Virginia Tech's Impact on the Movie Business

In today's New York Times, Michael Cieply wonders if "the horror at Virginia Tech has changed the chemistry of America's popular culture" and cites the upcoming Lionsgate film Hostel: Part II (June 8th)--part of a genre that's become known in Hollywood as "torture porn"--as a litmus test for an audience's ability to embrace onscreen brutality. The film, written and directed by Eli Roth (exec produced by Quentin Tarantino), is the sequel to last year's Hostel, which cost $5 million to make and grossed more than $80 million worldwide. Like the Saw series, which was also released by Lionsgate, Hostel was especially graphic and gory, basically a marathon of mutilation that follows three American college students who are tricked into being victims for a service where customers pay to torture and murder others for pleasure. The sequel promises a similar plot but features three women in the leads.

Lionsgate confirmed that it will go through with a June 8th release but declined to discuss if it will alter its marketing plan in light of what happened at VT. The MPAA, which reviews advertising materials for films seeking a rating, recently approved a poster for the film featuring a severed head, with the instructions that it couldn't be displayed in theaters where children might see it. Cieply quotes a pundit saying the Virginia Tech tragedy could affect Hostel: Part II's box office performance, but later suggests that the impact might be impossible to measure. Even before Blacksburg, these kind of ultra-violent films had been falling out of favor. In the past year, Touristas, The Hills Have Eyes 2, Dead Silence--all have been box office disappointments. And as mentioned in USA Today, there's a real glut this year with the genre and a feeling of oversaturation. From 2004-2006, an average of 20 horror movies were released. This year, there are 39.

But I wouldn't be surprised if Hostel: II ends up making money. Horror fans are a pretty loyal lot and Roth is a luminary in the genre. Moreover, part of the reason horror has become so wildly popular with the studios in the past few years is because they are incredibly cheap to make (no movie stars needed) so it doesn't take much to make them profitable. And sadly, I don't think the Virginia Tech tragedy will keep teens away. Looking back, the killings of Columbine had little effect on our love for cinematic violence; 9/11 had much more of an impact on what we were willing to watch. But we might not have to wait until Hostel: Part II to see if torture porn still draws crowds. Captivity, another Lionsgate horror film (with After Dark Films) that recently had all the trouble with its graphic outdoor campaign, hits 2000 screens on May 18th.

For fans of the genre, however, the most interesting part of Cieply's piece is when he talks to Roy Lee, the producer who was working on the remake of Old Boy, the film that was a reported favorite of killer Seung-Hui Cho. Lee said that movie had fallen out of active development at Universal long before the shooting spree and Mr. Cho's video was made public. Lee has also been working on a remake of the Japanese cult classic Battle Royale, a modern day Lord of the Flies which has 9th graders imprisoned on an island and killing each other. (Cieply reports that this movie is based on a video game, but I believe it's actually based on a novel, was made into a movie in 2000 and then later became a video game). Lee says that New Line has been working to get the film rights for the past year and that he was glad the movie had not started production before the Blacksburg killings. "We would have been slaughtered by the press," he said (Ed. note: Uh, nice choice of verbs, Roy). He still plans to proceed with a Battle Royale remake though "we might be a little more sensitive to some of the issues." A spokeswoman for New Line said she had "no news" about progress on the rights deal.

After Virginia Tech, Testing Limits of Movie Violence [NYT]

[Photo: Hostel: Part II. Credit: Everett Collection]