Suspect No. 6: Superheroes and Sequels
No love burns brighter than that between a superhero, his super-buddies and the studio that scores with their billion-dollar beer bash — especially when they can go back to the keg for another round. What made money in 2013? Franchises. Eight of the top ten moneymakers were sequels, or reboots of old series with numbers in their titles: Despicable Me 2, Fast & Furious 6. The ninth was a Disney cartoon; the ten was Gravity — the sole stand-alone, adult-driven film.
Romantic comedies don't launch franchises. Where do you go after a happy ending? Stasis or divorce. With The Proposal 2: Propose Harder off the table, studios lack the incentive to fund films that are one-and-done. These days, they'd rather spend money repeating a proven hit.
But the obsession with franchises comes with a high — and literal — cost. Blockbusters don't always make money but they definitely spend it. Sequels seem to be the obvious answer when you scan the box office winners, but in terms of return on investment, they're a riskier bet.
Let's crunch the numbers. The biggest rom-com in 2012, Silver Linings Playbook, made just over half the domestic gross of The Amazing Spider-Man. Worldwide, it made a third as much: $236 million versus $752 million. But check the price tags: Silver Linings Playbook cost $21 million, a fraction of Spider-Man's $230 million budget, and made its money back 11 times over. Spider-Man made more cash, but it wasn't as profitable.
If studios shelved their weakest blockbuster, they could fund five to 10 additional midprice films a year. Even if every one of those didn't hit, enough would make their money back to compensate. Yet between 2007 and 2012, the number of studio releases plummeted 37 percent.
There are two equalizers that explain why studios prefer to release a handful of blockbusters instead of a large, diverse slate of midbudget flicks: merchandising and marketing. The Amazing Spider-Man made extra cash by lending its brand to everything from Hardee's to OPI nail polish, not to mention an aisle-full of gizmos at Toys R Us. The Avengers made a bonus $500 million in toy sales; Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen an extra $592 million. But you won't find an action figure of Bradley Cooper in sweatpants and a trash bag.
Then there are advertising costs. In 2007, the last year for which the Motion Picture Association of America released marketing statistics, studios spent an average of $35 million on advertising for each movie. Even cheap films have to add on a whopping extra tax.
So when Warner Bros. makes a midprice movie — say, the $35 million original The Hangover — it spends as much as the film's budget to turn it into a hit. That The Hangover earned $277.3 million in the United States alone proves the studio made a smart bet. (Until, as ever, it allowed each sequel to bloat in budget until the third cost nearly triple the original's price tag yet grossed only $112.2 million domestically.)
In light of all that effort, it's no wonder studios believe a $100 million hit just isn't enough. Only one romantic comedy has broken $200 million at the domestic box office. Tellingly, the Weinsteins were willing to spend money on Silver Linings Playbook primarily because of its tie-in Oscar campaign.
Studios, Barrymore says, increasingly see films as satisfying one of two needs: "Is it meaningful and will it win awards, or is it a box office juggernaut?" Pity the genres that don't neatly fit into either box.
"Comedies, especially romantic comedies, just really aren't in that discussion because they're usually not going to win the awards, unfortunately," she adds. "That's the math of why we are where we are."
The industry no longer has the energy for midlevel wins — it's gotta be all or nothing. In reaching for riches, it must embrace the world.
Suspect No. 7: The Foreign Box Office
In 2001, the international box office was 51 percent of total movie sales. Ten years later, it was 69 percent, and it continues to climb. The common wisdom is that international audiences shun romantic comedies — they're too wordy and culturally specific. If you want to sell abroad, make a cartoon or an action spectacular.
In truth, foreign audiences like romantic comedies. Way back in 1990 — the prehistoric era of global promotions — Pretty Woman made 61.5 percent of its money abroad (again, without a known female star). Until 2012, the No. 1 importer of Hollywood films was Japan, an even more female-heavy box office than our own. Growing markets such as Russia have made local hits of lesser romantic comedies, like Gerald Butler's Playing the Field and Ashton Kutcher's Spread, which was never even released domestically.