Sunday, July 14, 2013

The Over 50 Movie Demographic



In case you missed it, the movie The Lone Ranger (other titles: The Masked Man; Tonto With A Bird On His Head; Hi-Ho Fella) took in only 47.9 million dollars during its five day debut during the Fourth of July weekend.  That sounds like a lot of money until you consider the fact that it cost 225 million to make the movie and that this was with the entire Southeast trapped inside due to a rain system that meteorologists called “a lot of rain”.



The Lone Ranger lost out to a movie called Despicable Me 2 which is a cartoon that seems just weird to me. I don’t know, maybe I’m not in the demographic that wants to hear Steve Carell do a bad Italian/Mafia imitation. 

Entertainment Weekly reports that the movie studio was “disappointed” in the return on investment with The Lone Ranger. Dave Hollis of Disney said, “The frustrating thing for us is that it felt like the ingredients were there. The most successful producer in history [Jerry Bruckheimer]; an award-winning, commercially successful director [Gore Verbinski]; and the biggest movie star in the world [Johnny Depp],”  Then Hollis gave the “Duh” statement of the year: “The heritage and legacy of the Lone Ranger story didn’t connect as well with the younger audience. It wasn’t something that was known, and it didn’t draw their interest as much as we’d hoped.”  (Twenty-five per cent of the paid audience was over the age of 50)

Honestly, do you know anybody under the age of 50 that had even heard of The Lone Ranger? If I went up to my son, a 22 year old college senior, and said “Hi-ho, Silver! Away!” he would give me the same blank look he gives when I tell him about the hardships of my youth  having to get up from the couch and actually turn the channels on the TV set.




Hollywood has a lot of problems with my demographic: Over 50 and has seen it all. Here are some suggestions I have that might make Hollywood some money and eliminate the need for Johnny Depp.

1)     Enough with the zombies already!

2)     Ditto on the teenage lovey-dovey vampires that live near Seattle

3)     Try to keep the length of a movie to some reasonable amount of time. If you can’t tell a story within 90 minutes to 2 hours, maybe you shouldn’t tell it.

4)     My biggest gripe with movies: It costs too much to go to the movies. You have an industry filled with people  constantly complaining about Mitt Romney and the evil one per cent  but yet will charge a family of four $20 for two cokes and a bag of popcorn. That is on top of the $22 you had to pay for a matinee. My solution: Base the price of the movie on the length of the movie. I’m not going to pay $10 a ticket for an 86 minute Will Ferrell comedy but would consider it for a movie like Lincoln.
                 
             
                            The cost: $200.00 (Free Popcorn Refills)



5)     The previews last too long. The problem with most movies is that they show too much of the movie in the “trailers”. This is especially true with comedies. Let’s face it, most comedies now are as funny as a root canal and usually have one or two funny moments, which they show in the trailers.

6)     I know it takes a lot of money to make a movie, but does everything have to be a sequel? There’s a movie called  Grown Ups 2. Why? There shouldn’t even have been a Grown Ups.

7)     If you are going to have a movie like Les Miserables, there should be a sign outside that reads, “This movie is long and there is lots of singing in it, but give it a chance guys, you won’t turn homo for liking it. Plus, Borat is in it too.”

8)     Enough with Star Wars. I like the first one (which is now the fourth one). I thought the second one (which is now the fifth one) was even better than the first one (which is now the fourth one).  At the rest of them, I felt like a C & E Christian (a Christian that goes to church only on Christmas and Easter). I went and saw the movies out of obligation and was bored out of my skull. 


           
                  Triumph captures the way I feel about Star Wars


9)     Can they make a movie that’s not based on a comic book?

10) Please remember that there are other adjectives than the swear word that begins with the letter F.










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