Wrenching Film Poses Marketing Challenge

By: Brooks Barnes
Thursday, Feb 5, 2009
The Arts C1

This article is about an award-winning film “Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire,” and how it has a lot of racial conflict. Marketing executives feel the film is more for an African American audience, and is hard to attract white audiences. The film is having marketing challenges; the film’s marketing cost is suppose to be $25 million, and so far they only have $5.5 millions from Lionsgate. Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry were sent a copy of “Push” and were asked to lend support. They both agreed and felt the film is very powerful and is highly recommended to the public.

The lede is confusing, because you can‘t really tell what her review is about.

“Dark and depressing rarely does very well at the box office, and with life outside the multiplex so rough these days, people see to be gravitating toward fluffy fare more than ever.” Barnes.

I think she is talking about the movie, but since the movie hasn’t even come out yet, no one would know what she is talking about.

The “but” statement is in the fourth paragraph which says even though the movie won three top awards at the Sundance Film Festival, it has a lot of negative imagery. Then Barnes mentions the marketing challenges it is facing.

The kicker is a quote from Oprah Winfrey saying how the movie “is raw and powerful and splits her open.”