HOLLYWOOD GOES GLOBAL - Why Certain Movies Blow Up the Box Office

It’s called “The Market,” and it’s ferocious. On the surface, major film festivals like Sundance shimmer with fashion, Dolce sunglasses, and the fireworks of paparazzi flash bulbs, but in the backrooms and basements is where the real business of international festivals unfolds. It’s here, in the bazaar-like “Markets,” that Bollywood execs haggle with Croat distributors over residual points, where listless German producers sell their films to Malaysian investors, and where Hollywood’s multilingual purveyors vend that which is quickly becoming the most important consideration when greenlighting a project: the potential ancillary exploitation. We’re talking about foreign distribution, DVD, and TV rights here, and this overseas potential is becoming exponentially more important to Tinseltown. Indeed, the vast majority of Hollywood revenue comes from overseas, not here at home. Last year domestic grosses totaled $9 billion, foreign grosses, $12 billion. In 2004, eight of the ten top-grossing movies gleaned the bulk of their box office boffo internationally.

Why should filmmakers care? Because it means that execs from the majors, mini-majors, and the indie operations nestled in tomb-like offices in Gotham’s midtown, are all looking at potential pictures with not just American, but also Italian, Australian, or Turkish audiences in mind.

If we filmmakers are to continue to survive in this here-today-gone-tomorrow biz, we have to know what’s selling…and where. Only then, can we write, produce, shoot, cast, and most importantly, sell our work. “Everything about the movie business today is about the global market,” Nicolas Meyer, president of Lions Gate International told the Washington Post. “The decision to greenlight a film is…based on the potential for international sales.” So what are these elixirs -- these panaceas -- that when incorporated into a film will augment its chances of finding a foreign audience? Foreign box office numbers seem to indicate that there is an enchanted triumvirate of characteristics that increase international success, and they will follow here.

But before we get to that, a caveat: as has always been the case, there is no sure thing in Hollywood. Companies like OTX, MarketCast, and Neilsen’s NRG that track trends and numbers overseas can be wrong. For example, a general understanding in Hollywood is that domestic cultural satire does not travel well. The Devil Wears Prada (2006), however, conquered the B.O. overseas its opening weekend, sucking up $17.3 million in 35 territories. Indeed, it was number one in the sought after British, Spanish, and Finnish markets. As Richard Peña, Program Director for the Film Society of Lincoln Center reminds, “Make the films you want to make, and hope that there will always be people and places to whom you can market,” for there will always be the Pradas that take everyone by surprise.

But back to the three seemingly magic elements. According to Ira Deutchman who founded Fine Line (The Player, Short Cuts, Basketball Diaries, My Own Private Idaho, among others), “Everyone will say the same thing…foreign markets are driven by movie stars, action and violence, world-class directors.” Let’s look at the numbers to see if this is accurate, and if so, examine how we as filmmakers can adjust our work to be more internationally marketable.

SEEING STARS
Humphrey Bogart once said, prophetically almost, that “You’re not a movie star ‘till they can spell your name in Karachi.” If only he knew how true this would become. Indeed, the B.O. numbers show that the chief selling point of American films overseas is the celebrity personality that carries them. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is the top-grossing film overseas this year, conjuring $635 million overseas and growing. This is no fluke. 2005’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory again carried by Depp, cumed roughly $269 million overseas, which brought it in at number eight for that year worldwide. The first Pirates did $349 million in foreign markets, and rolled in at number four. No doubt, Johnny Depp is a remarkably popular international star – the total cume of his films today is $1.65 billion, with an average of almost $60 million film! Indeed, overseas markets will pay big bucks to see the stars.

For us as filmmakers, this means we must adjust our projects to be “star-full” if we wish to sell internationally. For screenwriters, this could mean tailoring scripts to a particular star’s strengths or public persona requirements. For a producer, it probably means finding more money to cover the star’s exorbitant salary (or attaching a director your star is dying to work with). Either way, stars are the most uncertain and difficult of the three enchanted elements to achieve. So, what about the next one?

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION!
It’s no coincidence that this is the most familiar cinematic phrase. Movies are all about actions. Sometimes those actions are soft, subtle, and thought-provoking (consider any of the Merchant-Ivory pictures, for example), and sometimes those actions involve guns, explosions, fighting, and life-or-death danger. It’s this type of action and violence that sells overseas.

Of 2006’s top 25 internationally grossing pictures, 40% could be classified as action-packed and violent. Pirates, which we’ve already covered, number two-ranked The Da Vinci Code, which took in $537 million across the pond, X-Men: The Last Stand which landed at number four, and Mission: Impossible III which earned $262 million and a number six berth.

The list goes on with Superman Returns, Inside Man, Poseidon, Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, Miami Vice, and so on. For filmmakers looking overseas for sales, this might mean only one thing: file away that quixotic love tragedy you’re working on, fire-up the computer, and start etching out a plot wrought with death and destruction…and sex doesn’t hurt, either. But what about deep, profound films, you might ask? That’s where the third element could help.

DIRECT SUCCESS

So you want to do an art film? You want to plant something more thematic and thoughtful in the arid Hollywood tent-pole landscape? Good for you. Getting big actors on such projects is often most difficult because such projects rarely have the production budget to handle their salaries. By definition, such a project cannot fulfill the second magic element. So what can you do? Find success through world-class directors. Their pay checks are usually much smaller, and they are, more times than not, the bait you need to snag a big-name personality in the end. Directors are the third enchanted element.

Attaching an internationally well-regarded director can make an indie film fly overseas; a studio film, too, for that matter. For our discussion on making a low-budget (no stars) art-house film (no action) marketable worldwide, let’s stick to indies as our evidence.

The top grossing indie last year was Brokeback Mountain, helmed by preeminent Taiwanese director, Ang Lee, road away with $97.3 million overseas, 53.4% of its totals. Lee was already popular in Asia and Europe for his auteur-like storytelling and willingness to tackle non-Hollywood themes, as evidenced in his films Eat Drink Man Woman, Sense and Sensibility, and The Ice Storm. When Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon consumed $85 million of the foreign markets, it takes no MENSA president to cipher that Lee could help Brokeback travel. Indeed, it was Lee’s attachment that solidified Ledger and Gyllenhaal as the stars.

But what about an indie picture whose sales didn’t rely at all on star power or controversial storyline? For that, let’s consider 2005’s The Constant Gardener, which garnered 59% of its grosses overseas to the tune of $49 million. True, both Ralph Fiennes and Rachel Weisz are known actors (particularly now), but neither has enough box office clout to even have their own page on BoxOfficeMojo.com, the preeminent source of B.O. info. The film, however, was directed by Brazilian Fernando Meirelles, whose previous film, City of God, was nominated for four Oscars and captured $20 million overseas, but more importantly, ruled the all-important markets of France, Italy, Japan, and the U.K. It was no accident that the posters and trailer for Gardener both read: “From the Academy Award nominated director of City of God.”

No question, the right director can make an indie enticing across the pond. Ad Deutchman accurately points out, “For art films, directors are like Gucci … brand names.”

So there it is. Where domestic sales were once paramount, the increasingly global economy has not left Hollywood unchanged. Indeed, in the realm of box office boffo, where the United States was once the cat’s meow, it’s now quickly becoming little more than a dull purr. What’s more, there seems to be no end to this trend in sight … well, not in near sight anyway. True, international territories have cultivated their own mid-level productions (so art-house, indie films might soon go to the mat), but no one can currently create the behemoth, celebrity-riddled, eye-candy blockbuster like the U.S. Hollywood movies “are not the movies that they can make,” said Nadia Bronson, former head of foreign distribution at Universal. Thus, we filmmakers will have to continue to turn our gaze across the pond. We’ll have to shrewdly (and perhaps begrudgingly) work the three magic worldwide elixirs into our films by remembering to see stars and direct success, while forgetting the lights and camera, and focusing unbendingly on the action!