A Thing of Rare ‘Beauty’ for Marketers

It’s a movie with no sure-fire box-office stars, a sophisticated comedy premise and dark, ironic tone. It opened during one of the major attendance lulls of the year.

It’s an age-old recipe for failure; the list of September nonstarters is long. But don’t put “American Beauty” on that list; it’s poised to become one of the fall’s breakout hits--one that was both meticulously planned and unexpected.

The marketing strategy for “Beauty” sold both the film’s steak (thoughtful if disturbing content) and its sizzle (kinky sex appeal) and was aimed at both older and younger audiences. So far, everything is coming up roses for DreamWorks, which is releasing the film.

“It’s rare that you have this kind of movie, in which you can actually sell to more than one demographic,” DreamWorks marketing chief Terry Press notes.

In very limited release, the film has already amassed $7.5 million in just two weeks. “American Beauty” got off to a great start in its first weekend--$861,000 on just 16 screens, almost $54,000 a screen. The flashy opening gross was the best publicity the modestly budgeted, difficult-to-market movie could buy.

DreamWorks’ “Beauty” was hoping for favorable media comparisons to the recent phenomenon “The Blair Witch Project.” “Blair Witch” opened on a similar number of screens and took in $2 million its opening weekend. That was in midsummer, when the film’s core teen audience was available. The $54,000 per screen average for the adult-oriented “Beauty” was in its own way equally impressive, since adult audiences often take a wait-and-see attitude toward movies--and waiting in long lines on opening weekends isn’t their favorite activity.

DreamWorks Had Laid the Groundwork

The successful launch in a few major cities, months in the planning, triggered a quick reassessment of the film’s future release pattern, according to Jim Tharp, distribution head at DreamWorks. Tharp had already begun a dialogue with exhibitors about the possibility of going into more theaters faster after the film’s powerful Sept. 15 opening in New York and Los Angeles.

“We built in a flexibility with exhibitors,” Tharp says.

By Saturday morning of the opening weekend, Tharp was on the phone with exhibitors, arranging for this past weekend’s expansion to 429 screens, which netted $5.9 million--close to $14,000 a screen. Significantly, business from Friday to Saturday was up almost 50%, indicating strong word of mouth.

It was a gamble to go much wider that fast, he admits, but one that was worth taking. The original strategy was to get the film to the public first, before the fall’s prestige roster began in earnest, according to Press. A Sept. 15 release date arrived right on the heels of summer, with enough time so that the film didn’t have to go head to head with such major titles as Michael Mann’s “The Insider,” starring Al Pacino, and Martin Scorsese’s “Bringing Out the Dead,” starring Nicolas Cage.

Press began screening a rough print of the film in mid-July and soon realized it would be critically driven. Directed by Sam Mendes and starring Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening, “Beauty” won rave reviews from its earliest screenings.

The film screened to popular acclaim at the Toronto Film Festival in early September. Major cities were peppered with opinion-maker screenings and personal appearances by the film’s cast (of whom only Bening was unavailable due to her pregnancy). After starting word of mouth in urban areas, the film would slowly fan out to smaller towns and suburbs in early October, abetted by a TV advertising campaign, which would by then be in full swing.

The slow platform release, which Press refers to as “old-fashioned” (that is, the way movies used to be released, particularly edgy, specialized subject matter), would, she hoped, allow the audience for the film to slowly build. But the opening weekend grosses were just too good an opportunity to pass up for DreamWorks, which hasn’t released a movie since summer’s “The Haunting.”

“Not to do it would have meant possibly leaving money on the table,” Tharp says. The preview screening schedule was accelerated so the movie could be seen in more markets earlier.

“Beauty” isn’t a high-concept comedy or romance that could fit an easy marketing template. But the film did have some hidden (and not so hidden) advantages. There was the sexual content, and Press decided to play it up. The “provocative” poster for the movie features a nubile, naked female (Spacey’s teenage obscure object of desire in the film) clutching a rose with the tag line “Look closer.” And though “Beauty” would seem aimed only at more mature audiences, DreamWorks saw another potential demographic: teenagers and young adults.

There is a parallel plot told from the point of view of teenagers. “It has something for both groups,” Press says. “There hasn’t been a movie for a while that a 40-year-old and 20-year-old can have a conversation about.”

Different Approaches to Different Viewers

Of the approximately 500 advance screenings that were held nationwide, many were aimed at a college-age crowd and others solely at adults. A kind of “and you thought your parents were weird” TV spot was devised to appeal to young audiences who watch MTV and the WB.

The other TV spot, packed with critical bouquets, was geared to prime-time comedies and dramas, designed to appeal to an upscale audience that would be coming to see Spacey and Bening and the film debut of noted stage director Mendes (“Cabaret,” “The Blue Room”).

Since preview audiences seemed to respond to the film’s comedic elements, the theatrical trailer stressed the film’s humor, and DreamWorks got good exposure by playing it before such blockbuster hits as “Blair Witch” and “The Sixth Sense.”

Opening-weekend business bore out the two-pronged strategy, delivering a wide age range that skewed somewhat more female than male since, Press explains, women are more review-sensitive.

Now the question for DreamWorks is how quickly to push the film into more markets. The company will be adding another 200 to 300 runs on Friday, Tharp says. Then the film will be watched to see how it’s playing in suburbia and smaller towns. It probably will be in somewhere between 1,000 and 1,500 theaters by Oct. 15.

“The word of mouth is only going to accelerate,” Tharp says. “The film will play in certain theaters for a long, long time.” And that could keep “Beauty” alive into Oscar season, where it shows promise in several major categories.