It could be said Harry Potter really started the blockbuster status of young adult fiction at the cinema. The series has created a massive source of revenue for Warner, the combined global box office and worldwide DVD/Blu-ray sales and rentals adding up to a staggering average of more than $1 billion per year in revenue for the studio over the course of the last decade. With Potter gone, where can a studio hope to possibly make up for the coming drop in revenue stream?
Superheroes were the hope, but so far none besides Batman has proven up to the task for Warner. Superman might pull his weight come the release of Man of Steel in 2013, but his previous outing didn't live up to expectations. With the company seeming unwilling to invest widely in multiple superhero franchises at the same time, in the way Marvel has aggressively pursued development of many franchises from their stable of comic book characters, it's unlikely superhero films will end up swooping in as saviors to replace the big yearly revenue Harry Potter used to guarantee.
Part of the problem is that film studios focus too much on the supposed "gold standard" of target audiences -- young males -- at the expense of other demographics. And the fact is, there are only so many movies young men can really go see in any given year.
When you invest too much in movies that appeal to that single audience, you are setting yourself up for several failed films when you can't get "the guys" to show up consistently enough for your entire slate of films. Meanwhile, you steadily lose the interest of other demographics when they get sick and tired of being either ignored entirely, or (perhaps worse) presented with genre films that conform to stereotyped, cliched standards (for example: women get an annual offering of derivative rom-coms that assume women's only interests are dating and shopping).
So, while superhero movies and other films generally pandering to young males continue to reign supreme at the box office overall, it's become obvious that there's a need to find other profitable properties fit for adaptation and which can broaden the audience in order to bring in greater revenue.
And in walks the young adult novel. As noted, Harry Potter might be said to be the first, but it still focused its appeal toward young male viewers. However, within that series came unexpected revelations for the studios -- female audiences turned out in high numbers as well, as did parents who read the books along with their kids. The studios started to think about it, and to see how such novels were already branded and had a built-in audience of young people who might also bring their parents to theaters as well.
Now, stop for a moment and consider something. Twilight had female viewership that actually matches or exceeds male attendance at superhero films. And female viewership helped propel Harry Potter films to unprecedented heights at the box office as well. So... what happens if you adapt a young adult novel series that appeals to both the young female and young male audiences?
We might be about to see the answer to that question, when The Hunger Games opens this weekend, brought to us by Lionsgate. Notice, the film still clearly targets the female audience, but the book series has a firm foundation of male fans as well, and the film itself is tracking pretty well with male viewers. There's little doubt the movie is going to open huge, so the only question is whether it will have the legs for a sustained run that makes it into the blockbuster franchise everyone expects it to be.
If it's half as good as everyone says it is, then I think yes, it'll indeed be a big success. And it will probably be widely popular with males as well as females, and I bet the viewership age will even be relatively diverse (as compared to most summer blockbuster fare, especially superhero films).
The latter won't be true of every film, obviously, since there's still plenty of room in theaters for the movies that are designed to appeal straight to those same young men. But over time, as more and more films demonstrate that female audiences have finally started to be recognized as a valuable, powerful segment of the film-going public, it will be reflected in the choices of studios when they decide what content to adapt and how to adapt it.
With luck, this will have an impact on superhero films as well, and Warner Bros. will finally move on adapting a big screen Wonder Woman film that has great appeal for female viewers as well as male fanboys. After all, just as the film studios have for years neglected female audiences in their efforts to focus on appealing to male viewers, so too have comic books really dropped the ball on appealing to female readership and instead just overtly continue reaching out almost exclusively to young male readers.
The reason there is such a large fan base of females for young adult novels is simple: the book industry doesn't suffer from the same narrow male-centric focus that hinders film and comics, and so it's a no-brainer to authors that there's value and credibility in appealing to female audiences. Now that cinema has caught on to this obvious fact, it will reap the financial rewards if the industry continues to pay attention and respect that audience.
True, those films will all probably be huge, and there's a lot of expectation that The Dark Knight will be the biggest domestic film of the year (although I personally think The Hobbit is going to be the highest grossing film of the year worldwide and maybe domestically as well).
But tracking for The Hunger Games and advance ticket sales increasingly suggest it might just set a record opening for March, ahead of Alice In Wonderland's previous record-breaking 2010 opening. And that film went on to gross more than $1 billion at the box office, not to mention taking the number-9 spot on the list of all-time worldwide grosses. If The Hunger Games does top $1 billion, it will have brought Lionsgate as much revenue as the studio made in the previous 12 months combined (and FYI, Lionsgate happens to have bought Summit Entertainment, meaning Lionsgate now owns the Twilight franchise as well, so just imagine the kind of huge growth the studio is going to experience this year and the coming years -- four total Hunger Games films, a sequel to The Expendables, and the upcoming Joss Whedon-Drew Goddard movie The Cabin in the Woods).
Right now, The Hunger Games accounts for more than 90% of Fandango's online ticket sales. And to put the whole young adult novel genre in perspective, as of tonight (after The Hunger Games makes the list, as it will do by this evening) the top advance ticket sales of all time on Fandango will be:
- The Twilight Saga: New Moon
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2
- The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1
- The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
- The Hunger Games
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1
However, maybe The Hunger Games won't end up with massive overseas numbers (which helped Alice In Wonderland top $1 billion), and will instead come in somewhere closer to the box office showings of the Twilight films. Which would still make it one of the year's top films, would demonstrate the power of the genre and of female audiences, and is better than most comic book films can pull off at the box office. And don't forget, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 hits theaters this year as well, so the superhero genre's three big entries will be facing two big entries from the young adult novel genre.
Batman is the king of the super-hill right now. Spider-Man happens to have appeal that crosses the gender lines (recall that the previous Spidey films had good female attendance). And The Avengers will benefit from featuring a slew of heroes with their own fan base, not to mention the appeal of being the first movie team-up of previously solo superhero characters (the X-Men started out as a team, by contrast). So, this year is a novelty in that it's featuring all of the heavy-hitters from the superhero genre in the same 12 month span. Most superhero films don't do the kind of numbers these three films are likely to pull down, and most superhero movies in fact don't even perform as well as Twilight.
Therein lies the point. While superhero films can be more hit or miss when it comes to raking in receipts in excess of $500+ million, young adult novels have so far been pretty consistently strong. So far, we've only had a few examples, but it looks like the trend will definitely continue for the time being, now that The Hunger Games has arrived on the scene. And that means the superhero genre is going to have to start sharing the spotlight with the young adult novel genre -- and if you ask me, that sounds like a pretty nice team.
I'll leave you with this trailer for The Hunger Games, which I'll be seeing and writing more about in the next few days, so check back soon!
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