Does Hollywood hate adults?

Sat, 07 Jul 2012 22:00:00 +0000

Is Hollywood's business model failing because it's almost exclusively focused on teenagers and young adults, and largely ignores moviegoers over 30? This question reappears in various guises every year or so, and after you pick it apart -- what do we mean by "failing," when they're still making piles of dough? What do we mean by "largely ignores," when plenty of adults still show up? -- it almost always merits a murky, yes-and-no answer. And while that's still the case, the debate has broken out anew across the movie blogosphere.

This year's "tentpole" season has already produced three whopping huge hits -- "The Hunger Games," "The Avengers" and, apparently, "The Amazing Spider-Man" -- with "The Dark Knight Rises" still to come. But the billions of dollars those movies will generate have failed to dispel the atmosphere of anomie surrounding the film industry, or the sense that it hasn't yet adjusted to a cultural and technological marketplace that has fundamentally changed. Ticket sales in North America appear to be on a permanent downhill slide, and the big studios' profit margins now depend on two interrelated factors: Increasing ticket prices, especially for 3-D projection, and a single-minded focus on big-budget, effects-driven action spectacles that can be successfully exported to the biggest markets in the developing world, most notably India and China.

Salon.com > To Rome With Love

Does Hollywood hate adults?