Regal Entertainment Group Chairman and CEO Mike Campbell and NATO President and CEO John Fithian chat  about theatrical exhibition with The Hollywood Reporter's Carl DiOrio. 

Before getting outside the box office, they get right into it:

THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER: Will summer 2008 set another new boxoffice record?

CAMPBELL: We have a strong slate of films this summer, but what you’re missing is what I’d call the three money-in-the bank films you saw last year in May. There’s a lot of diversity in product this summer, but will it be a record summer? I can’t say that.

FITHIAN: This year we have a few more unknowns. Some of those will surprise on the upside and some on the downside.

THR: And the year?

CAMPBELL: What I would say about the fourth quarter is that last year that was our weakest quarter, so on a comparable basis I think there’s more powerful product in that quarter of this year.

FITHIAN: I don’t disagree at all. I think it’s also important to remember we are coming off two up years in a row.

 On ratings:

THR: Exhibitors tend to like less restrictive ratings, yet there continues to be a regular flow of R-rated movies. Are you OK with that?

CAMPBELL: From a selfish, economic point of view as an exhibitor, we do better with PG and PG-13 films, and on any given year you generally see 17 or 18 of the top 20 films as PG or PG-13. There is still a place for R-rated films, but we do better at the boxoffice and at the concessions with PG and PG-13 films.

FITHIAN: I am mystified why everybody in Hollywood wants to be Quentin Tarantino instead of trying to sell movie tickets.

 
THR: Any other specific advice for Hollywood on the kind of pictures they should make?

FITHIAN: More family titles of any genre. When you take an action film and decided to make it PG-13 instead of R, it does better. And in most cases, if you have a comedy and decide to make it PG-13 it does better, although there certainly is a role for the harder-edge comedies as well. But as the father of a 5-year-old, there are times I am looking to go to the movies with my child and can’t.

Year-round movie-going: 

THR: You like to encourage “ 12-month releasing.” Isn’t there a limit to how many tentpoles can open while school is in session?

FITHIAN: Yes, but we’re still doing it wrong. Virtually every school in the country is still in session the first weekend in May, and the biggest movies in 2007 were released over the first weekend in May. Yet we leave April almost entirely off the table, and the circumstances of school are very similar in April and May.

There are only so many blockbusters you can tolerate in the year, but in summer when they are so close together we are losing money. With those huge titles last May, we lost— in my estimation —$50 million$100 million because we had them all in one month. If one of those had been in April, I think we would have made a lot more money.

CAMPBELL: We could increase the boxoffice several percentage points by having a release schedule that was spread a little more evenly.

Read the rest here. 

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NATO President John Fithian presents the first ShoWest/NATO Freedom of Expression Award to Ang Lee and James Schamus for their courage and integrity in releasing Lust, Caution with an NC-17 rating.

 

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NATO's vice-president and general counsel, Kendrick Macdowell, turns the air blue with his explication of the Classification and Ratings Adminsitration's language rule in the latest issue of Boxoffice.

Misunderstood, often appealed, and utterly appropriate in Macdowell's thinking, the required "R" rating for two instances of "the F-word," gives the power of language its due. Cover your ears, open your eyes (there's adult language inside) - the column is here:

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It happens to the best of them.

Even Boxoffice  (NATO's official magazine), can't get its facts straight on the NC-17 rating. Michael Villapiano, in a November 7 blog post, retails some of the more persistent myths surrounding the rating.

It starts in the first paragraph, which I'll reprint in full:

Historically, the most reasonable solution in avoiding the dreaded NC-17 rating has been releasing films unrated. This technique has allowed filmmakers to circumvent the Motion Picture Association of America, while at the same time enabled more print advertising and wider theatrical exhibition. Many newspapers won’t promote NC-17 films and many theaters won’t screen them. Larry Clark’s debut Kids, Darren Aronofsky’s Requiem for a Dream and Todd Solondz’s Happiness were all released unrated and made 7.5 million, 3.6 million, and 2.8 million respectively. These numbers may not seem astronomical, yet compared to the figures of NC-17 films, the unrated ones do quite well.

To which I can only respond:

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Focus Features' head and Lust, Caution screenwriter James Schamus was interviewed on KCRW's The Business this afternoon and calmly and genially eviscerated every myth surrounding the NC-17 rating.

A few highlights:

• Very few newspapers have refused ads for the movie.
• Television advertising and standards & practices execs are eager to work with them should Focus choose to advertise on TV.
• The two difficulties he cites are audience perceptions of a stigma surrounding the rating, and a single major theater chain that has a blanket policy against screening NC-17 films.

I highly recommend you listen. His take on the process is refreshing, light-hearted and hypocrisy-free.

The film has taken in $1.3 million through its third weekend in release and is playing in 77 locations in the top 20 markets.

Update: Two newspapers weigh in on Lust, Caution and NC-17.:

The Naperville Sun in Illinois wonders whether the film will play in the suburbs. The upshot?

In either case, it seems to be the audience, not the theaters, that will determine if an NC-17 film will be played in local venues. Like any other foreign, independent or art film, they will show it - but only if you come.

In the Hartford Courant, NATO president John Fithian continues his campaign for broader acceptance of the rating:

Fithian's support for the rating is a matter of integrity.

"A lot of studios just require their filmmakers to produce a film that is not an NC-17. We think that is a mistake. By not using the rating appropriately, the pressure to cram films into the R rating is too great," Fithian says. "What we see is filmmakers making just enough cuts in their movie to fit into an R.

"This damages the integrity of their movie and is a potential abuse of the rating system," he continued. "As a consequence, the R rating is too broad. The soft end of R and the hard end of R are too different. If NC-17 were used correctly, ratings would make a lot more sense."

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Lust, Caution smashed records in its exclusive opening weekend iat New York's Lincoln Plaza Cinema. according to Variety:

"Lust," carrying the ultra-restrictive NC-17 rating and clocking in at 158 minutes, grossed an estimated $61,688 for Focus Features in its exclusive run at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. Among exclusive openings, it nabbed the best debut ever for a foreign-language film, as well as one of the best showings ever for a live-action film.

Per-screen average is the best on the books for an NC-17 film, whether in an exclusive or limited run. Focus topper James Schamus co-penned the screenplay based on a story by Eileen Chang.

"What does this mean? It means that the running time, the foreign language and the rating just didn't have an impact on the opening," Focus prexy of distribution Jack Foley said. "It just cranked to that level."

Ang Lee's film goes into wider limited release Friday.

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The L.A Times takes a front-page look into Lust, Caution's attempt to remove the perceived stigma and misconceptions of the NC-17 rating. Reporter Lorenza Muñoz goes deep into the weeds with studio executives and uncovers some new misconceptions perpetuated by the executives themselves.

In addition, the lingering association between NC-17 and X-rated fare can take a toll at the box office. Films labeled as NC-17 sell as many as 25% fewer tickets, studio executives said. The highest-grossing NC-17 film was "Showgirls," a 1995 film that brought in $20.4 million.

It is difficult to conceive on what basis anyone can make such a comparison. There will need to be more than a dozen or so NC-17 rated films before there is enough data to make a such an assertion. If one can make an assertion, the available evidence points in the opposite direction:

NC-17 rated films take in, on average, $2.1 million more than unrated films - the preferred form for releasing films that might otherwise be rated NC-17. In other words, one might make the reckless assertion that the stigmatic NC-17 increases box office take by more than 100 percent.

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Ang Lee has cut approximately 30 minutes from his Venice Film Festival winner Lust, Caution in order for it to play on Chinese screens.

China, which has no rating system requires all films to be suitable for all audiences or it will not be screened. According to Variety, the film may also be trimmed for Hong Kong audiences, which has a rating system, and a rough equivalent to the R rating:

(T)he III classification is the territory's only one with mandatory effect. It gives theater box offices the power to check IDs, requires that promotional materials are screened by the censors and that videos are sold in sealed plastic wrapping.

However, government censors may still insist upon cuts in order for a film to qualify for that rating.

No such rating option exists in the Chinese mainland, where either everyone gets to see a movie, from toddler to teen to pensioner, or no one does. Ang Lee's last pic "Brokeback Mountain" was banned in mainland China for its homosexual content.

The lack of a film classification system means the only tools at the censor's disposal are cutting entire scenes or simply banning a movie, both drastic steps when one considers that script approval was granted before a movie goes into production.

China's main movie watchdog, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television refuses to introduce the rating system as it believes that if a movie is unsuitable for children, then it's unsuitable for adults too.

"Authorities told me that there was no film rating system on the mainland so they let me cut it. Children are able to watch it on the mainland," Lee said.

So what's the problem with an NC-17 rating? The film maker need not cut a frame from his or her film, it may be shown in any theater without legal restriction, media will advertise it. The only restriction is that children under s 17 may not attend.

Critics say that the NC-17 inhibits the commercial prospects of a film and that many theaters will not play a film so rated. But the NC-17 merely reflects the nature of the content and theaters and audiences judge their interest in seeing or screening films on that basis every day. Would a movie theater in say, Provo, Utah, book the film with the same content and an R rating? Would a sizable audience go see it?

Thanks to Ang Lee and James Schamus at Focus, we'll get the opportunity to see how a film intended for adults and not children - and honestly labelled as such - performs in the market. Let's hope American audiences, theaters and media respond as forthrightly.

 

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Ang Lee spoke up on the NC-17 rating attached to his new erotic thriller Lust, Caution (AP via L.A. Times) :

 "In the past, NC-17 movies were equated with pornographic movies. Most movie theaters don't show them," Lee said after arriving to attend the Venice Film Festival, where "Lust, Caution" is competing for the top Golden Lion prize.

"We hope to send the message in the U.S. that NC-17 is a respectable category and that it's not pornography. It's just unsuitable for children," Lee said. The NC-17 rating bans viewers under 17.

A neat summing up of NATO's goal for NC-17. An effective and credible rating system needs to make use of all the ratings. For that to work, serious film-makers need to take  NC-17 seriously. Let's hope Lee's forthright description of the rating will lead others to do the same. Then, perhaps, we won't have to read about movies being "slapped," 'hit," or "branded" with a particular rating. Nor will we have to read about "censors" who have deemed a movie "too hot" or "too sexy" or too anything for U.S. audiences.

It's just unsuitable for children.

 

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Focus Features accepted an NC-17 rating for Oscar-winner Ang Lee's period drama Lust, Caution, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

"Lust" follows a young Chinese woman in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II who becomes the center of a plot to seduce and kill a married enemy collaborator. The trailer for the subtitled Chinese-language film shows lead actors Tony Leung and Tang Wei in various states of writhing passion.

The story goes on to speculate as to just what content merited the rating. It also goes on to repeat some long-standing myths about the NC-17: that certain content "violated the ratings board's unwritten rules (like the number of allowable pelvic thrusts, for example) to make an appeal possible" and "(s)ome newspapers and TV outlets won't carry ads for NC-17 films".

It is important to point out that the content described (or any content for that matter) does not "violate" anything. Movie ratings are not punishment meted out to offenders of some mysterious standard of morality. Rather, they are descriptions attached to films to give information to parents so that they can make judgements themselves as to what is appropriate for their children. The NC-17 goes a bit further and restricts the film to adults.

As far as newspapers and television outlets refusing to carry ads for NC-17 films, "some" is accurate as far as it goes. It would be more accurate to say "almost no" newspapers and TV outlets refuse to carry ads for NC-17 films - and they are in markets where such films would be unlikely to have much appeal.

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