Who Said Films Today Are Only for Teenagers?

Despite the contention that adult-oriented drama has become the exclusive domain of cable and network television, movie patrons have braved long lines and winter storms in recent weeks to make hits of such diverse and non-formulaic films as “Cast Away,” “Traffic,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and, to a lesser degree, “Finding Forrester,” “Thirteen Days” and “Chocolat” and art-house films such as “Before Night Falls.”

Dramas were the main contributing factor to a record Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend. Except for the runaway teen hit “Save the Last Dance,” serious dramas were the box-office mainstay as they have been for the last several weeks. Business for the first two weeks of the year was up about 40% on average from last year, most of that from increased ticket sales for adult movies.

“It’s unprecedented,” says Jeff Blake, marketing and distribution president for Sony Pictures. “For one movie drama to do well at this time of year is not uncommon, but this time there’s tremendous depth to the market.”

Not only are several dramas thriving, but they’ve actually pushed the envelope this year, managing to survive without cannibalizing attendance from one another. They’re coexisting with more obviously commercial titles such as “What Women Want,” “Miss Congeniality” and “The Family Man,” which also appeal primarily to the over-25-year-old demographic.

Though each film is different in style and structure, the one thing “Cast Away,” “Traffic” and “Crouching Tiger” share is an ambiguous (that is, not happy) ending. That they’re thriving without following the accepted commercial formula is even more significant.

The only way for that many adult-skewing movies to succeed at one time is for the market to expand to include the elusive, infrequent adult filmgoer, says 20th Century Fox Films co-Chairman Tom Rothman. Exit polling on “Cast Away,” Rothman says, indicates the film has become an event among patrons who rarely go out to the movies. As a result, the Tom Hanks survival drama, which has been doing the kind of business usually reserved for teen summer blockbusters, grossed close to $170 million in its first four weeks of release.

Miramax’s West Coast president, Mark Gill, offers anecdotal support for Rothman’s assessment. “I’ve been talking to people who only see one film every two or three months,” he says, “and they’ve been seeing a film a week.”

Miramax’s “Chocolat” has grossed more than $9 million on only 260 screens since it debuted at Christmas. Gill says initially the film was to go wider on Jan. 5, but given the strength of so many dramatic titles, the company delayed a wider, 750-theater break until today, with wide national release to follow in February. The studio’s “All the Pretty Horses” was one of the few casualties of the holiday season, buffeted by the competition and hobbled by indifferent reviews. “It’s no longer enough for a drama to be good, it has to be great,” says Gill.

Star of ‘Traffic’ May Be Steven Soderbergh

Steven Soderbergh’s “Traffic,” a hard-hitting ensemble drama about America’s disastrous battle with illegal drugs, opened to $15.5 million on only 1,500 screens, surprising both the industry and distributor USA Films. Like Hanks’ “Cast Away,” “Traffic” features a viable box-office star, Michael Douglas, but is essentially an ensemble drama. The second weekend brought its total to more than $35 million. “Traffic’s” box-office success, while not on the scale of “Cast Away,” is impressive given its serious subject matter.

“I think the star here is Steven Soderbergh,” says USA Films President Russell Schwartz. The director had another box-office triumph earlier in the year, “Erin Brockovich,” which grossed $125 million.

Excellent reviews and awards buoyed “Traffic’s” early chances, and USA decided to move up national release to Jan. 5, when there would be no new national releases. It proved to be a wise calculation. “Traffic” was expected to be strongest in upscale urban areas because of its sophisticated documentary style and multistory approach. Though about 60% of the audience is over 30, “Traffic” is equally popular in small cities and suburban areas, according to Schwartz.

And, he says, it’s also drawing blue-collar audiences who are less likely to be attracted by a review. “I think it’s because the drama of how drugs affect our lives resonates with different audiences in different ways,” says Schwartz.

“Traffic” has also begun to generate news and op-ed pieces, which is turning the film into a kind of pop-culture event, says Schwartz. On the other hand, “Cast Away” is partly capitalizing on a pop-culture event that preceded its release, last summer’s reality TV series “Survivor” and its upcoming sequel.

“Crouching Tiger” was a phenomenon from the start. The momentum began last May when Ang Lee’s martial-arts fable received raves at the Cannes Film Festival. When it opened in late December, “Crouching Tiger” hit the ground running, managing to amass $20 million on only 200 screens in a three-week period.

Industry insiders doubted the film could be as successful in national engagements because it is in Mandarin Chinese. But when it expanded to 700 screens over the recent holiday weekend, “Crouching Tiger” added more than $9 million to its take. It is already the second-largest-grossing foreign-language film ever, behind “Life Is Beautiful,” which grossed about $56 million two years ago.

Sony Pictures Classics co-President Michael Barker says the film’s penetration in smaller markets was achieved through aggressive marketing. After it debuted at Cannes last year, the company immediately began securing the best theaters for the film’s December release. With a six-month lead time, “we screened it widely, for all different demographics,” says Barker--not only for the traditional upscale audience, but for groups like martial-arts teachers.

Independent Films Are Also Thriving

With the addition of “Forrester” and “Thirteen Days” over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend, the market for adult dramas expanded even more. Both films grossed in the $11-million range, which would be considered good for the mid-January weekend were it not for the three huge hits that got there ahead of them.

The increase in the adult audience has been so dramatic that it hasn’t adversely affected the mainstay sophisticated urban audiences supporting such independently made fare as David Mamet’s satirical “State and Main” ($4 million to date), the Coen brothers’ “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” ($7.3 million) and the Cuban-based drama “Before Night Falls” ($550,000 in extremely limited release).

Fine Line President Mark Ordesky sees this as a positive sign that “the independent film market is alive.” The year 2000 was rather dismal for alternative films, with few exceptions (“Sunshine,” “You Can Count on Me”). With so many “serious” studio hits, there was fear that the upscale audience would be lured away.