Hollywood gets serious to attract audiences

Naomi Watts stars in Peter Jackson's version of King Kong.

After a summer when weary action flicks and television remakes failed to fire up movie fans, Hollywood hopes to turn things around this autumn with films that put new faces and the Oscar race in the spotlight.

As the summer season ends, box office experts expect ticket sales to be down about 10 per cent from last year's record US$3.9 billion ($5.49 billion) as films like Stealth, The Island and to a lesser extent Bewitched failed to be big hits.

One refrain heard around Hollywood was that this summer's films were just not good enough and that fans want originality rather than reruns.

The upcoming schedule features only two sequels officially designated as "part two" - thriller Saw II next month and family comedy Cheaper by the Dozen 2 in December - although titles such as November's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire certainly qualify as follow-ons.

Lords of the Rings director Peter Jackson's remake of a signature Hollywood film, King Kong, opens in December and he promises a fresh take on the beauty and the beast classic.

As is typical of autumn when teenagers head to school, the film industry goes light on the comic book action and kid comedy that fill the summer and focuses more heavily on human dramas that appeal to older audiences.

Next month's The Weather Man starring Nicolas Cage fits in the drama niche with a tale about a father in a mid-life crisis. It is funny, but the humour is dark. Although its message is life affirming, it could make audiences uneasy.

This month, Gwyneth Paltrow reprises her role in the award-winning play Proof as a woman caring for her mentally-ill father played by Anthony Hopkins.

Also this month, former Lord of the Rings king Viggo Mortensen is a small-town husband who gets targeted by the mob in thriller A History of Violence, Nicolas Cage has Lord of War in which he plays an arms dealer with a moral conscience.

War and Middle East politics seem to be weighing on Hollywood's mind with the widely anticipated Jarhead hitting screens in early November, followed later that month by Syriana and in December Steven Spielberg's Munich.

Jarhead is based on Anthony Swofford's best-selling book, and it details his days as a US sniper in the 1991 Gulf War. Another Oscar winner, Stephen Gaghan who wrote drug-dealing drama Traffic, gives audiences Syriana, which tells three disparate stories that revolve around oil and Arab politics. It stars George Clooney, Matt Damon and Amanda Peet.

For Munich, Spielberg revisits the 1972 massacre of 11 Israeli athletes after they were taken hostage by Palestinians during the Munich Olympics.

Several low-budget and independent films venture into war and politics as well including The War Within about a Pakistani engineer turned terrorist. Paradise Now looks at two Palestinians recruited to be suicide bombers.

Director Tim Burton, whose Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was one of this summer's fresh surprises, brings out a tale of tortured love this month with Tim Burton's Corpse Bride. Art, not commerce, is the key driving force in the Oscar race, and George Clooney's movie for next month, Good Night and Good Luck, a black-and-white film about newsman Edward R. Murrow and Senator Joe McCarthy's war on communism, figures prominently.

On this month's watchlist are The Constant Gardner and Capote with Philip Seymour Hoffman as the American writer. Must-see titles next month are Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown and Shopgirl, based on the novel by comedian Steve Martin.

The Oscar race picks up in November with former 007 Pierce Brosnan in The Matador, Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line and musical Rent.

The star-making machinery also uses awards season to launch new talent, and Hollywood is watching Sundance festival sensations such as writer/director Noah Baumbach and his The Squid and the Whale next month and actor Lou Pucci in this month's Thumbsucker.

In November and December, Hollywood and its box office watchers have high hopes for movies such as animated Chicken Little, the fourth Harry Potter movie and The Chronicles of Narnia: the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, based on C.S. Lewis' fantasy novel for children.

- REUTERS