After the Success of WONDER WOMAN and BLACK PANTHER Theater Owners Want More Diverse Movies
Wonder Woman and Black Panther have proven that everyone is capable of telling an amazing story. I personally loved both of these movies. Black Panther is very possibly my favorite Marvel film and Wonder Woman is definitely my favorite DC film by a very long shot. I’m not the only one who has loved these movies either. Wonder Woman is sitting with a 92% from critics and an 88% from audiences on Rotten Tomatoes. It also got $821.9 million at the box office. Black Panther has been out just over two weeks and is already sitting at $476.6 million at the box office with a 97% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and 79% from audiences (the only reason I’m not surprised by this is because we know that people have been looking at sabotaging the audience score). I know both films have gotten a lot of backlash for being “part of a political agenda,” but I don’t care about that. They were both great films in my opinion.
Despite the political backlash, they are both proving two things to the movie industry that movie theater owners are trying to point out. First, if a movie is great, it doesn’t have to come out during one of the two traditional blockbuster timeframes (summer or leading up to Christmas). Black Panther came out in February and has been going strong. Second, diverse casts and crews can do fantastic, not just from a storytelling standpoint, but from a profit standpoint. John Fithian is the head of the National Association of Theatre Owners and he put it this way:
“Theater owners have been asking for more diversity in movies for a long time, and by diversity we mean diversity in casting and diversity in times of the year when movies are released.
The traditional norm is that big movies only go in the summer and winter holiday. Black Panther proves if you’re good, people will come out and see you any time of the year. It also shows that a movie with an all-black cast and a black director can break records. It’s not the race or the sex of the actors in a movie, it’s the quality of the movie that matters.
We want these movies to set a precedent and not be one-offs that people forget about. We’d like to see this more and more and more. There should be a Latino superhero movie or an Asian superhero movie. The more you have different types of people in these movies, the more you appeal to different types of audiences.”
I know that Fithian is mostly talking from a financial standpoint, but these are great points in general. I hope that we can see more great movies coming out regularly, and maybe it’ll help us get some new stories. I’m getting sick of the same adaptations, reboots, and sequels taking up space, and part of me wonders if more diversity could help fix that.
Source: Variety