TheLoop21.com

By: Michael E. Ross (Add to your loop)
Tue, 04/07/2009 - 00:00

Dev Patel and Freida Pinto star in "Slumdog Millionaire." Photo Credit: Ishika Mohan

It may be the pop cultural equivalent of the chicken and egg debate: Does Hollywood set trends, or is it only a follower? Are movies a cultural forecast or a “breaking news” report of what’s already happened?

The movie awards season that recently ended witnessed a continuation of the international dimension that the Golden Globes and the Academy Awards have been a party to for years. The multiple wins for Slumdog Millionaire, for all practical purposes a joint venture of Hollywood and the Bollywood combine of India, sent the signal that American tastes for the movies are more accommodating than we previously thought.

But the success of Slumdog and the Oscar winners from around the world raises some questions. What will Hollywood’s next focus be? Will the motion-picture industry choose to make better use of an increasingly savvy, ethnically diverse independent film culture right here in the United States?

The tale of Tyler Perry’s Madea franchise is a case in point. Perry’s first Madea film, Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005), made about $5 million (maybe what a big-budget picture would spend for catering) and went on to gross more than $50 million in ticket sales, much of it at U.S. theaters catering to black audiences.

Fast forward four years. Perry’s latest, Madea Goes to Jail, led the movie box office for the weekend of Feb. 22 with $41 million, Perry’s biggest opening yet. It followed on the success of Madea’s Family Reunion (2006), which went on to gross more than $60 million.

The distributor for Tyler Perry Studios films, Lionsgate, had the foresight to see a success before it was a success. What’s curious is why such films and studios are still the exception that proves the rule.

Example: The recent film Medicine for Melancholy, by first-time director Barry Jenkins, is a love story. It's about two black San Franciscans coping with emotional turmoil, identity issues and their own status as minorities in a gentrifying city whose black population is the smallest of any major American metropolis. The film, despite rave reviews and strong buzz from the major film festivals, was never picked up by a major studio.

The results are what you might expect. According to boxofficemojo.com, the film’s domestic box-office receipts through March 19 — after seven weeks in release — are $86,931. It’s now playing in all of four lonely U.S. theaters somewhere near you.

Such dismal returns wouldn’t have happened had Medicine been released with the clout and visibility of a major studio.

A studio like IFC Films, which is distributing Medicine, may well have been Jenkins’ preference.