The best Thanksgiving clash won’t be over who has to sit at the kids’ table. The more interesting battle is Hollywood’s holiday weekend campaign to seize family and female moviegoers — without being undone by the leftovers of the penultimate ” Harry Potter” film.
Four movies will premiere in wide release on Wednesday, double the total from last Thanksgiving: Screen Gems’ musical romance “Burlesque,” 20th Century Fox’s romantic dramedy “Love & Other Drugs,” Disney’s animated fairy tale “Tangled” and CBS Films’ revenge thriller “Faster.”
Even though the studios are widely (and perhaps rightly) criticized for making few movies aimed at women, their Y- chromosome partiality is not obvious over next week’s holiday break. “Burlesque,” “Love & Other Drugs” and “Tangled” are all chasing women as their primary audience. Disney is betting that a lot of moms — and maybe a few dads — will bring their children to its animated retelling of the Rapunzel story. The only new entry aimed squarely at men and older boys is “Faster,” an R-rated action film starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
“There was nothing going after this audience,” Robert Teitel, a producer of “Faster,” says of the decision to schedule the film as counterprogramming. CBS Films hopes that Johnson, a former professional wrestler who has recently been making kiddie fare such as “Tooth Fairy,” “Race to Witch Mountain” and “The Game Plan,” can recapture the patrons who attended his earlier, more violent works, including “The Rundown,” “Walking Tall” and “The Scorpion King.”
Full story: Hollywood chases female audience for Thanksgiving weekend – latimes.com