August 04, 2004

Declining Novel Readership and its Effect on Movie Marketing

The Hollywood Reporter has an excellent, must-read article about the effect of declining readership among adults, and the effects on movie marketers has different implications than you might think. For example, the real boon from securing a book's rights isn't the large reader base:

Actually, people who read novels may be the wrong audience to bring into theaters opening weekend. Having read the book, they know the story that's supposed to be on the screen and that probably isn't going to be there. People who have read the book are likely to leave a movie theater and tell others that the film wasn't as good as the book or, worse yet, that so many of the good things in the book never made it into the movie. There are reasons for this, of course, that reflect the differences between writing novels and making films.

The article goes on to discuss some of the marketing benefits of securing literary properties, including the benefit of a coherent thematic "spine", and the substantial publicity "hooks" that will help differentiate the film in an otherwise crowded marketplace:

Having a best-selling novel as the basis for a movie provides a publicity hook for the initial media coverage of the project. It gives a project a legitimacy that an original doesn't usually have, unless it happens to be the product of a high profile screenwriter and an A List director. Just the fact that a novel is being turned into a movie sets in motion a chain of media coverage that invariably centers on how the book will have to be changed to become a movie, how its author feels about Hollywood making those changes, who will or won't or should or shouldn't be cast in the film and how the author really feels down deep inside about those particular actors. Novelists whose affection for Hollywood diminishes once the check cashing ritual is over, can and often do take full advantage of the media's interest in pursuing such stories.

So does this new climate make much difference for movie marketers? On the studio side, the penchant for following risk-averse, homogenized properties will most likely continue, while many smaller producers will continue to pick up books that they like. Would you ever expect to see a David Foster Wallace film from Sony? Not Likely, but someone at Plum Pictures has plans to make one. At their investment level, they don't need the marketing clout of a name familiar to the general public, but rather, one that resonates with an audience whose sensibilities match those of the producers'. This is where the notion of business and art clash; as opposed to constructing a film out of a marketing hook, these indie producers create films that they would like to see, and leave it to others to figure out how to market it. It's a gamble that, for all practical purposes, rarely pays off, but when it does, we get films like 'The Godfather.'

For a movie marketer, the real challenge is not getting a neatly packaged product easy for consumption. Instead, they crave to work on marketing plans that leave no blog unturned, no niche publication unconsiderered and no potential butt-in-the-seat forgotten. And in an era of massive audience dissonance, these are the marketers that will be successful.

Related Links:
NEA Report on Declining Readership
Novel reading decline not good for H'wood