The WB Situation

Posted by Chris

October 10, 2007

I had something written yesterday about blogger responsibility and corporate best practices as they relate to the tempest in a teapot that is the issue of Warner Bros’ exec Jeff Robinov’s comments about women in film. If you’re not familiar with what happened, Nikke Finke reported (a loose use of the word) that Robinov said WB would no longer greenlight movies starring women because of the poor performance of some movies like that in recent months.

But I decided that what I had written didn’t really do any good, and in fact would burn a lot of bridges and so decided to ditch the post. It didn’t serve any purpose and so I deleted it before it saw the light of day.

Luckily Karina hits the nail on the head in a way no one else really did with this post.

…but like I said: the news wasnâ€™t that the studio was turning away from (mis)casting female movies stars in action movies; the news was that they cast a bunch of Oscar-winning actresses over 30 in poorly conceived genre fare, and then dropped the ball on marketing.

Yep, that pretty much sums up The Reaping, The Brave One, The Invasion and a host of others. All these were poorly conceived and then received marketing campaigns that didn’t sell the movie all that well. There’s no point in casting Jodie Foster in a story like The Brave One when it, by all accounts, was only a half-way decent story. And there’s even less point to it when it’s going to be marketed as a genre action/revenge flick.

Anne touches upon the same themes. My apologies to her for lifting half her post, but it’s worth reading as a whole.

Warners greenlit three violent action pics starring female stars with femme appeal–Jodie Foster, Hilary Swank and Nicole Kidman, respectively–and then marketed the movies like Joel Silver movies. There are myriad reasons why each of these pics failed to thrive. A brainy twist on the vigilante genre, The Brave One may have been too disturbing for moviegoers, who remain uncomfortable with realistic stories about women with guns or angry women who take revenge on violent men. (Angelina Jolie with guns in a fantasy action pic is another matter.) The Brave One required careful handling and may have needed a slower release plan. Selling Foster as some kind of action hero may not have been the best approach. Audiences did buy her in Panic Room and Flight Plan, probably because in both she was a frightened mother defending her child. That’s one of the only ways that audiences will forgive a woman with a gun.

The Reaping and The Invasion were both expensive B-pictures that were poor vehicles for any star, and were badly timed at the tail end of the recent horror cycle. Their fate had nothing to do with Swank or Kidman’s performances. One thing that Warners and Silver should keep in mind with any movie aimed at women–they tend to be more discerning, read reviews, don’t show up en masse opening weekend, and look for movies to be well-executed.

I find it interesting that the most well-reasoned and compelling posts/articles I’ve read on this topic have come from women. Aren’t they supposed to be offended? Aren’t they the ones that are supposed be calling for all sorts of box-office boycotts and sanctions? Nope. It’s the guys.

The veracity of Robinov’s comments was always, in my mind, in question. It always seemed likely his comment was taken out of context or he was mis-quoted or something. It also seemed likely the “producers” who tipped Finke off were setting some sort of score, a goal Finke always seems happy to facilitate.

Make good movies, then market them well. If you cast the right actors, put the right people behind the camera and let them do their thing, then a good product will likely emerge. Then market it appropriately and to the right audience and it will do well financially. Make crap and then launch a poor campaign and it will likely fail. It doesn’t matter who’s in the lead.