If love again, a beautiful romantic comedy starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas and above all Céline Dion, which grossed just $5 million at the North American box office in 10 days… and less than $100,000 in Quebec, we tell ourselves, that there is a problem. But which one?
Loving again is not a recipe to say the least. With $5 million in sales from 2,703 theaters, the average per-screen gross of $1,849.79 is evidence of a disastrous flop… all the more surprising considering Screen Gems Studios, a Sony subsidiary , didn’t skimp on the big names because Celine Dion also benefits from a good twenty minutes of screen time. So what’s going on in the land of rom-com?
You don’t weigh
The romantic comedy had its heyday in the 1990s and 2000s. Remember… When Harry Met Sally (1989 and $92.99 million at the international box office), Hitch (1989 and $366.78 million), Love at First Sight in Notting Hill (1989 and $363.71 million), The Wedding of the Year (2002 and $374.89 million), A Pretty Woman (1990 and $432.56 million) or even Marie has a je-ne-sais- quoi (1998 and $369.88 million) … All of these films grossed the studios hundreds of millions of dollars, and they were on very limited budgets.
And it’s not the stars that are missing the credits. Kate Hudson, Drew Barrymore, Jennifer Lopez, Julia Roberts, Cameron Diaz, Katherine Heigl, Reese Witherspoon… and even Jennifer Lawrence have made their mark in romantic comedy.
But with the success of the superheroes everything changes. “Romantic comedy makes money, but not as much as Marvel,” said Scott Meslow, author of “From Hollywood With Love: The Rise and Fall (And Rise Again) of the Romantic Comedy” on the pages of Capsule.
“Romantic comedy died out for much of the same reason that most mid-budget films began to die out: Hollywood favored big blockbusters or films with statuette potential, with very little space between those two extremes,” adds the author.
stereotypes…
Sandra Bullock, high priestess of the genre and who we saw in last year’s The Lost City (grossing $192.9 million), analyzes the phenomenon in the New York Times.
“Anytime someone said ‘chick flick’ or ‘rom com’, it was discouraging. I think when everything shifted towards very masculine action-adventure films, women were relegated to henchmen or damsels in distress.”
But Marvel’s waning dominance at the box office isn’t the only factor. Over the years, the stars who made their names in romantic comedy have evolved, as have the directors. Also, and above all, the ambient discourse has become less paternalistic and less stereotyped. Even a romantic comedy like How to Lose Your Boyfriend in 10 Days (2003 and grossing $178.50 million) starring Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey, which was considered irreverent at the time, does not stand the test of time, the portrayal of the young woman seems very old fashioned today in the post #MeToo era.
Danielle Henderson, co-host of the podcast I Saw What You Did, points out on the pages of Parade that “nobody wants two people who are beautiful by Hollywood standards to take too long to fall in love while the planet is literally in Operation is.” Fire.”
Long live the “Zinternets”
And, of course, Netflix, Prime Video and other digital platforms have changed the situation by making rom-comes accessible on-demand. And it’s no coincidence that You in My Home and Vice Versa, starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher, and Hostage Wedding, starring Jennifer Lopez and Josh Duhamel, hit theaters on Netflix in the last few months.