August
22
Trailer Watch: Secret Life of Bees Debuts in Toronto
It's taken six years to turn Sue Monk Kidd's 2002 bestseller The Secret Life of Bees into a movie. Producers Lauren Shuler Donner and Joe Pichirallo, who followed the project from Fox Searchlight to Focus Features (where David Gordon Green was attached) to Will Smith's Overbrook production company and back to Fox Searchlight again, doggedly kept the project alive when it seemed like nobody wanted to do it.
Of course The Secret Life of Bees breaks all the conventions of what's deemed commercial these days: it's period (60s South Carolina) and it's about smart, cultured African-American women (not a low-brow urban comedy), although the lead is a white teenager (Dakota Fanning). The film could easily turn into yet another well-intentioned, inspirational heart-tugger (like Denzel Washington's The Great Debaters or Akeelah and the Bee) that earns rave reviews but still fails to build into a crossover hit.
So why did Fox Searchlight finally step up? First, because the book was a huge bestseller, there's a core femme demo to count on. Second, the women at the Fox specialty division loved the project and were willing to roll up their sleeves and push it. When marketing chief Nancy Utley throws her weight behind a pic, it usually gets made.
Gina Prince-Blythewood (Love and Basketball) adapted the book and directed the movie, which stars Fanning as 14-year-old girl who seeks more info about the mystery of her mother's death. She leaves her father (Paul Bettany) and turns up with her babysitter (Jennifer Hudson) at the home of a family of three sisters with a honey business: Queen Latifah. Sophie Okonedo (Hotel Rwanda) and singer Alicia Keys, who delivers a song for the closing credits. It's 1964, during the Civil Rights movement.
Searchlight will be targeting two under-served audiences: African-Americans and women. One reason movies aimed at women are so risky is that they depend so much on execution. Searchlight is fanning the flames in Toronto, where The Secret Life of Bees will debut on September 5 in advance of its October 17 opening on 1200 or so screens. Here's the new trailer:
Subscribe to this blog's feed
It's movies like this which explains the reason why movies like Death Race (which I really liked in all it's stupid glory) exist. And I'm speaking as a man and an African-American one at that too
Posted by: Sergio | August 23, 2008 at 07:00 AM
This is making me cry already. I guess it started 6 years ago when I read the book. What a beautiful film!
Posted by: This is making me cry | August 23, 2008 at 09:13 AM