Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Hollywood Geniuses

So here’s the state of the geniuses that run the American film industry. First, they expect a movie based on a virulently anti-Catholic novel to be a Christmas hit. Wrong:

“The Golden Compass,” a $180 million family fantasy starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, failed to direct the masses to movie theaters. ... “It’s a little bit disappointing,” said Rolf Mittweg, president and chief operating officer of New Line’s worldwide distribution and marketing operations.

Meanwhile, despite the consistent pattern of anti-war message films flopping, left-leaning political films are still generating lots of interest:

Politically themed films might be tanking at the box office, but executives are still salivating over the genre, according to a ranking of hot scripts making the rounds at Hollywood agencies. According to the Black List, compiled annually by production executive Franklin Leonard, five of the top six scripts were political in nature. ... This year’s list suggests that political themes continue to offer extensive dramatic fodder, even as the potential for box office remains limited, as exhibited by such films as “Lions for Lambs” and “In the Valley of Elah.”

Limited? Try nonexistent.

Brian De Palma’s “Redacted,” the Iraqi war movie that won the best director prize at the Venice Film Festival but has been dismissed as loathsome and awful in other circles, has been in theaters – okay, 15 theaters – nationwide for three weeks now. According to BoxOfficeMojo, during that time it has grossed a total of $60,456 domestically.  To give you an idea of how small that number is, another limited-distribution movie, “Juno,” which is in just seven theaters, earned $56,107 last Thursday alone. ...

I don’t think shareholder activism does much good, but if I were a shareholder in any Hollywood studio, I’d be considering some anti-itdiotarian activism anyway. In any case, it just goes to show that Hollywood could use a dose of ideological diversity.