Teens give Hollywood a shock

Overall, the flicks easiest to sell to teens have been those with — brace yourself for some new marketing buzzwords — aspiration and relevancy. None delivered more on that front than She's All That and Varsity Blues, both of which also benefited from beating the teen-movie rush by coming out early in the year and wooing youngsters with MTV-ready soundtracks.

Even films made for broader appeal scored by using teen-music tactics. The meaning of Life's $20.4 million opening can in part be found in Interscope's hit hip-hop soundtrack, which preceded the Eddie Murphy-Martin Lawrence dramedy by a month. "The soundtrack gave us real credibility with our core audience, especially the African-American audience," says Marc Shmuger, Universal's president of domestic marketing.

When it came to marketing, the best campaigns followed a law of The Matrix: Image is everything. The trailer for Warner Bros.' surprise hit wowed youngsters with special effects but said nothing about the movie's spiritual aspects. Paramount's tag line for Mel Gibson's Payback — "Get ready to root for the bad guy" — put a lighter spin on a dark, violent movie. (Other dark movies, such as Eight Millimeter and True Crime, might have profited from a similarly light advertising touch.) Universal's teen-focused preopening campaign for Life gave no hint of the film's bittersweet side. "Our mantra was 'Funny is money,' " says Shmuger. During its second weekend, however, with a more revealing adult-targeted campaign in circulation (as well as less-than-enthusiastic word of mouth), Life suffered a 45 percent drop at the box office.

The promise of laughs also drew older crowds as well. Benefiting from a hilarious trailer, Analyze This performed, according to producer Paula Weinstein, "like the opposite of There's Something About Mary — it started older and went younger." Other than buying tickets to Analyze This, however, adults had little impact at the box office this spring. Oscar's endorsement helped 1998 holdovers Shakespeare in Love and Life Is Beautiful, and there was some swooning for Message in a Bottle. But women passed on dramas like Gloria and The Deep End of the Ocean, and one seemingly safe bet, Universal's older-skewing EDtv, which arrived too late. "There was no escaping [the similarly themed] The Truman Show," says EDtv producer Brian Grazer. "I think they were convinced they'd already seen that in some form or another."

Speaking of things you've seen before, plenty more youth-oriented movies will be rolling out this summer, from Adam Sandler in Big Daddy to South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut. "The heart of this demographic is still in its mid-teens," says Sony's Blake. "We're not quite ready to move up the ladder yet." The next rung, of course, may be a glut of college comedies. Can you say Animal House: The Next Generation?