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Most teen films don't do this well, and most young TV stars can't guarantee B.O. gold. Movies starring Campbell (Wild Things) and the slightly older Friends cast (Picture Perfect, Fools Rush In, Romy & Michele's High School Reunion) typically bump their heads on the $30 million ceiling. Teen movies still serve an old function: to caulk the crevices in the release schedule and create cheap product that, if it doesn't make a bundle, won't lose one either. Like I Was a Teenage Werewolf and the Elvis films of 40 years ago, they are reliable B movies.
But even if a teen film isn't a big hit, it can make money. This summer's Can't Hardly Wait (with Hewitt) grossed a tepid $25 million, but since it cost only around $10 million, everyone got to see some green. Everyone but the actors. "The teen genre is a godsend to studios, because they can use a bunch of young people in the place of one $20 million star," says Cary Woods, who produced Scream. "And the kids don't get gross percentages, so the studios get nice profits." It's not as if these kids were cobbling Nikes in China--$50,000 to $150,000 is decent pay for a summer job--but young TV stars are the best buy in Hollywood.
And so are teen moviegoers. Gerry Rich, MGM's president of worldwide marketing, notes that a teen movie may cost up to 50% less to advertise than a big summer film. Cost-efficient ads for Disturbing Behavior and Halloween: H20 are blanketing the kid-drams and cable music channels. "When you're marketing a teen movie," notes Bob Weinstein, the Miramax co-chair and boss of Dimension Films, which distributed the Scream epics, "MTV becomes your best friend."
Now teens and Hollywood are on that same intimate basis. "Everything is being cast younger in Hollywood," says Cathy Konrad, producer of Williamson's new black comedy, Killing Mrs. Tingle. "You'll read a script where the characters are 40 years old, and the studio will ask if they can be in their early 20s instead." The moguls also think of how the Amy Heckerling comedy Clueless transformed Jane Austen's Emma into a modern-teen hit, and they dip some literary favorite into the fountain of youthpix. The fall film Ten Things I Hate About You, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt of 3rd Rock from the Sun, is "The Taming of the Shrew in high school." Next year's Cruel Inventions, with Gellar and Dawson's Joshua Jackson, was pitched as "Dangerous Liaisons in high school." Then there's Strike, billed as "Lysistrata in high school." Can a teen Finnegans Wake be far behind?
Fortunately for Hollywood, there are millions of attractive kids with a show-biz bug. "Casting directors used to recruit out of Yale drama school," says Konrad. "Now they go to small towns to watch high school plays." Or they receive a videotape from Ohio. "I'm kind of a fresh-face type of deal," says Holmes, asked to explain her appeal. "It's not that I'm sexy, I know that! Whatever. I know it won't last forever, but I'm glad to be in my teens and doing these things."