Why does the Hollywood hype machine keep trying to sell us Jennifer Aniston?

Cafe Society
1

Once or twice a year, there’s a new Jennifer Aniston movie released and heavily hyped as a Jennifer Aniston star vehicle. Every single time I go to the supermarket, Jenn is on the cover of at least one tabloid or magazine. She is, very likely, the most heavily hyped actress today.

Only one problem with all this: Practically every movie in which she receives top billing underperforms. Look at this list of her last several movies in which her name appears first on the credits:

The Switch, $49 million (U.S.)
Along Came Polly, $88 million
Rumor Has It, $43 million
Friends With Money, $13 million (limited release, though)
Love Happens, $36 million
The Break-Up, $118 million
The Bounty Hunter, $67 million

She does fine in supporting roles (Office Space, Horrible Bosses, Marley & Me, Just Go With It), but for someone who gets as much press as she does, ONE $100 million movie out of her last 7? And it’s not like she was a big movie star before this!

Compare her to Sandra Bullock. Sandra made The Blind Side ($255 million) and The Proposal ($163 million). That was just 2009! Sure, Sandra got a lot of coverage due to her divorce, but right now I’d bet Anniston is being covered in tabloids at a ratio of at least 10-1 versus Bullock. I’m sure a great deal of the coverage is due to her being married to, then dumped, by Brad Pitt (the Mary Sue syndrome?), but the hype obviously does not translate into ticket sales. (It might translate to tabloid sales, though.)

So, why is Hollywood still trying to push ol’ Jenn? I don’t get it.

2

Going by the boxoffice numbers in wikipedia, most of those movies made several times their initial cost. Rumor has It seems to be the only one that didn’t do well. So I imagine they keep letting her star in movies because her movies keep giving a good return on investment.

So I don’t think Hollywood is really pushing her, there a group of people that like to read about her in the tabloids and see her movies, probably, as you say, because of her marriage/divorce to Brad Pitt, and so Hollywood keeps churning out movies to capitilize on those people. There aren’t enough such people to make her movies blockbusters, but romantic comedies are cheap to make, and she draws enough of a crowd so that they make a good profit.

3

I don’t think they are all that profitable. Marketing costs on the average movie are $35 million. Even if hers are cheaper to market at $25 million, that would make more than half of her movies money losers.

4

i just don’t think she’s much of a movie star. she has great comic timing in the right setting, and she did well on friends because of the ensemble nature of the show. i haven’t seen a lot of her movies, but in what i have seen, she seems to still be rachel and not bring anything new to the role she’s playing. i like the movie bruce almighty, and she’s fine in it, but she doesn’t do anything that any other cute girl next door type couldn’t pull off.

5

The US box office is only one way for a movie to make money. I seem to remember reading somewhere that it’s only about twenty percent of the revenues for a typical movie. For example, Wikipedia says that “Rumor Has It” grossed $46 million internationally and also had $36 million in home video sales.

6

I think marketing budgets for big blockbusters make the average a lot higher then it would be otherwise. The production budget for a lot of Aniston’s movies are less then 35 million, I’m skeptical studios spend more on marketing a movie then the do to produce it in the first place.

Which is of course the advantage of putting Aniston in your movie, since there’s a segment of the population that follows her in the tabloids, there’s a segment that will hear about her upcoming movie even if they spend zero dollars in advertising it.

7

Her roles in Just Go with It and Marley and Me were just as big as any of the other movies you mentioned. Why aren’t they counted?

8

If Anniston’s films were losing money, they wouldn’t hire her to star in them. Simple as that.

9

I only used movies in which she was billed first. In Just Go with It she was billed second behind Adam Sandler, and in Marley and Me she got second billing to Owen Wilson.

10

Tabloids don’t print your picture based upon how well your movies sell. Tabloids print your picture based upon how well it will sell their tabloids.

Think about how many times Tom Hanks hit the front page of the Enquirer during the entirety of the '90s.

11

I think it’s a combination of Hollywood inertia (“We’re doing a romantic comedy? Get…uh…Jennifer Aniston!”) and the blind optimism that, “surely, OUR movie will finally be the breakout hit where she makes $250 million!”

12

Given that she’s the female lead in both of those, I wouldn’t call it second billing, but then I’m not in Hollywood.

13

As an aside, I’m convinced the tabloids have created a cottage industry of stars that are really only stars because the tabloids have decided they are stars. Jennifer Aniston is one of these, but the shining “star” of tabloids has been Jessica Simpson, who is really a terrible singer and actress, but does one thing well, and that one thing is to be on the cover of tabloids.
It’s pretty weird, really. Very meta.

14

It’s okay if you don’t like Jennifer Aniston, but the reason she keeps getting roles is fairly simple – her presence helps a film make money. It’s not inertia or blind optimism – it’s a proven track record of profit.

15

Who said I didn’t like her? She was excellent in Office Space.

I completely disagree with the statement “her presence helps a film make money”. I think her movies are doing poorer than would be expected for a film star of her name recognition and the movie’s budget. My premise, which can’t easily be proven or disproven, is that you could have put almost any other actress in those movies and gotten similar box office results. $36-118 million dollar US theater grosses are absolutely nothing special for romantic comedies.

Here’s a list of the all-time best grossing romantic comedies. It’s not perfect (Coming To America is on it! So’s Norbit!) but her highest movie listed is at #19, which is not impressive considering how many she has made, and that the list is not adjusted for inflation.

16

You do understand the difference between “net” and “gross,” right? Just because a movie grosses a huge amount doesn’t mean it made money. Granted, that’s much more likely to be the case in romantic comedies, the budgets of which aren’t going to be high by Hollywood blockbuster standards.

I repeat – Jennifer Aniston is in a lot of movies because she helps the movie make money. She’s a proven commodity in romantic comedies and similar movies. If you include *Just Go With It *($103 million US gross) as a Jennifer Aniston movie – which I think you have to do to be fair about this – Jennifer Aniston has starred in four of the top 37 highest-grossing romantic comedies made since 1978. Throw in *Rumor Has It *(#92 on your list) and *Marley & Me *($143 million US gross) and it’s pretty obvious that either Aniston can help draw moviegoers to the movie, or she’s very savvy about picking which movies to make.

Edited to add: Incidentally, since the highest-grossing romantic comedy since 1978 made $244 million, I think setting the bar at $250 million is a little unrealistic.

17

Aniston’s 42 and still hot, so she’ll fit nicely in uber-MILF roles. I expect we’ll (well, you’ll - I don’t go to romcoms) see more of her in roles as the intelligent fox the male lead initially ignores until he tires of the vacuous 20-something hottie (i.e. the “girl” to Aniston’s “woman”). Aniston is the reward men get for growing up, and she ain’t half-bad not at all.

18

You may not go to romcoms, but you’ve exactly described her role in Just Go With It, a romcom earlier this year in which she starred with Adam Sandler.

19

As an afterthought I recall one reviewer referring to Kathleen Turner, then in her late forties and appearing in a stage version of The Graduate, as “pure theatrical viagra”. If Aniston goes the same route, she’ll be doing rather well.

20

Well, I figured as much from the endless commercials and confirmed it by reading the wiki summary after the film was released. Once I saw Sandler “hilariously” interacting with Aniston’s character’s kids, it was kind of a sure bet that at the end, he and they would form a bond. And besides, I thought right off the bat that Aniston was more attractive than Brooklyn Decker. I get that I was supposed to have a visceral instinctive boooiii-oooiii-oooiiinnnng! reaction to Decker, but television is full of women who look like supermodels, so it’s time to look for other, more lasting qualities.