Fox Searchlight sent out a press release this morning “announcing” that Juno has crossed the $100 million mark domestically, and with it, they laid bare their entire strategy for giving this film a platform release and selling is as a “crossover success story” before the film was ever released. Juno was opened like an indie in order to make this press release possible. If it they had just opened it like other films that appeal to the same demographic and fit into the same vague genre??????Superbad, for example??????and it still took twice as long to hit $100 million, even though its star quotient is much higher and its marketing campaign was arguably more aggressive, then that wouldn’t have been news. But make it look like it’s beating the odds, like it’s making history by playing on more screens than The Banger Sisters and making more money than Sideways (as if ANYONE remembers the last time a movie about/for 45 year-olds made more money than a movie about/for 16 year-olds)??????now that’s a story!
In short: I think a draft of this press release was written in September, and details and dates were changed after the Oscar nominations. That is all.
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SpoutBlog