When times get rough, Americans typically escape the harsh realities of their everyday lives by going to the movies. That’s how it was during the Great Depression when movie theaters managed to draw nearly 60-70 million viewers each week (more than half of the population at the time) and the same holds true today. Despite the current recession, ticket sales have increased this year, up 17.5 percent, to $1.7 billion, according to Media by Numbers, a box-office tracking company. Attendance has also jumped by nearly 16 percent.
But who makes up that audience? In a recent article from The Hollywood Reporter (Adults steer clear of movies), they suggested that adults prefer to stay home while kids and young adults increasingly fill the seats at the multiplexes. Certainly online movie rental services, like Netflix make watching movies from the comforts of home easier, with their library of more than 100,000 DVDs. But one top studio exec quoted in the article believes, “Adults are a harder audience to motivate, and the problem with some adult movies is compounded by their not being high-concept films that you can boil down to 30-second spots.”
It’s hard to point to one singular reason why adults may be avoiding the theaters these days. Some say it's the recession, but one could also argue that there just aren’t many options available to mature adults coming out of Hollywood recently. The teen comedy 17 Again and the wildly popular tween hit Hannah Montana: The Movie have both topped the box office in recent weeks. But other current, more adult-oriented films like Duplicity and State of Play, while well-liked by critics, both made less than $14 million on their opening weekends.
Certainly the months leading up to awards season offered meatier fare, but have older movie fans just grown complacent, content to watch DVDs at home or essentially lost confidence in Hollywood altogether? With many of the latest films aimed at kids, comic book fans and the like, occasionally more engaging or “quality” adult films might fly under the radar. Yet, sometimes it’s just a matter of seeking them out.
The “powers-that-be” in Hollywood won’t be motivated to change the current crop of movies they’re dishing out and focus on more adult-oriented fare while the youth market remains their biggest area of profit. So when we notice a movie that might pique our interests, it behooves us to go out to the theaters and support that movie, because we can’t expect Hollywood to produce more films for us when we don’t go out to see the few that fit the bill.
As luck would have it, there seem to be a few promising films in the pipeline. Along with The Brothers Bloom (which I highlighted in an earlier post), these upcoming movies look like they might resonate with adult audiences:
Happy viewing!
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