Nets Go To the Movies
Telepics Span Genres, Viewer Demos
by Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn -- Multichannel News, 6/8/2008 8:00:00 PM
From music to mystery, cable networks are serving up an eclectic mix of made-for-TV movies this summer targeting viewers from every demographic.
“This is definitely the most ambitious and expansive summer slate of movies we ever put on,” said Gary Marsh, Disney Channel Worldwide president of entertainment. Disney hopes to attract young viewers and their parents with two music-focused movies.
The network is making aggressive plans with its launch of Camp Rock starring Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers band. The teen adventure film will premiere June 20 on Disney, then will have a multiplatform showcase on three consecutive nights, airing first on ABC’s Wonderful World of Disney, then on ABC Family Channel before being streamed on Disney.com.
Then in August, the channel will cast the spotlight on one of its popular franchises with The Cheetah Girls One World.
“We’ve done, over the years, maybe one big project and a smaller project, but these are two big high-profile, star-driven movies which puts a real stake in the ground and says this is a big music-driven summer for movies,” Marsh said.
At Disney, the goal isn’t just for a share of the audience “but a share of mind,” Marsh added. “We can create that in a lot of different ways. One is just by having spots on TV, but also by having music out there, which kids pay attention to in the summer. So what we have is an opportunity to connect with them on multiple levels not just as part of a television property.”
ABC Family, which will premiere two new original scripted shows as part of its slate this summer, kicked off the season earlier this month with Michelle Trachtenberg, Drew Fuller and Billy Campbell in the father-daughter tale, The Circuit. It will follow that up July 13 with another father and daughter story, Picture This starring Ashley Tisdale and Kevin Pollack, a coming-of-age story about an unpopular high schooler and her overprotective father who grounds her on the night of her first big date.
“Movies are absolutely as important to us as the series,” said ABC Family president Paul Lee. According to Lee, the network’s original movies have ranked No. 1 among viewers 18-49 in all of ad-supported television. “We’ve had a particularly good run. Holiday in Handcuffs, which was our Melissa Joan Hart movie at Christmas was the highest telecast that we ever had [at that time] and we think the two we have [this summer are] on par as well.”
While ABC Family may look to increase the number of movie originals slightly in the coming years, Lee said the network has no plans of exceeding its one movie a month strategy, breaking films in various genres over the year.
Romantic comedies have worked best among the ABC Family’s millennial viewers and their parents. “People love romantic comedies and you only have to look at ratings for Holiday in Handcuffs or Santa Baby, which we had with Jenny McCarthy to know that people love these movies,” Lee said.
The Hallmark Channel, on the other hand, is upping the ante on original movies in production, by reaching outside their own box for projects and broadening the scope of viewers’ expectations.
“In the past we had produced all of our movies with Larry Levinson Productions, and we’re still doing a tremendous amount with him” said David Kenin, Crown Media Holdings executive vice president of programming. “But we’re going outside to deal with others because you get to go in different directions creatively. It’s already provided some fertile ground for us in the way things look on our air.”
In July, the network will ride into its summer movie season with A Gunfighter’s Pledge, a Western starring Luke Perry and C. Thomas Howell, followed by the family saga Every Second Counts, with Stephen Collins. Dick Van Dyke returns to the network in August with son Barry Van Dyke and grandson Shane Van Dyke in Murder 101: Lock Room Mystery. Dear Prudence starring Jane Seymour and For the Love of Grace with Mark Consuelos, Corbin Bernsen and Chandra West round out the summer roster.
At Lifetime Entertainment Services, executives are choosing to make fewer movies — down from about 60 titles to 40 this year — dedicating more of the network’s budget dollars to attracting high-profile talent and improving production quality. They’re also tapping into more diverse stories.
“When I first got to Lifetime I took a look at a lot of movies that we were making and the feedback we got is that they felt that there was the sameness to the product on the air,” Lifetime president of entertainment Susanne Daniels said. “Viewers were not feeling like they were getting enough new and fresh material and that the Lifetime movies weren’t distinct enough in story, in genre, in actors; and so one of the things we really did was try and have a lot more variety to every aspect of our production.
“That meant stepping it up with directors and bringing in directors that actors felt comfortable with, and really working with the community to tell them that there was a new day at Lifetime; that we were really going to make a big effort to make HBO-level women’s movies,” Daniels said.
On June 22, Less Than Perfect’s Sara Rue stars as an author haunted by her best friend’s suicide in the thriller, Nightmare at the End of the Hall. On June 28, Kelly Preston and Ron Eldard headline The Tenth Circle, an adaptation of Jodi Picoult’s best-selling novel about a family confronted with the rape of their teenage daughter.
In August, Valerie Bertinelli and pop singer JoJo Levesque are mother and daughter in the comedy True Confessions of a Hollywood Starlet, in which a teen star is forced to live a simpler life in Indiana.
Scrubs star Judy Reyes joins Ana Ortiz and A Martinez for the based-on-true-life saga Little Girl Lost: The Delimar Vera Story, and Chelsea Hobbs (The Party Never Stops) plays a recent college graduate who becomes consumed by her “easy money” nightclub gig in the drama, True Confessions of a Go-Go Girl.
“Working with different directors and talent, bringing in new books that women love, and getting the market out there to tell women we were doing, it was all part of a very conscious plan,” Daniels said. “And so far, knock on wood, it seems to be really working.”
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