The Hollywood Reporter
Old People, Old Stars: Hollywood’s New Hot Demo Is Saving the Box Office
8/22/2012 by Pamela McClintock, Tatiana Siegel
Midday on Saturday, Aug. 18, the top-grossing theater in the U.S. for The Expendables 2 — a who’s who of 1980s action stars now in their 60s, led by 66-year-old Sylvester Stallone — was the Cinemark Palace 20 in Boca Raton, Fla., ground zero for affluent retirees. About 245 miles away, Hope Springs, starring Meryl Streep, 63, and Tommy Lee Jones, 65, was the No. 1 film at the Rialto 8 in The Villages, a sprawling retirement community northwest of Orlando that is the country’s fastest-growing small town (presumptive GOP vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan stumped there the same day with his 78-year-old mother, Betty Douglas).
After years of fawning over the fanboy, Hollywood is suddenly embracing the boomer, who is turning out to be the most avid moviegoer of all as teenagers and young adults disappear behind video game consoles, computers and iPhones. “It’s the next frontier. Younger people have pretty much been milked,” says Bill Newcott, entertainment editor at AARP’s The Magazine.
Not even the youth-obsessed studios can ignore the numbers. There are 78 million baby boomers, defined as those born between 1946 and 1964. In 2010 — thanks in great part to advances in medicine — 40.3 million were over the age of 65, making them the fastest-growing segment of the population, according to the U.S. Census. That compares with 30.7 million people between 18 and 24. It’s also the segment that most likes to go to the cinema. The MPAA reports that movie attendance across all age groups dipped in 2011 — save for those 60 and older.
“Our demo has more time, more disposable income, and when they like a movie, they reward it very well,” says Newcott. “They give a movie legs, and that’s the real value of our audience.”
And not just the serious, art house dramas that are often associated with the elderly crowd (the indies long have adored this demo). Aging boomers can drive all kinds of movies to commercial success. The more obvious examples are 2007’s The Bucket List, starring Jack Nicholson, 75, and Morgan Freeman, 75, and 2008’s Gran Torino, directed by and starring the 82-year-old Clint Eastwood. The less obvious include Mamma Mia!, starring Streep; the action hit Taken, starring Liam Neeson, 60; True Grit, starring Jeff Bridges, 62; and the Denzel Washington thriller Safe House (Washington is 57). Even The Bourne Legacy is being fueled by the over-50 set, which made up 33 percent of the film’s opening-weekend audience in early August, the largest of any age group by far.
“Boomers, older and younger, grew up when moviegoing was the cool form of entertainment,” confesses one studio chief. “They have the lifetime habit and enjoyment of going to theaters, and it is still the ‘date night’ activity. And now they have the time to do it, either as empty nesters or, for many, retirees. They also have the money to spend. So, yes, it’s a very important audience, albeit a segment.”
For the stars that the older boomers grew up with, it’s welcome news: Streep, Eastwood, Neeson, Bridges, Michael Douglas and Helen Mirren are just a few of the actors who are in the midst of a late-career renaissance.
The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, about a group of British retirees who decide to move to India, is one of the most profitable films of the summer. Released in May, the Fox Searchlight movie — whose ensemble cast includes Judi Dench, 77; Tom Wilkinson, 64; Bill Nighy, 62; and Maggie Smith, 77 — was made for a modest $10 million but has grossed north of $46 million domestically and $131 million worldwide. Better yet, Searchlight spent a fraction of what a bigger studio spends to market a film since it rolled Marigold out slowly, banking on word-of-mouth.
In North America, Marigold made more than the genre mashup Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer ($37.2 million) or the Adam Sandler-Andy Samberg comedy That’s My Boy ($37 million). And Focus Features’ Moonrise Kingdom — Wes Anderson’s quirky coming-of-age story that features Bill Murray, 61, and Bruce Willis, 57 — also overperformed throughout the summer, grossing $42 million to date.
Historically, the major studios haven’t entirely ignored the older moviegoer — 1985’s Cocoon, 1989’s Driving Miss Daisy, 1993’s Grumpy Old Men and 2000’s Space Cowboys were box-office hits in their day — but the rise of the Franchise Age demanded a steady diet of big-budget tentpoles, so many of which starred the hot young actor of the moment and relegated Hollywood’s seasoned veterans to mostly supporting roles. Amy Baer, who oversaw 2003’s Something’s Gotta Give during her tenure as Sony’s executive vp production, recalls some resistance to the film’s subject matter. “I remember when the script came in,” she says. “Amy Pascal always loved it, but there were certain concerns coming from marketing. They asked, ‘Are people going to want to watch these people kiss and have sex?’ ”
A quiet revolution within the studio system began in 2009 with the success of Julie & Julia, starring Streep and Amy Adams. Instead of releasing the film in fall or winter — primetime for adult fare — Sony went against conventional wisdom and opened the movie in August. Julie & Julia went on to become one of the most profitable films of that summer, grossing $94.1 million in North America. More than 55 percent of the film’s opening-weekend audience was over age 50.
The Expendables came a year later, co-written, directed by and starring Stallone, who roped in as many of his action contemporaries as he could, including Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Mickey Rourke, Jet Li and Jason Statham, most of whom could buy tickets for their own movie at the senior rate. Action stars aren’t supposed to be quite so elderly, and no studio would touch the project, forcing Millennium Films to finance the movie independently before Lionsgate agreed to pony up for distribution rights.
Expendables was a resounding hit, grossing nearly $275 million globally and prompting this summer’s sequel (which adds beefy roles for Willis; Arnold Schwarzenegger, 65; Chuck Norris, 72; and Jean-Claude Van Damme, 51). In October 2010, Red — starring Willis, Mirren, Freeman and John Malkovich, 58, as mothballed spies who come out of retirement — provided further proof that sexagenarians can wield guns and flex their muscles along with the best of them. Yes, action films like these still have the car chases and explosions general audiences are looking for, but for the older moviegoer, they can provide vicarious wish fulfillment.
“The thing about the action stars in Red and Expendables is that they get to play it old,” says Newcott. “How long did Roger Moore play James Bond but still try to play it like he was a guy in his 40s? Everybody had to play younger. Now they can play their actual age; that’s the breakthrough.” Adds AARP spokesperson Michelle Alvarez, “People in general are changing their perception of aging and what aging looks like.”
Much like Expendables, Red couldn’t find a major studio home — despite the fact that it was based on a title published by Warner Bros. subsidiary DC Comics — so producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura brought it to Summit Entertainment. The pic was a breakout success, grossing nearly $200 million worldwide. A sequel, which adds Anthony Hopkins, 74, to the returning original cast, will hit theaters in August 2013.
“I think these films are working because for a long time, films with older casts were very serious, very adult,” says di Bonaventura. “These new crop of films have a more youthful quality to them and don’t take themselves too seriously. They are trying to be mass entertainment. Summit got that we wanted to make a funny action picture.”
Di Bonaventura, who also is producing January 2013’s Schwarzenegger action pic The Last Stand, speaks from experience. During his days as Warners’ president of production, he raised eyebrows when he pushed to make Grumpy Old Men, the Jack Lemmon-Walter Matthau box-office hit that spawned a sequel and TV series.
But if the major studios have been reluctant to embrace boomer projects in the past — other than adult dramas — most are now rushing to claim a piece of this lucrative market. They’re also willing to pay healthy salaries to the likes of Streep, Stallone, Willis, Freeman, Douglas and Mirren, among others.
“They’re getting their quote and more,” says di Bonaventura. “And the biggest thing Arnold and Bruce have going for them is, there’s not really a crop of young action stars to compete with.”
Across Hollywood, almost every studio has a gray-haired contender: Warners has Eastwood as a grizzled baseball scout for Sept. 21’s Trouble With the Curve. Universal is pursuing Dirty Grandpa (Bridges is mulling an offer), while CBS Films has Last Vegas, a comedy starring Douglas, Freeman and Robert De Niro, 69, which begins shooting in the fall. And Sony is prepping the elderly answer to The Hangover with Winter’s Discontent, about a widower who moves into a retirement community with his best buddy with the hope of getting laid (the script was on the 2008 Black List).
And Sony is one studio that already has made major inroads between Julie & Julia and this summer’s Hope Springs. The opening-weekend audience for Hope Springs — about Jones and Streep trying to restore romance to their longtime marriage — was virtually identical to Julie & Julia, with 55 percent over age 50. Hope Springs has outpaced expectations, grossing north of $35 million in its first 10 days.
As for marketing, yep, a lot goes back to AARP. Among the keys to Hope Springs’ success was the August/September cover of AARP Magazine, which boasts one of the largest circulations of any publication in the world, reaching 50 million subscribers. “It’s a big deal to get an AARP cover. I’m jealous of Hope Springs,” says a veteran film marketing executive. “The filmmakers don’t like it because they feel like they are selling their movies to their grandparents, but we love it.”
While celebrities long have graced the AARP publication — recent covers include Sharon Stone and Washington — the organization has an increasing amount of pull with Hollywood’s marketing mavens, according to Newcott.
In recent years, AARP started hosting a Movies for GrownUps film festival in conjunction with its annual national convention. At first, the studios offered only movies that already were in theaters, but last year, indie distributor Producers Distribution Agency prescreened Emilio Estevez’s The Way at the AARP convention in Los Angeles. Estevez and his father, 72-year-old Martin Sheen, the film’s star, walked the red carpet along with son Charlie Sheen.
This year, 20th Century Fox is premiering its Thanksgiving comedy Parental Guidance — starring Billy Crystal, 64, and Bette Midler, 66, as a couple left in charge of their grandchildren — at the AARP film festival, which runs Sept. 20 to 22 in New Orleans, in advance of the film’s Nov. 21 opening. Crystal and director Andy Fickman are accompanying the comedy to the AARP event. AARP also has seen interest in its annual Movies for GrownUps Awards pick up considerably. When the awards program was launched 10 years ago, AARP couldn’t get anyone of note to come. Last year, Streep and Martin Scorsese were just a few of the notables attending.
Parental Guidance isn’t the only studio picture making a major play for older moviegoers this holiday season. On Christmas Day, Paramount has The Guilt Trip, a road-trip comedy starring Barbra Streisand, 70, and Seth Rogen. The studio has two other films that are designed to woo older audiences: Robert Zemeckis’ Flight, a smart thriller starring Washington, opens Nov. 2, and on Dec. 21, Jack Reacher, starring Tom Cruise — who just turned 50. Paramount vice chairman Rob Moore says boomers are one of Hollywood’s rare demographic constants — they always turn out. “This is a group that grew up going to the movies. It was before cable TV, before the VCR,” he says. “At times, Hollywood forgets them but invariably comes back and realizes how steady and dependable they are.”
