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As a swishy swashbuckler, Johnny Depp is worth his weight in cursed Aztec gold coins. But out of eye-liner and off the plank, can even Capt. Jack Sparrow’s alter-ego lure filmgoers away from giant robots, starships and superheroes with an entirely different - and decidedly darker - bandito?
We’ll soon know when Public Enemies, starring Depp as Depression-era gangster John Dillinger, machine-guns its way into theatres Wednesday.
For Depp’s Dillinger, more daunting than the prospect of swarms of federal agents is the current movie-going landscape - one in which audiences have shown little interest in adult-aimed, star-driven dramas.
What once was a sure thing - the teaming of Depp with Christian Bale in a big-budget Michael Mann crime saga - now seems an iffier, even risky, proposition. Consider: while box office has been surging all year, 2009’s most profitable hits have been youth-driven: From Paul Blart: Mall Cop to Fast & Furious to Star Trek to The Hangover and Up.
Conversely, dramas with edgier undercurrents have disappointed, rejected by audiences who, seeking an escape from the doldrums of a recession, want simply to be entertained, favouring broad-strokes laughs and CGI spectacle over story and stars.
“It’s definitely more difficult now to make a drama - even to put it together, period,” acknowledges Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes, whose latest film is the effects-free Away We Go.
Last December his Revolutionary Road grossed a paltry $22 million despite the A-list wattage of Leonardo DiCaprio and Mendes’s wife Kate Winslet.
Since then, high-priced flops have included The Soloist with Robert Downey Jr. and Jamie Foxx (box office tally: $30 million), Duplicity with Julia Roberts and Clive Owen ($39 million) and State of Play with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck ($40 million). Meanwhile Fast & Furious, the fourth film in the enduring bone-headed franchise, grossed more than $70 million just in its first three days.
Understandably, that’s grim news for filmmakers who want to traffic in more than sequels, remakes and adaptations of comic books.
“I don’t make movies about helicopters exploding,” says director Nick Cassevettes, whose Cameron Diaz-led tear-jerker My Sister’s Keeper opened on Friday, the same weekend as Michael Bay’s sequel Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
“Mainly that’s because I’ve never witnessed a helicopter exploding. The themes in this movie are universal - family, love, life, loss ... These are bigger problems than cars changing into robots.”
Tell that, though, to studio executives who are increasingly skittish about financing dramatic fare. Among the most recent casualties? Moneyball, a baseball drama with Brad Pitt that Sony yanked the plug on just days before filming was set to begin.
Granted, there are always exceptions: Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino, for one, proved to be the actor-director’s biggest hit ever, raking in close to $150 million. But is even that enough to dispel the notion that bankrolling a Hasbro-based production is a safer, savvier bet if you’re an executive hoping to greenlight a hit and keep your job?
“There’s definitely an adult crowd that wants to see movies too,” says scribe Alex Kurtzman who, with writing partner Roberto Orci, penned such blockbusters as Star Trek and Transformers.
Future of drama
But it’s tough, Orci believes, for soft-sell dramas to cope amid what he calls the “blunt force trauma” of modern movie marketing.
Still, the pair is adamant there’s a future for the drama, insisting they would love to write one themselves one day - without droids or aliens. “We came out to Hollywood thinking that’s what we would be doing actually,” says Kurtzman.
Says Orci, “The first script we read was Sex, Lies and Videotape.”
If the drama does survive, however, it will probably do so with a cheaper pricetag. It’s extremely doubtful, for instance, that Crowe will ever get another $20 million payday to play a pudgy grungy political reporter. (And it’s no coincidence that he will next be seen as a slim, gladiatorial Robin Hood in next May’s Ridley Scott-helmed action-adventure.)
Of course, some of this is culturally cyclical: The gritty films of the 1970s were shoved aside for the escapism of the 1980s, which in turn led to the indie boom of the 1990s. Presumably, the zeitgeist could shift again - this time away from mall cops and street racers.
But even if Public Enemies performs well, it’s doubtful it will be enough to coerce Hollywood brass into making a course correction.
Last spring, executives at Universal, the studio behind Frost/Nixon, State of Play, Duplicity and Enemies, announced they were putting a moratorium on pricey adult dramas, instead focusing on broad comedies and so-called “event” pictures.
Not that there are any guarantees. Take, for example, the studio’s Land of the Lost, which appeared to include all the ingredients for success: a big star (Will Ferrell), a big budget ($100-million-plus) a high concept based on a 1970s children’s TV show and plenty of computer-generated effects. The result? An abysmal $43 million so far - and one of the summer’s biggest bombs.