Hipster agency poses challenges for cine marketers

NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – Batten bottomward the hatches -- the hipsters are coming.

Even as Hollywood studios added aim at the broadest accessible audience, a few companies are experimenting with the adverse access in these summer months and beyond: They're authoritative smart, arbitrary movies for a adult adolescent audience.

The pics are aggravating to be the abutting "Garden State," a 2004 blur that, like added hipster pics, can be about authentic as trafficking in angry music, accidental appearance and characters who are disaffected.

But to succeed, these films will charge to attempt in a added difficult bazaar than "Garden State" did alone bristles years ago -- and do alike bigger business than that picture's $27 million.

Perhaps the best arresting archetype of the anatomy is Fox Searchlight's accessible breakdown comedy-drama "(500) Canicule of Summer," Marc Webb's subtle, funny and uncharacteristically guy-centric appearance of avant-garde romance. The films opens July 17 in bound release.

Starring Joseph Gordon-Leavitt as a cogitating artist and Zooey Deschanel as his ethereal, sometimes unattainable adulation interest, the cine was one of the blemish hits at Sundance this year. It has all the adequacy of a summer counterprogramming hit, forth the curve of "Little Miss Sunshine" three years ago.

But alike by the standards of Searchlight -- which with films like "Garden State" and "Juno" has animated hipster business to an art anatomy -- "Summer" is a catchy enterprise.

30-SECOND CHALLENGE

Its best ambrosial aspects are moments of quirky, contextual ball and its affection of blue -- not absolutely the affectionate of actuality that plays able-bodied as you dig into your airheaded cat-and-mouse for the affection to begin.

"This cine is decidedly arduous to put advanced in a 30-second atom or alike a two-minute trailer," says Fox Searchlight admiral Nancy Utley.

The specialty analysis has appropriately staged a appreciably abounding screening campaign. Since its Sundance premiere, the cine has catholic to 28 festivals and played 215 articulate screenings. Searchlight additionally staged a six-city June 21 betrayal of aliment and added commodity at retailers, watching as Twitter and Facebook fueled the events' popularity.

Saturation isn't a concern; admiral say that in a brand-driven marketplace, there's no such affair as too abundant attention.

But the aggregation additionally wants to be absolute about who it gets absorption from, and has devised a attack that's either surgical or schizophrenic, or both.

One TV spot, aired during "Family Guy" and "South Park," appearance a shower-sex ball arena (which is not absolutely cogitating of the movie's tone) while addition sticks to the quiet affecting aspects.

On the publicity side, Deschanel is appointed for the older-skewing "The Tonight Show." But the flat is actuality appropriately advancing with promos in Suck magazine, at GenArt and at added indie venues.

Executives accept the articulate accretion is important for all-embracing awareness, but that it's not enough. "We charge to booty the ambiguous fizz and about-face it into a specific buzz," Utley says.

The aforementioned could be said of hipster movies in general.

HIGHER STAKES

Gone are the canicule back a baby cine aimed at twenty- and thirtysomethings could artlessly booty its time to abound into a hit, article Searchlight did back it accomplished "Napoleon Dynamite" to $44 million. The blur backward in theaters for nine months and was in absolution for three months afore it alike hit 1,000 screens.

That's in allotment because with media reacting faster than ever, movies don't bastard up on consumers the way they already did. And in allotment it's because budgets are swelling, adopting the stakes.

Hipster movies are now big business. Warners' abatement absolution "Where the Wild Things Are" -- based on a abiding children's archetypal but directed by the appropriate Spike Jonze and with music from the Arcade Fire -- is a prototypal hipster pic. But the film's account is conservatively estimated at $75 actor -- not absolutely a belligerent Sundance affection that can allow to comedy mostly to city apish types.

Focus Appearance this ages already has approved a hipster cine with Sam Mendes' "Away We Go," about a abundant mid-thirties brace traveling North America in chase of their new hometown.

So far it's cartoon solid results. In four weeks of gradually addition release, "Go" has becoming about $5 million.

But capturing the admirers is altered for this blazon of blur because the admirers is added media-savvy and beneath affected to a accepted business campaign.

"With movies like these you can't bandy a absolute over (your business spots)," says Focus Appearance admiral of business David Brooks. "You accept to be added precise. But the outlets are out there, abnormally in the cable world." He cites Ball Central as one such area for announcement and promotion.

Of course, too abundant hipster business can about-face off a boilerplate audience. And alike those who adorned themselves as hipsters abhorrence the appellation for its overused, Madison Avenue ring. In the end, no amount how they access it, cine marketers will face the ultimate claiming with hipster pics -- business to the unmarketable.

(Editing by Sheri Linden at Reuters)