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1 introduction the Color of hollywood—Black, White, or green? Many filmmakers still want to believe that there’s not enough money spent on promotion, but it’s been tried enough times, and tried recently enough, that the studios have seen that there is just very little interest from audiences abroad. it’s not racism; there are a lot of American movies that don’t work overseas—[that] don’t travel. —Steve guila, president of Fox Searchlight, a division of twentieth Century–Fox, 2004 on April 20, 2012, director Tim Story’s Think Like a Man, a cinematic adaptation of comedian Steve Harvey’s self-help book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, debuted on over two thousand screens across the United States. Produced on a $12 million budget,1 Think Like a Man earned $34 million in its opening weekend, holding the number-one spot for top-grossing movies for two consecutive weeks. Starring a predominantly black ensemble cast, including four black women in lead roles—rare for a studio-distributed romantic comedy— the production earned a total of $92 million in domestic box office after eighty days in 2,052 theaters. The film helped Story replace Tyler Perry as the highestgrossing American black director. But despite the film’s success in the United States, Think Like a Man was not shown in France. Distributors reportedly feared that a film featuring black actors in all the major roles and white actors in only minor roles would be perceived as lacking in diversity—notwithstanding that a number of Hollywood and French films with predominantly white casts were released in France in the very same year.2 Think Like a Man was not the only contemporary American film with a mostly black cast to receive little or no attention in international markets.3 Even Red Tails, an action film produced by George Lucas, couldn’t summon much interest on the international scene. Released in 2012, Red Tails is about 2 iNtRoduCtioN the Tuskegee Airmen, a group of black pilots who fought in World War II. The film was written and directed entirely by African Americans in collaboration with Lucas and features a predominantly black male cast. Lucas, one of the most financially successful white directors and producers in American film, invested $58 million into the film’s production budget and $35 million into distribution. Action films with male protagonists and/or well-known directors are often a winning formula at the box office. Accordingly, the film debuted at $19 million on 2,512 screens domestically where it played for 140 days for a total of $49.8 million. But Red Tails only received limited international distribution through Twentieth Century–Fox (in France), Capelight Pictures (Germany), and Momentum Pictures (Ireland and the United Kingdom).4 The reported earnings for its limited international release are incomplete,5 which makes it difficult to assess the film’s overall outcome and challenge the perceived failure of black film in foreign markets. Considering such big-budget action films tend to make handsome profits in the international market, this data could prove useful in debates regarding the profitability of black films.6 While promoting Red Tails, Lucas revealed that he could not find any major studios that would back the film because “there were no major white roles in it at all.”7 In fact, studio executives described it as “not green enough,” reminiscent of when a white distributor in Hollywood characterized Haile Gerima’s 1993 film, Sankofa, which won several international awards, of being “too black.”8 Although Sankofa recouped production expenses when it earned $2.4 million domestically, paling in comparison to Red Tails’ $49.8 million, both films had limited international distribution due to deeply embedded ideologies about race.9 So why, when films with predominantly black casts have a clear record of economic success in domestic markets, is distribution so drastically limited in the international markets? Hollywood studio executives insist that a lack of international demand drives their investment choices and overall reluctance to distribute or produce films about women and African Americans.10 Considering the above examples, a more likely answer is studios’ limited definitions of the international market and treatment of films with mostly black casts. While it is probably premature to say exactly how the onscreen narrative and the offscreen circumstances of these particular films will influence the future development of African American film, important insights can be gleaned by considering the past. By placing contemporary black films...

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