| Tuesday, May 28, 2002 |
02:11 - Yeah? So it's a chick flick...
http://members.fortunecity.com/backtodisney/News.html
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Katzenberg, on Spirit:
''This is a chick flick. I'm proud of it," Jeffrey Katzenberg told USA Today. "Beauty and the Beast was a chick flick. The Lion King was a chick flick. Those are good things. When you look at the marketplace with Spider-Man and Star Wars, we're the alternative." He predicts that Spirit will play best to girls ages 8-12, tapping into the ongoing National Velvet-style romance between prepubescent females and pretty ponies, and will be lucky to corral $100 million--respectable but not anywhere as green as Shrek's $267.6 million.
Okay-- leaving aside the odd statement that TLK was a "chick flick", and the expectations that Spirit would make only modest opening-weekend box-office figures (actually it's turned out that it's pulled in the biggest weekend for a traditionally-animated film since Tarzan), I have to smirk a little bit at this.
The ads for Spirit, the ones that show satisfied moviegoers coming out of a screening, are very light on the twentysomething guys with the big teeth and the sunglasses on chains gesticulating about the suspense and the animation-- and very heavy on the cherubic pre-teen girls lisping "Bye, horsie!"
I guess that was to be expected. But regardless of the powerful deterrent that these ads might be for me, I'm still going to go see the film, and I'll probably enjoy it a vast amount.
Maybe tomorrow night, when the squealing target audience has all tottered off to bed, and I can enjoy it for the technical and visual feast that all reports claim it is.
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