Hollywood Moves Away From Middlebrow

One surprise hit was “Inception,” with Leonardo DiCaprio.

By BROOKS BARNES
NYT

LOS ANGELES — When negative Twitter commentary seemingly torpedoed the Sacha Baron Cohen film “Brüno” in July 2009, movie executives started talking in solemn tones about the ability of social networking to sway attendance. The era of using marketing to trick consumers into seeing bad movies was drawing to a close.

It was mostly lip service.

As Hollywood plowed into 2010, there was plenty of clinging to the tried and true: humdrum remakes like “The Wolfman” and “The A-Team”; star vehicles like “Killers” with Ashton Kutcher and “The Tourist” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp; and shoddy sequels like “Sex and the City 2.” All arrived at theaters with marketing thunder intended to fill multiplexes on opening weekend, no matter the quality of the film. “Sex and the City 2,” for example, had marketed “girls’ night out” premieres and bottomless stacks of merchandise like thong underwear.

But the audience pushed back. One by one, these expensive yet middle-of-the-road pictures delivered disappointing results or flat-out flopped. Meanwhile, gambles on original concepts paid off. “Inception,” a complicated thriller about dream invaders, racked up more than $825 million in global ticket sales; “The Social Network” has so far delivered $192 million, a stellar result for a highbrow drama.

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