Hacker Cinema
What Women Want
2000 · Film · 127 min
Directed by Nancy Meyers
Advertising executive Nick Marshall is as cocky as they come, but what happens to a chauvinistic guy when he can suddenly hear what women are thinking? Nick gets passed over for a promotion, but after an accident enables him to hear women's thoughts, he puts his newfound talent to work against Darcy, his new boss, who seems to be infatuated with him.
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5 comments on Hacker News
> Then there's "it's all remakes now"—but 1) it's not,
It really is, if by "remake" you mean all ways of leveraging existing IP. Here are the top ten box office films of 2020:
* Bad Boys for Life (sequel) * Sonic the Hedgehog (videogame) * Birds of Prey (comic book) * Dolittle (book) * The Invisible Man (book) * The Call of the Wild (book) * Onward (original) * The Croods: A New Age (sequel) * Tenet (original) * Wonder Woman 1984 (sequal, comic book)
Two originals. Now go back 20 years:
* Mission: Impossible 2 (sequel) * Gladiator (book) * Cast Away (original) * What Women Want (original) * Dinosaur (original) * How the Grinch Stole Christmas (book) * Meet the Parents (remake) * The Perfect Storm (book) * X-Men (comic book) * What Lies Beneath (original)
Four originals. Go back another 10 years:
* Ghost (original) * Home Alone (original) * Pretty Woman (original) * Dances with Wolves (book) * Total Recall (short story) * Back to the Future Part III (sequel) * Die Hard 2 (sequel) * Presumed Innocent (book) * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (comic book) * Kindergarten Cop (original)
Five originals. Another ten years to 1980:
* The Empire Strikes Back (sequel) * 9 to 5 (original) * Stir Crazy (original) * Airplane! (original) * Any Which Way You Can (sequel) * Private Benjamin (original) * Coal Miner's Daughter (original) * Smokey and the Bandit II (sequel) * The Blue Lagoon (book) * The Blues Brothers (SNL sketch)
Five originals again. I'm going by top box-office gross here because I think that's a good proxy for what is successful. You can look at other years, but there is a very clear (but not overwhelming) trend towards movies based on familiar content. It's not clear whether studios are leading audiences or vice versa. Probably some iterative process of both.
There's also a clear trend away from dramas. I think that's because drama (and non-slapstick comedies) tend to rely heavily on specific cultural norms for their effect which makes them translate poorly. There is a very clear trend especially in the last decade or so of Hollywood focusing on movies that will also do well in China in particular.
A large number (possibly all, but I didn't check) of those companies are global. Here are a few examples of how revenue breaks down for some (randomly chosen big) movies from some of the firms on the list.
AT&T owns Warner Bros, and makes things like Harry Potter. Picking one of the movies, I see that the US box office is only about 1/4 of the worldwide gross. [0]. Not to mention that AT&T is itself a global firm for upwards of a century.
Disney owns Marvel, which made Avengers Infinity War. A whopping 2/3 of that revenue came from outside the US [1].
Comcast owns Universal, which made Jurassic World. That movie had 61% of its revenue from outside the US [2].
CBS owns Paramount, which made Titanic. More than 2/3 of that revenue came from outside the US [3]. Of course, that was a massive movie - what about something like Shrek the 3rd? Interestingly, roughly 60% of that revenue came from outside the use as well [4]. Take a look at What Women Want, almost 20 years ago, and 1/2 of that revenue came from overseas [5].
Netflix is in over 190 countries, with more than 70 million subscribers outside the US. This is even more impressive when you realize that Netflix was US-only as recently as 2010 [6].
Obviously I could go on, but I think I made my point - US media companies dominate the globe for movies. I could also nitpick and note that they left off video games entirely, even though they are bigger than some of the companies on this list. But no matter how I slice it, it is not a local market, and hasn't been for years. Hence my strong disagreement with your position.
[0] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=harrypotter72.htm
[1] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=marvel0518.htm
[2] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=jurassicpark4.htm
[3] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=titanic.htm
[4] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=shrek3.htm
[5] - https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=whatwomenwant.htm
[6] - https://hbr.org/2018/10/how-netflix-expanded-to-190-countries-in-7-years
If I remember correctly, I noticed seeing the Apple logo upside down on Mel Gibson's What Women Want (2000) but I didn't know all Macs were like that (my first and only Mac was the 2006 MacBook). I hadn't seen the movie until much later.
No problem, it just seemed that you had a priori assumptions that may not be correct. If you want to sell to women, of course you would be interested, e.g. the great scene where Darcy first meets and teaches Nick this point in What Women Want (great movie all through, btw). As an edge case, think of people in Mattel not being interested in what girls think!
W+K also made the Nike ad that's featured in the movie What Women Want, which I thought would have been a great ad to use in real life.