This Hollywood Reporter story says Tyler Perry––whose most recent film, Meet the Browns, opened with $20 million but failed to hit number one as so many of Perry’s films have, and dropped off sharply in its second week in release––is looking to attract a crossover (white, suburban) audience without alienating his working-class Black base. And he’s got a foolproof plan: Perry’s next film, titled The Family That Preys, is set to star box office it girl Kathy Bates, who, of course, has proven time and time again to have a hypnotic lure on white audiences. I literally cannot hold on to a dollar bill if a Kathy Bates movie is playing in the vicinity.
In all honestly, this might be a smart move: if Perry’s broad comedy-spiked faith-and-family melodramas have a natural chance of crossing over to any white sub-demo, it’s older, middle-class women. But the makeup of the movies themselves is only half the battle. Even leaving race aside, if Lionsgate (for whom, as puts it in the THR story, “getting into the Tyler Perry business has been like acquiring a license to print money”) really wants to open up the appeal of these movies, they’ve got to make some changes in the way they’re marketed and released.
First and foremost, Lionsgate needs to disabuse themselves of the notion that these films are critic proof. It may well be that Perry’s core audience doesn’t need a review to convince them to see his latest opus, but again, the demographic who might be most naturally receptive to these films is older, not online and not easily swayed by TV advertising, and thus unlikely to know about a Tyler Perry film unless it’s reviewed in the Friday arts section of their local paper.
The first step would be for the studio to actually show a Tyler Perry movie to critics before opening day. They routinely invite critics to Friday morning “courtesy screenings”; the New York Times will then get a review in the Saturday edition, but a weekly like the Village Voice won’t be able to weigh in until the film has already begun its precipitous box office decline. That’s the point––Lionsgate wants to make as much money as possible before that negative reviews have the potential to hurt word of mouth––but funnily enough, not only are critics starting to take Perry seriously, but Perry’s recent filmography seems to be the one place in the contemporary film industry where there’s some overlap between critical opinion and box office success.
His best reviewed film thus far, the fall 2007 release Why Did I get Married?, is also his second-highest grosser. But Browns didn’t go over as well with critics; it currently carries a 30% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and even sometime Perry defender Armond White called the film “a woeful setback” which “Perry writes and directs as if his audience had never seen a movie.” The film’s massive 62% second weekend drop off may have something to do with that; Married dropped a comparatively respectable 42%.
Who knows––maybe Kathy Bates’ star power will be enough to give Perry the crossover success he apparently craves. But I can’t imagine it would hurt matters for Lionsgate to take these movies seriously enough to put some effort into convincing critics that they should take them seriously as well.
