In Laman's Terms: Can Fall 2019s Adult Dramas Bring The Box Office Heat?

Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman in Harriet

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

With the Toronto International Film Festival announcing its first line-up of movies this week, it looks like it's just about time to turn our attention to award season, the final four months of a given year where most adult-skewing dramas make their debut in order to score as much awards attention as possible. The fact that such releases typically come out closer to the end of the year somewhat explains why we haven't had a ton of non-tentpoles making big bucks at the domestic box office, though a bigger reason is that we've had five blockbusters based on Disney properties each released in over 4,450 locations over a span of 13 weeks, thus ensuring that it's near impossible to that anything else, blockbuster or otherwise, can get enough exposure or screens to make an impression.


However, we have an odd reprieve coming up from the sort of PG-13 all-ages tentpoles Disney has made its bread and butter. After Hobbs & Shaw (hailing from Universal), we only have three PG-13 blockbusters for the rest of 2019, Gemini Man, Charlie's Angels and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Heck, Disney actually doesn't have another movie for three months when fantasy family movie Maleficent: Mistress of Evil arrives. Recognizing this, American movie studios have lined up the domestic calendar with a boatload of adult-skewing dramas that eschew explosions for more small-scale ambitions. Even the lone comic book movie for the rest of 2019 is Joker, a low-budget drama owing more to Mean Streets than Avengers: Endgame.

Still, even given the dearth of conventionally big tentpoles on the horizon, it's still understandable to ask if Award Season 2019 will continue the box office doldrums that faced the majority of Award Season contenders this time last year. First off, it's important to remember that, usually, the best dramas in a given year don't end up making the biggest box office. In a just world, Little Woods (my personal favorite movie of 2019 so far) would be doing circles around The Lion King at the box office, but as American politics demonstrates repeatedly on a daily basis, we do not live in a just world. Adult dramas thriving at the domestic box office has always been an uphill climb and when they do, it's not usually the best dramas that do score with audiences.

Even ten years ago, the biggest adult drama of 2009 was not superior fare like A Single Man or Brothers, it was The Blind Side. It was a terrible movie with horrifically racist overtones but it fit the bill for a family-friendly movie based on a well-known person that most viewers already had some kind of emotionally invested in. That's how you get $255.9 million domestically. Interestingly, the second-biggest adult drama of 2009 is a Quentin Tarantino movie (hey, we have one of those opening this weekend!), Inglourious Basterds. Those are the only adult dramas to crack $100 million in 2009. Interestingly, the rest of the 30 movies to crack $100 million that year were primarily animated family movies (six of them, plus two live-action movies starring CGI rodents), a quartet of comedies and a whole bunch of action movie tentpoles.

Interestingly, that doesn't seem to be massively different from what's excelled at the 2019 domestic box office slate, save for the comedies, most of which in 2019 (save for The Upside, a perfect example of cornball but undemanding entertainment like The Blind Side) have struggled to one degree or another. Even keeping that in mind, there's still room to be concerned for the lack of variety in what's succeeded at the domestic box office given that Disney has dominated the first seven months of the years to a creepy degree. Disney has five of the six biggest movies of 2019 domestically with the only anomaly being Spider-Man: Far From Home, a film based on characters owned by Disney. The types of film that audiences turn out to see in droves theatrically hasn't changed profoundly but the fact that only one studio is controlling 36% of the domestic box office in 2019, that's totally new and totally concerning.

So the scheduling for the remainder of 2019 that sees tentpoles becoming more scarce could be a great opportunity to even up the odds. Here we could see movies occupying genres Disney doesn't have an iron grip on thriving at the domestic box office. That sounds promising but even here there are understandable concerns, namely that the crop of adult-skewing dramas released in the last four months of 2018 tended to come up short at the box office, save for Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star is Born and Green Book. Could this be an indicator people are done seeing stuff that isn't a remake of an animated Disney movie on the big screen? It's a shame people didn't turn out in droves for excellent films like Can You Ever Forgive Me? or If Beale Street Could Talk, but just from a glance, it looks like the 2019 adult-skewing dramas headed out to into theaters have a much better shot to achieve box office success compared to their 2018 brethren.

One problem last Fall's big adult-skewing dramas had was that they weren't very commercially enticing movies. Typically, for big studio dramas to work or get crossover appeal into mainstream sensibilities, they do need to have premises and/or be based on real stories that makes them more easily marketable to the masses. There's a reason the Alejandro Gonzales Inarittu movie whose marketing could boil its premise down to Leonardo DiCaprio Is On An Action Revenge Mission is the one that made over $175 million domestically while the Inarittu movie whose premise was Famous Actor Contemplates His Own Place In The World made 25% as much domestically.

Similarly, movies based on real-life individuals that people are either aware of or have easily understandable struggles are a great way to entice people into the theater. Freddie Mercury or Lady Gaga worked as much of an audience-friendly brand name for Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star Is Born, respectively, as the Marvel Studios logo did for Guardians of the Galaxy. 

In the last four months of 2018, movies that fit those kinds of requirements for adult-skewing fare to excel at the box office were few and far between. Some, like Boy Erased, Ben is Back and Beautiful Boy, suffered from being far too grim to ever garner mainstream success. Others, like A Private War and especially Welcome to Marwen or The Front Runner, were about true stories the public wasn't as aware of. And then there were some like Beale Street or Widows that probably could have done a lot better (especially the latter film) but got screwed over by poor release dates and marketing. We'll have to wait and see if the marketing will be up to par for 2019s award season dramas, since most of them haven't even dropped a trailer yet, but conceptually, a bunch of these movies look like they could totally go the distance at the domestic box office.

Joker is an obvious likely box office winner thanks to it being based on the most famous comic book supervillain of all-time, but beyond that one, something like Ford v. Ferrari already feels like it's got the combination of big name actors, an easily explainable real-life story and an exciting trailer emphasizing it as full-throttle underdog tale that will likely make it a box office hit. Opening the same weekend as Ford v. Ferrari is The Good Liar, which stars reliable box office draw Helen Mirren and the iconic Ian McKellan in the lone thriller of November 2019, which should help it stand out in the marketplace. If Murder on the Orient Express proved anything, it's that audiences love a good murder mystery and Knives Out could satisfy that hunger further, especially with a trailer that promises dark comedy touches to assure audiences it won't get too bleak.

And then there's A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which dropped its first trailer this weekend and immediately got social media buzzing (and over 6 million YouTube views in about 50 hours) about iconic actor Tom Hanks playing Mister Rogers. Once again, we see how a well-known historical figure can get people interested in a movie that doesn't star Disney Princesses or superheroes. Only the second movie in history to feature Harriet Tubman, Harriet, which also dropped its first trailer this week, feels like it could be a surprise box office overperformer thanks to the historical figure it stars. Perhaps it won't, perhaps none of these titles will make any money and cement once and for all that the movie theater is now a home for only 2019 tentpoles. But I don't think so. There's a lot of potential in these films that could easily lure audiences to multiplexes. Let's see if the crop of films in Award Season 2019 are able to realize all of that box office potential that could show that it's not just Disney blockbusters that can excel at the 2019 domestic box office.