L.A. Times: Lack of Christmas Movies a Business Decision, Not Cultural

Are we buying this? People don’t want to see Christmas movies?

Steven Zeitchik of the L.A. Times:

Studios don’t usually take sides in culture-wars debates. They do, however, pay attention to the shifting winds. And as Joe Roth, the former Disney executive who once shepherded holiday hits like “Home Alone” and “Santa Clause,” says, holiday pictures just aren’t where the creative or monetary Zeitgeist is circa 2010.

“The way to do a big-budget film these days is to take stories that everyone in the world knows and take them in a new direction,” Roth told us. “But no one’s come up with a fresh way to do a holiday movie, so we’re all doing it with other kinds of stories.” (Roth is doing just that with “Snow White” and “The Wizard of Oz.”)

In past years there have been scads of movies playing off the holidays. In fact, as recently as 2006 we had a sack full of them, from a Danny DeVito comedy (“Deck the Halls”) to a Queen Latifah heartwarmer (“The Holiday”), to a horror movie (“Black Christmas”). That glut has turned, just four years later, into a scarcity. (Whether any of the ’06 movies were any good is another matter.)

But don’t be quick to blame Hollywood. Most of the movies from that fertile year of 2006 flopped. So right now, Hollywood executives’ assumption is that Americans would rather come to theaters to see stories about pretty much anything other than Christmas. Are they right?

Read the full article here.