Comments (28)

• Wow, how many times does Tyler Perry have to kick hollywood in the ass, before he gets any respect? I don’t really care for his films , but no one can deny he’s a box-office force!

  Comment by a DGA member — February 21, 2009 @ 12:29 am  Reply to this post

• He should run for Prop 8 and get America to accept gay rights and marriage. Afterall, who is the best crossdesser is there today to convince moviegoers that a man playing a woman is funny, with family values and always setting setting the wrongs rights!

  Comment by Armand — February 21, 2009 @ 1:24 am  Reply to this post

• I work at Arclight Sherman Oaks and they put Madea in one of the smaller houses. They don’t know what they’re doing obviously.

  Time after time his films make a killing and people keep thinking (and hoping in some circles) that the next one will be a flop.

  I’m not a huge fan of his work either (except for Diary which was amazing), but being a fan and having RESPECT are two VERY different things.

  I respect Tyler Perry immensely.

  Comment by Leland — February 21, 2009 @ 1:27 am  Reply to this post

• porr f13th. it’s falling down 77%. i’m so sad about it.

  Comment by francesco — February 21, 2009 @ 2:25 am  Reply to this post

• I’m looking forward to his cameo as a Starfleet Academy head honcho in JJ Abram’s STAR TREK as well.

  Comment by spacesheik — February 21, 2009 @ 3:07 am  Reply to this post

• 1. Perry is a niche audience person, whose films will consistently make a nice profit if budgeted around 20-30M, but with minimal cross-over to the general audience. Also, Perry himself is a less dependable brand than “Madea.” The non-Madea films do considerably worse.

  2. Friday the 13th just is hemorrhaging. Not surprising that it’s dropped, but that hard?

  3. Coraline is again proving that 3-D certainly can give you some decent legs. (And Taken is having surprising legs, perhaps because there’s no other action flick in the market.)

  Comment by MAtt — February 21, 2009 @ 6:18 am  Reply to this post

• @francesco:

  Horror movies almost always have steep drops in their second week onwards. It’s already made a huge profit for New Line/WB, having already made back its production budget twice.

  Comment by Matt C — February 21, 2009 @ 6:43 am  Reply to this post

• “Time after time his films make a killing and people keep thinking (and hoping in some circles) that the next one will be a flop.”

  Actually, he’s had a flop: “Daddy’s Little Girls.” And the grosses on his movies were on a decline over the last year and a half. OF COURSE he was going to make a Madea movie. What better way to keep the empire running than a wild appeal to the base sensibilities of his target demographic?

  Like every Perry movie: big first weekend, followers flood the message boards and critic email accounts with “TYLER PERRY HAS DONE IT AGAIN!” Second weekend, 70% drop and a 60 mil top gross.

  Same old same old.

  Comment by Ryan S — February 21, 2009 @ 6:47 am  Reply to this post

• Why are you sad about F13? It set all sorts of box office records, made its budget back in one day, and had an entire ad campaign that put all the pressure in the world on the audience seeing the thing opening weekend or, better yet, on Friday the 13th itself. It was always going to probably make around 60-70 million no matter how many horror sites cried out that it would be “the first Friday the 13th to make 100 million!”

  Comment by The Good Doctor — February 21, 2009 @ 8:51 am  Reply to this post

• Madea is just a summer camp away from being this decades Ernest.

  I personally have no interest in his work (I’m not the target demo either) but there is no denying he makes money. And as long as that keeps happening we can look forward to more of Madea at the top of the box office.

  Comment by Mysterious Stranger — February 21, 2009 @ 9:17 am  Reply to this post

• When will people stop drinking the Tyler Perry kool-aid. People need to stop supporting this anti-union jerk

  Comment by Pbj — February 21, 2009 @ 10:13 am  Reply to this post

• Im always amazed by small-minded Hollywood thinking. Tyler Perry gets zero respect from the industry. You’d think that a successful African American would get some credit. I enjoy his movies and the Christian virtues of some of his themes. They aren’t the best out of Hollywood, but they deal with real issues (in exaggerated situations). Haven’t seen his TV show, which I heard is bad.

  Hollywood is probably uncomfortable with his story, his success, and i bet, even his Christian messages. And I’m not one of those angry culture warriors who feels victimized by America.

  Comment by mileshigh — February 21, 2009 @ 11:23 am  Reply to this post

• I don’t get why Tyler Perry is celebrated as a voice for his people when all he does is perpetuate the same tired stereotypes about blacks as being sassy or shrill. If a white guy had made any of these movies he would’ve been vilified and it would’ve bombed miserably. And if a movie prominently featured a white character in drag who accosted black people there would be demonstrations outside any theatre that showed it (since Madea’s primary purpose in all of these dumb movies is to put whitey in their place). There’s just too many racial double standards in this country when it comes to black & white.

  Comment by Earl — February 21, 2009 @ 12:23 pm  Reply to this post

• I am a middle age, white, Jewish, gay guy and I love Tyler’s movies. I went to Madea last night. The Los Angeles area theater was quite full for a 10pm showing and was a very diverse crowd. When nobody’s looking, why not rent “Why Did I Get Married” and see how universal his themes are. People are people and relationships are relationships. What a great escape!

  Comment by try it you will like it — February 21, 2009 @ 2:03 pm  Reply to this post

• Dear Racists and Bigots:

  Don’t worry.

  As you can see, my people are of no threat to you. We say we want equality but really we believe in and support the worst images of ourselves.

  We stayed away from “The Secret Life Of Bees” but we love us some Madea! We don’t even care if the fake, anti-gay cross-dresser pissed on other black people and kept them from joining a union. We just love seeing his wild, loud-talking, English abusing, self-righteous minstrel show.

  So fear not. Take a vacation from your occupations. You don’t have to work to keep us down.

  We can do it all by ourselves.

  Comment by NoCountryForBlackMan — February 21, 2009 @ 2:13 pm  Reply to this post

• is it just me or isn’t Tyler Perry aka Madea just the new Flip Wilson aka Geraldine circa 2009? While Perry is a proven commercial brand and a box-office force to be reckoned with (*caveat: as long as he keeps his production/P&A costs within indie low-budget well below studio pictures), like Mrs. Doubtfire and Milton Berle and countless other comics before him, it just proves that Americans black or white love to laugh at a guy in drag. Let’s do the math…Tyler Perry movies that DO feature the stereotypical Madea cross-dressing act do boffo box office compared their low budgets: DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN ($50M domestic), MADEA’S FAMILY REUNION ($63M), and now MADEA GOES TO JAIL aimed to gross $40M+ this weekend alone. But what about the NON-Madea TPS movies? Let’s see – THE FAMILY THAT PREYS ($36M), DADDY’S LITTLE GIRLS ($31M), or even WHY DID I GET MARRIED ($55M). (And does anyone remember that Lionsgate’s marketing team was savvy enough to do a deal w/ TPS to license all of Tyler’s “old” gospel-circuit stage plays and released all these titles (Famiy Reunion, Goes to Jail, et al.) several years ago direct-to-DVD? The general lesson is: Madea IS a sure bet, but Tyler Perry isn’t always a sure thing. If he keeps donning the dress and wig, he’s golden, but if he tries stretch & attempt something actually credible, serious, or artistic, not so much. Heck, I enjoy TP movies as much as the next guy (in that guilty pleasure sorta way), but I DON’T like the fact that Tyler Perry is a greedy, egotistical, hypocritical union-buster who long refused to give his own writers fair pay, benefits, or residuals on content they helped create…until he was called on it and forced to make a fair deal for his own team. What would Madea say? “HELL TO THE NO!”

  Comment by Geraldine — February 21, 2009 @ 2:58 pm  Reply to this post

• Matt, making a Tyler Perry niche movie for $20-$30 million is way too much. It’s because his movies are so cheap to make that they are so profitable.

  And Ryan, I didn’t care much for DADDY’S LITTLE GIRLS. But with a $10 million budget and a domestic gross over three times that, it was hardly a flop.

  Having seen all his films, except the latest, which I’ll see tonight, Perry’s best film is probably WHY DID I GET MARRIED?, with his first film, DIARY OF A MAD BLACK WOMAN, the first Madea movie, not far behind. The atrocious MEET THE BROWNS is his worst by far.

  Most white folks, especially critics, don’t get Perry because they can’t get behind his often messy combination of broad comedy and melodrama. Check out Roger Ebert’s vicious pan of BLACK WOMAN. And he’s married to one!

  Me, I like them mostly, but his TV shows are another story altogether.

  Comment by Dixon Steele — February 21, 2009 @ 3:38 pm  Reply to this post

• Nikki,

  Why aren’t we talking more about the incredible legs ‘Taken’ has had? It was a truly terrific film and everyone I’ve talked to loved it as much as I did. Word of mouth lasting this long just goes to show how great it is. Who gives a crap about Tyler Perry, who btw, tried to screw his writers not too long ago. The cross-dressing man ‘joke’ lost its funny many moons ago.

  Comment by TheRealStory — February 21, 2009 @ 3:41 pm  Reply to this post

• @ mileshigh and try it you will like it:

  You do realize that Perry did try and fire the writers of his TV show “Meet the Browns” because they were engaging in union activity? They too were African-American and wanted WGA benefits, which Perry tried to deny them. The WGA and the NAACP had to step in to resolve the matter.

  Aside from his contributions and hiring talented African-Americans to headline his movies, Perry is full of double standards, both business-wise and religion-wise. He’s not the saint as his publicists and his famous friends would have you believe. (And his movies are terrible IMO.)

  Comment by Matt C — February 21, 2009 @ 6:12 pm  Reply to this post

• “And Ryan, I didn’t care much for DADDY’S LITTLE GIRLS. But with a $10 million budget and a domestic gross over three times that, it was hardly a flop.”

  17 mil ad budget and the Perry expectation factor = flop.

  Comment by Ryan S — February 21, 2009 @ 7:42 pm  Reply to this post

• I really liked Madea Goes to Jail it was my favorite one. I get bored with his non Madea movies.

  I loved the part when she jumped over her car in the Kmart parking lot.

  I wish he would make a movie with just Madea, Joe, Corra, and Brown. I hate all that drama crap even though in this one it wasn’t as bad as the other two Madea movies. And if he does include drama why does it always have to be about rape/sexual assualt

  Comment by Mike — February 21, 2009 @ 8:24 pm  Reply to this post

• I am in the south and I get a charge out of some of the real life quirks he throws into the Madea films that are uniquely southern. Southern women really do have a certain amount of crazy they carry with them on a daily basis. I’m a big fan of off beat, irreverant characters. I don’t think there would be a way to portray a large black family without them going to church. I’m am very anti-religion and I have no problem with in his movies. Madea is NOT a church goer but she is a believer. I’d rather deal with a believer than a church goer.

  In person Perry comes off as a little “too sincere” and that always puts me off. In the end for me he is an artist. Sometimes I get what he creates and sometimes not. Simple. End of story.

  I do find that watered down attempt at a sitcom on TBS to be the most dreadful thing broadcasted in the country though. It beats of “Rock of Love” and the parade of sad desperate whores on reality attempts on VH1 and MTV. The TBS sitcome is much like the old tv series “Clarissa Explains it all” without the you know artistic vision, cracker jack writing team and the golden acting chops of young Melissa Joan Hart.

  Comment by clinton — February 22, 2009 @ 5:37 am  Reply to this post

• Wow, that fellow from the Arclite in Sherman Oaks got it right. Every theater I see has Tyler’s film in the smallest theater. Certain tribes in Hollywood really don’t like to see a black, Christian message now, do they? Keep putting him down, soon Tyler will own your studios, sshmucks.

  Comment by Malcolm — February 22, 2009 @ 6:53 am  Reply to this post

• @ Matt C

  Tyler Perry wasn’t liked BEFORE the drama regarding his TV show unfolded. I had heard of the threats and the NAACP incident.

  Also, I am aware of Mr. Perry’s religious double standard. Its called the Prosperity Gospel. However such ‘values’ are rarely communicated in any movies, making his demographic starving for attention, regardless of the hypocritical lifestyle from the messenger. All those Drudge idiots (if they’d be willing to watch a movie with an all black cast) want movies that speak their jeudeo-Christian values.

  Comment by mileshigh — February 22, 2009 @ 8:36 am  Reply to this post

• Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail is the dark story of a prostitute trying to redeem herself is set against comedic Madea’s hilarious antics.

  I certainly am used to Tyler Perry’s mixture of narcissistic tragedy combined with slapstick comedy but I would welcome a film that is 100% Madea. No comedic story line should involve gang rape. The disconnected and contrasting parallel story lines became annoying and marginalized the star attraction (Madea). I found myself unable to focus on the dark melodrama in anticipation of the hilarious Madea one liners.

  Comment by janetgirl — February 23, 2009 @ 7:19 pm  Reply to this post

• I PERSONALLY ENJOY HIS MOVIES,PLAYS ETC.SO WHAT IF HIS MOVIES DONT WIN AN OSCAR OR BRING IN 100 MILL OR ONLY COST A COUPLE OF HUNDRED DOLLARS TO MAKE.SO WHAT,SO WHAT,SO FREAKING WHAT.HE IS A GOOD WRITER.A DAM GOOD WRITER.AND THATS ALL THAT COUNTS.HIS PERSONALLY LIFE IS HIS BUSINESS.WHO HE HIRES AND FIRES IS HIS BUSINESS.HE’S TRYING TO MAKE MONEY JUST LIKE THE NEXT MAN.(OR WOMAN)AND WHEN IT’S ALL SAID AND DONE,THE MAN IS STILL RICH AND HE IS RICH FOR ONLY ONE REASON.HE MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT.IF YOU DONT LIKE HIM OH WELL KEEP IT MOVING.ALL THIS SLANDER ABOUT HIM IS REALLY UNCALLED FOR.NOBODY IS PERFECT.HE WRITES FROM THE HEART,WHAT HE FEELS.REAL LIFE ISSUES.(MAINLY FOCUSING ON AFRICAN-AMERICANS).I MEAN REALLY,TO SIT THERE AND SAY THAT A MOVIE ONLY MADE 10 MILL IS A BAD THING?ARE YOU KIDDING?THERE ARE WAAAAAAAAAAAY MORE MOVIES THAT MADE LESS THAN THAT.TYLER IS DOING THE DAM THING.LEAVE HIM ALONE.

  Comment by Anonymous — February 24, 2009 @ 7:26 pm  Reply to this post

• I read most of these notes…OMG,”Stop Hatin” as “we” might say. Honestly, I am a black man and I do not enjoy the Madea thing, I perfer his serious movies (ie, no Madea). This man is doing something right. The latest movies has made over 66 million as of today. There is a good possibility that it will hit about 75-85 million. I just read that he is about to release 2 more movies in the next 18 months.

  Far as his audience, he knows who he is targeting and he is hitting his target audience. Now come on really, who was complaining when white men ran hollywood and only casted blacks as pimps and hustlers? Not the white people. Now that a black man has decided that he would show blacks (african americans/Negros) in their full dispora of statuses we are offended….NO COME ON…would it be okay if a white producer showed the white hill billies of West Virginia up to the upper class of Northern Virginia….you get my point…its a movie, if you do not like it do not watch it…I really believe some people are mad cause the brother is making mad $$$$$.

  One last thing as far as the WGA…FOR GOD’S SAKE HE IS A BUSINESS MAN!!! HE IS THERE TO MAKE MONEY.

  Comment by SGM=VA — March 9, 2009 @ 7:29 pm  Reply to this post

• PG13 Rated,Great movie we loved it,Also it was neat when Parents all around us told their kids to cover their eyes during the KIDNAP & RAPE scene. Kool idea to get PG13 rate it drew in whole families.

  Comment by SWB — March 14, 2009 @ 10:36 pm  Reply to this post