Hollywood now has at least three politically themed movies lined up for the 2012 election season, but political experts say there’s little or no evidence they’ll have any impact on election results.
“I haven’t seen any evidence that any movies ever had an impact on a campaign,” said Tony Fratto, a former George W. Bush spokesman who is now a partner at the consulting firm Hamilton Place Strategies. Aside from political audiences “inside the beltway, New York and Los Angeles, there’s just not a lot of attention” paid to political movies, he said.
The movies include a drama about the successful killing by Osama bin Laden at the direction of President Barack Obama, a comedy about Southern politicians and a biopic about Republican consultant Karl Rove.
“College Republicans” begins shooting in Texas in November. The movie “is about when Karl Rove and Lee Atwater first met, which is when Karl Rove ran for president of the College Republicans, and that’s when they sort of discovered dirty tricks. It’s interesting to see them take that journey together,” producer Maya Browne told The Wrap, a web publication that covers the movie industry. In 2008, Browne produced a pro-Obama video, titled “My name is Barack Obama.”
Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis will play competing South Carolina politicians in the comedy, “Southern Rivals,” which begins filming this fall. Ferrell told movie industry reporters in April that the movie will be out in time for the 2012 election season and will “have comments on the circumstance now in modern day politics.” (RELATED: Will Ferrell goes Dubya again: President Bush reacts to Osama bin Laden’s death)
Kathryn Bigelow is directing the drama about the bin Laden operation. In 2008, she won industry awards for directing “The Hurt Locker,” a movie about U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan charged with handling unexploded bombs. Bigelow’s new movie is scheduled to open in October 2012, and is getting extensive aid from the U.S. military.
In August, a White House spokesman dismissed as “ridiculous’’ suggestions that Bigelow is getting an extraordinary amount of aid from the White House. His dismissal came after New York Republican Rep. Peter King, chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, urged an investigation into reports the administration granted Bigelow “high-level access” for a movie about the killing of the Islamist terror chief.
Hollywood has tried to influence politics before, most notably with the 2004 movie “The Day After Tomorrow,” which was based on the perceived threat of global warming and hit the theaters in May before George W. Bush’s race against Democratic Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry. The movie was a financial hit.
“That may be the best example” of a political movie, said Fratto. It got a lot of attention from political advocates, he said, and “a lot of acclaim, wide distribution … [but] it certainly didn’t swing the attitude of the public in favor of climate change legislation.”