Selling a comedy movie is hard these days! Despite the huge successes of both The Hangover Part II and Bridesmaids this summer, studios are more skittish than ever about greenlighting comedies. This is thanks to a cratering DVD market and the difficulty in marketing comedies overseas. The DVD problem is especially significant, with comedy DVD revenue having tanked 63% from 2006 to 2010, which is much worse than the 39% decline in the overall market. So essentially, Hollywood doesn’t want to make any more comedies because high school and college kids now just download and stream comedies instead of buying the DVDs to watch repeatedly.
With this Friday’s release of Zookeeper, Sony is hoping star Kevin James will buck his weak track record overseas because he’s surrounded with computer-generated talking animals, which traditionally have been popular internationally.
So what does that mean for the future of comedic films? Fewer star-based movies and broader humor. Here’s what we’re in for, folks:
Hoo-eee. Well, it could be worse. Luckily, as comedic films become less and less relevant, we’ve got TV comedy pumping out quality content in heretofore unheard of quantities. Who cares about movies when we’ve got so much great TV? You can keep your Kevin James and his talking porcupines, stupid international markets. We’ve got basic cable. [via]
