Guess what? Turns out if you essentially ignore half the population, you’re leaving money on the table. Apparently this is, like, an AP Calculus-level concept in Hollywood.
The Hollywood Reporter suggests that the industry’s all-young-dudes-all-the-time summer blockbuster strategy is backfiring. For one thing, younger audiences are slipping away like sands through the hourglass: In 2013, as per the MPAA, the share of “frequent moviegoers” dropped 17 percent among the 18 to 25 demo and 15 percent in the 12 to 17 demo. Meanwhile, women are showing less interest in bald-faced dudebro crap spectacles like Transformers: Age of Extinction:
By contrast, females made up only 39 percent of Amazing Spider-Man 2’s debut audience, compared with 42 percent for 2012’s The Amazing Spider-Man and 46 percent for Spider-Man 3. The same trend applies to Transformers: This summer’s Age of Extinction skewed 64 percent male during its first weekend.
All this translates to a 20 percent summer-revenue collapse for North America.
All the while, movies that bother a) appealing to women and b) being remotely worth a crap are making money hand over fist:
Moms and girls helped turn Frozen into one of the biggest successes of all time ($1.27 billion), and they have powered Disney’s Maleficent to nearly $670 million, including $222 million in North America — more than any other summer film aside from X-Men: Days of Future Past. Fox’s The Fault in Our Stars also mobilized younger girls (82 percent of the opening audience was female; 79 percent was under 25).
If only someone could figure how to shoehorn some robots into a remake of All That Heaven Allows!
Photo via AP Images.