Girls Power the Twi-Hard Phenomena
For many years the world of fandom seemed to be a boys club. We always assumed that we were the only ones who put posters up in our bedrooms, went to midnight showings, and hit the convention scene to talk shop and meet the people we idolized from the silver screen.
Those days are a thing of the past, and I can tell you exactly when the winds of change started. It was with one movie. A box-office smash from a famous director known for making horror films, starring a cast of attractive twenty-somethings. The flick is Scream, a reinvention of the slasher wheel that was marketed toward the fangirls as much as it was for the fanboys. Gone were the days when a genre-type film was advertised with daring artwork. Now it was about the poster having more of a Vanity Fair look, a more glamorous touch to them. There is no arguing that this strategy worked in spades, as Hollywood struck oil with a old selling point for a new generation. Today’s advertising is about grappling your attention with a hot young actor who is going to be starring in the film.
Money talks, as the Kevin Williamson penned project made well over one hundred million dollars in domestic ticket sales. The floodgates opened and every young star wanted to be in the next big thing. Jennifer Love Hewitt in I Know What You Did Last Summer, Josh Hartnett in The Faculty, and Katie Holmes in Disturbing Behavior are prime examples.
Incredible things can happen when you find that magic in a bottle that is a great story with an attractive cast. The new millennium has found this potent formula again in the film versions of Stephanie Meyer’s best selling novels that have touched the pop culture zeitgeist like nothing I have seen before. Was this what it was like when The Beatles invaded America in the 1960′s?
Summit Entertainment and Creation Entertainment came to Los Angeles, California for three days of all things Twilight. I’ve have been to many of these kinds of events, and aside from Comic-Con, I have never seen such a huge auditorium full of hardcore fans. The room was wide open and from left to right; it looked like the setting for a small concert. It was appropriate because the stars of this series are like rock gods to these girls.
I will be the first to admit that I am not the demographic for the Twilight films, but I can really appreciate the magnitude of what the franchise has accomplished, especially in the economic times that we live in.
Keep your eyes peeled for our coverage of the Los Angeles Premiere of Eclipse and interviews with its stars in the coming weeks.
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