Cross Over Roadblock?

Okay, does anyone remember this. Scroll down to the very bottom and see where I said the reason is basically that we(black people) are not able to cross over and appeal to a white audience. In my daily perusing of the entertainment world, it seemed as though this could be said also for movies. Before you click x, hear me out.

I'll step on the brakes and detour to Mr Tyler Perry. Unless you are living under a rock, Tyler Perry is the megasuccessful black producer, writer, actor of a number of movies and it seems he has joined the ranks of "Accepted Blacks"(A.Bs). A.B's you say? Well that's my personal definition of black actors that white peeps are comfortable with. To make this easier, members of this club are: Halle Berry, Denzel Washington, Will Smith etc...you should catch my drift by now. Tyler Perry only made this cut because it seems nowadays if you make a black movie that is not done by Tyler Perry then you are kinda SOL. Studio heads are uncomfortable till you say Tyler Perry. I can't think of any other black movies since the onslaught of Perry movies.

I digress sha, a lot of people including black people give Perry a lot of flack for his movies. They say he is perpetuating a stereotype. I am not a fan of Perry but I have seen every movie he has brought out to make my own decisions, and even though I am not a fan I disagree with them. Perry said every character in his movies are people he encountered growing up and just because it's not yours or my reality doesn't mean it's not other people's reality. My beef with Perry is that his movies are done at the most basic of basics like he is talking to a primary school student but I understand his audience and that's a different story. But it leads me to the main movie in question - Precious.


Precious was a little known movie directed by Lee Daniels (Shadowboxer, Monster's ball). It premiered at Sundance beginning of 2009 and noone had heard of it, till Oprah WInfrey and yup, Tyler Perry attached their name to it, suddenly people took notice, earlier on, on my FB status I had mentioned that Hollywood had chosen their token black nominees for award season and it was from the movie, Precious. Precious premiered amidst lots of buzz and praise and I am sure they made more than was expected but they stalled at $35 million. Usually for most movies with this much buzz, ticket sales rise but this is what I read somewhere:

"Yet the fairy tale, I’m afraid, has now run into something of a road block. Every successful movie, in its own way, waxes and then wanes with audiences, but over the last few weeks something startling has happened to Precious: After burning up the box office, it quite suddenly went cold. Over the Thanksgiving weekend, for instance (when it was still hot), it was on 664 screens, and it averaged a sizzling $10,680. (I don’t mean over the five-day holiday; I mean over the normal Friday-to-Sunday frame.) Then, just one week later, it was still on 664 screens, but suddenly the average was down to $3,437 — a virtual cliff drop of a plummet. One week later (which is to say, this past weekend), the movie was still on 664 screens, and the average had sunk to $1,929. In other words, within the space of three weeks, just as the awards season begins to get busy with actual awards, Precious has gone from being a breakout indie smash to a movie that looks as if it’s starting to squeeze out its last receipts."


Reasons have come up that maybe the movie is too depressing, to which I call BS. I have watched a LOT of Oscar movie contenders and there is some depressing stuff in there. I happened to see an advance screening that came with a Q&A with the director and he specifically said that this movie was made for black people. Majority of the people at the screening were black and I suspect that if black people were the majority of viewers and it stalled at 35mill, is it safe to say that this movie did not appeal to our white brothers and sisters? That's what I suspect but who knows? I happened to read comments on an article on Precious and a lot of commenters(obviously white) were making comments saying that they can't waste money to see a movie that promotes obesity (ess squeeze me?). One last stretch of an example is Princess and Frog, so far it's made 85mill but the industry peeps are dissapointed because it made less than was projected. Could it be because the characters were black? I sincerely hope that is not the case but I can't deny that I feel that race plays a huge part. What do y'all think?