Jen Yamato from Fearnet has a great article that looks at what exactly the hugely successful numbers for New Moon could mean for Hollywood, and the ways movies are made and sold. Check out more below:
Female audiences demand to be catered to.
Twilight was always a female-oriented property, thanks to a high quotient of moony eyes, forbidden love, and romantic longing courtesy of author Stephenie Meyer. And studio execs perked up when the fantasy book-turned-indie film raked in over $69M its opening weekend, making back its budget by double. But as evidenced by worldwide masses of screaming fans, a sprawling fansite community, and its blockbuster box office performance, New Moon is no accidental success – women will buy tickets, they will go multiple times to the movies, and they will bring their friends/daughters/mothers. And they’ll even go to horror-themed movies – that is, if the movie gives them what they want. (See below.)
Summit is now a studio model.
From the start, Summit Entertainment did the best job it could have done to spin itself a mega franchise out of an otherwise unnoticeable vampire love story. Now, it’s a major player with a diverse upcoming slate that includes another Robert Pattinson vehicle and a smattering of rom-coms and family flicks. While Summit may not make a smash hit out of every film (their 2008 horror pic Sorority Row was a modest financial success, but barely) they will use the enormous profits fromNew Moon to build the studio and finance its expansion, moving from a tiny studio that specialized in obscure genre pics (remember P2?) to a mainstream distributor with the power to slot a vampire movie next to a sci-fi actioner (Knowing) and a potential Oscar picture (The Hurt Locker).
And how’d they do it? The New Moon campaign benefited as much from the public’s obsession with its “are they or aren’t they?” on-screen couple (AKA Robsten) as it did from the deliberate releases of new clips and photos from the film, which became events in themselves. Summit also took note of and worked with the fansitecommunity, rewarding their footwork with all-important access and ensuring that their built-in audience stayed interested.
Fangirls are a force to be reckoned with.
Fandom has long been the territory of males, so it’s refreshing to see a self-contained community of Twilight fangirls growing steadily. They devour Twilight trivia, publish meticulous blogs on every aspect of the franchise and its stars’ lives, and have hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. And some of them, too, still live with their parents. (The difference being fangirls also have real jobs and take showers. Zing!) Twilight fangirls are just as powerful and just as nerdy as fanboys – and maybe now studios and the fanboycommunity can finally take them seriously.
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