer one of Jack Nicholson’s greatest performances in an entertaining journey of self-discovery, created by the Oscar-nominated writers of
ELECTION. NARC is reported to be a fresh take on the crime genre, starring Jason Patric and Ray Liotta. Oscar nominators and voters may struggle to choose among Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Julianne Moore in THE HOURS, directed by Stephen Daldry
(BILLY ELLIOTT) and scripted by top Brit playwright David Hare.
We always see films by Martin Scorsese—probably America’s finest director—so we will give GANGS OF NEW YORK a look. (Its chances for success were enhanced when Miramax moved it up to December 20 from the Christmas Day release date it previously shared with the other Leonardo Di Caprio film, CATCH ME IF YOU CAN.) Of ADAPTATION, starring Nicholas Cage, Meryl Streep and Chris Cooper, Honeycutt wrote, “(writer Charlie) Kaufman and (director Spike) Jonze take huge risks to ponder…our desire as human beings for passion, and the emptiness one feels when it is missing.” Note that Kaufman and Jonze are the duo behind
BEING JOHN MALKOVICH.
Finally, we’ve read that Michael Caine gives the performance of his life in the new widely praised remake of Graham Greene’s insightful 1955 Vietnam murder-mystery novel THE QUIET AMERICAN, so we plan to check that out too.
FILMS FOR TWO ADDENDUM:
Alan Waldman is a multiple-award-winning Los Angeles freelance writer who has covered the Hollywood film and television industries for 17 years for publications including BROADCASTING & CABLE, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, THE IRISH TIMES, MULTICHANNEL NEWS, TELEVISION EUROPE, and TV GUIDE.
Alan’s 13 Favorite Holiday Releases of the Past Five Years:
For more features by Alan for FILMS FOR
TWO, click here for his interview with Screenwiter Lizzy
Weiss.
We thank Alan for his advice on how to weed through all our viewing options this season, and wish Alan, Sherry, and all of you the happiest of holidays!
