The Hollywood disconnect

Liza Foreman

• Last Updated: November 15. 2009 4:49PM UAE / November 15. 2009 12:49PM GMT

Reviews of The Box, starring Cameron Diaz, did not match up with box office takings or independent research. Dale Robinette / Warner Bros Pictures

It is nothing new for a studio film with an A-list cast to flop at the American box office. But when Warner Bros’ The Box, starring Cameron Diaz, opened to a paltry $7.5 million (Dh27.5m) earlier this month, it caught the attention of the Los Angeles Times writer Patrick Goldstein.

In his The Big Picture column, Goldstein pointed out that while the reviews for the film were OK, the independent research service CinemaScore gave The Box an F. Since CinemaScore was launched in 1982, only a handful of films have received such a bad mark.

Goldstein’s remarks are part of what could best be described as an ongoing discussion about critics and Hollywood being out of touch with audiences.

Of course, studios and producers have long used so-called test screenings to track a film before it is released by showing it to a real-life audience, usually recruited off the street. This can lead to sometimes drastic changes being made to a film at the last minute, including cuts or the postponement of the release date.

Still, when an independent service such as CinemaScore is more on the money than half the town’s critics, and better at assessing the situation than studio-led measures, it prompts the question: is Hollywood getting it as right as it could? (CinemaScore doesn’t run test screenings but gauges audience responses to films as they open.) Some are wondering once again if the old system is out of date.

As one industry veteran put it: “Reviewers aren’t in touch with the audience, especially on those films for which they aren’t the audience. It is a general problem that the reviewers are predominantly middle aged and out of touch with an audience that is often much younger and hipper. Shouldn’t studio heads be 15? That is what is so interesting about internet figures like [Ain’t It Cool News’s] Harry Knowles.”

The fact that CinemaScore is based in Las Vegas may have something to do with its accuracy in this case. “The most important thing in doing testing audiences is to get out of Los Angeles because everyone here is a filmmaker,” says the producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr. “Test screenings are very useful because if the audience doesn’t laugh, then it isn’t a comedy. The real trick is the ability to recruit the right audience. So the results are dependent on the audience and the service. There are a lot of them.”

Ed Mintz, CinemaScore’s founder, told the Los Angeles Times that the real mistake with The Box was its ending, which surely should have shown up in a Warner Bros test screening poll. The story follows a married couple given a box with a button that, if pressed, could reward them with a million dollars at the price of a stranger’s life.

Goldwyn says the polling service follows the same model as politics. “It can be right, it can be wrong. It depends on the makeup, who takes part, and the demographics.”

One former studio executive put the film’s performance down to the falling trajectory of the director Richard Kelly’s career. He made a huge impression when his directorial debut, Donnie Darko, premiered at Sundance in 2001. His follow-up, Southland Tales, was almost booed out of the theatre at Cannes in 2006. The Box is his third feature.

But there may have been problems from the get-go. “The first two-thirds was like a good Twilight Zone episode. Then it went off the rails,” says the executive, who read the script but did not wish to be named as he has not seen the finished film.

Fickle audiences also play a part in films bombing, sometimes even despite research. “It is very difficult to predict what an audience will do,” Goldwyn says. “Sometimes those tests are good and sometimes not. You can’t write a rule book. I have had films that had low ratings that did better than anyone expected and also the opposite experience. It can go either way. Trying to pre-judge success or failure in this business is what can be fun – and what can drive you crazy.”