It was not that long ago when romantic comedies were a
reliable date-night staple at the box office. It was a carefree, frothy
time, when Julia, J. Lo, Kate, Katherine, Sandra, and Reese could show
up onscreen, meet cute with just about any handsome male specimen, and
pull in seven figures. But audiences seem to be falling out of love with
the genre: The near-total rejection of Gerard Butler’s Playing for Keeps ($12 million, and fading fast) is only the latest casualty.
Earlier this year, Wanderlust ($17 million) and The Five-Year Engagement ($28 million) fizzled, while the genre’s once-reigning doyenne, Reese Witherspoon, saw her hybrid action/rom-com, This Means War,
met with yawning indifference: It grossed just $54 million
domestically, ten million less than its explosion-heavy budget. The
highest-grossing rom-com of the year was Kevin Hart’s Think Like a Man
($91 million), and that film never truly broke out beyond its
predominantly African-American target audience. “It is the hardest time
of my 30 years in the business of doing them,” said Lynda Obst, the
producer of romantic comedies like Sleepless in Seattle, One Fine Day, and How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.
Vulture asked several top filmmakers, producers, and executives for a
heart-to-heart about the reasons why the genre is getting the cold
shoulder — and as with most splintering relationships, there’s plenty of
blame thrown back and forth: Studio chiefs blame audiences and stars,
directors and producers blame studios and audiences, and agents blame
their clients.
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