What Went Right: Juno
By Shalimar Sahota
February 5, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Film producer Mason Novick had stumbled upon a blog called The Pussy Ranch, where a stripper was writing about her experiences (who knows what Mason was actually searching for). Describing the writing as interesting and fresh, he contacted the blogger, Diablo Cody, about putting her experiences in a book. So while Cody’s “memoir” Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper was in the works, Novick looked into adapting the book for screen, asking Cody to write a screenwriting sample. That sample turned out to be Juno.
Director Jason Reitman managed to get a hold of the script through a mutual friend of his and Novick’s. Talking to ComingSoon of his impression of the script, he said, “I was pretty confident that if I didn't direct this movie I would regret it for the rest of my life.”
The story concerns Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page), a 16-year-old high school teenager… and she’s pregnant. The unplanned baby comes after a night with her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). Juno considers an abortion, but hearing that her baby already has fingernails puts her off. After consulting with her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby), Juno decides to give the baby up for adoption. Looking in the local Penny Saver for parents, she picks Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), a couple longing to adopt their first child. However, as time goes on, she starts to notice cracks in Mark and Vanessa’s relationship.
Juno was one of those lightning in a bottle scripts. Everyone had praise for it, yet the subject matter itself turned most studios off, which seemed odd. It’s like everyone telling you, “Yeah, we love it, but it’s about a pregnant teenager and who’s going to want to watch that?” Mandate Pictures, Mr. Mudd and Fox Searchlight were the ones that stepped up to back the film, with the latter handling distribution in the US. There are conflicting reports about the production budget that was generated, but Juno is said to have cost somewhere between $6.5 million and $7.5 million.
The cast itself was perfect. Ellen Page was already drilling herself into the consciousness of moviegoers, having starred in the likes of Hard Candy and X-Men: The Last Stand. The same goes for Michael Cera, who was in Superbad. Jennifer Garner took a pay cut and backend deal for her small role.
The film secretly premiered at the Telluride Film Festival in September 2007. Its reception was the start of an immense amount of buzz as the film continued to play the festivals. It was a runner-up for the People’s Choice award at the Toronto Film Festival (losing out to Eastern Promises).
Juno opened in limited release at just seven theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday December 5, 2007. The film was originally set to open on December 14th, but the release date had been brought forward to take advantage of the strong buzz coming from the festivals and reviews. It landed at #17 with an opening weekend gross of $413,869 (it had earned $525,155 over its opening five days). The following weekend Fox Searchlight had the film playing at 40 venues. It climbed to #11 with a weekend gross of $1.4 million. Word-of-mouth was happening, and it was happening over the Christmas holidays, with families and friends getting together and saying, “Hey, have you seen Juno?”
Juno finally went wide on Tuesday, December 25th. On the weekend of December 28th - 30th (its fourth weekend of release) it was playing at 1,019 theatres and earned $10.6 million, placing it at #5. The next weekend Fox Searchlight pushed the film in over 1,900 venues in an effort to get it to #1. It earned $15.8 million (its highest weekend take during its release) and charted at #2 (it was kept off the top by National Treasure: Book of Secrets). Going into 2008 and from January 7th to 10th it was actually the top performer at the daily box office.
Speaking to Market Watch, Fox Searchlight President Stephen Gilula explained that they had planned a calculated release to have the film slowly expanding, only they ended up having to book more theaters than they expected. They did not intend to have the film playing on more than 2,000 screens, yet demand meant that by its sixth week they added an additional 500 screens, which brought the screen count to over 2,400. “The film has taken hold in a vast number of small markets in the Midwest,” said Gilula said of Juno’s performance. “Theater owners are seeing the demographic group that attends screenings continue to widen.”
In its eighth week the Oscar nominations were announced, with Juno receiving four nominations - Best Film, Best Director, Best Actress and Best Original Screenplay. In the same week it became Fox Searchlight’s first film to cross the $100 million mark at the US box office.
Juno played for 28 weeks (it was still playing in a handful of theaters even after it was released on DVD) and earned $143.4 million at the US box office. It earned an additional $87.9 million overseas, with $10 million from Australia and $19 million from the UK (in both countries Fox also distributed the film and opened it wide against blockbusters such as National Treasure: Book of Shadows and Cloverfield).
Juno had managed to earn $231 million worldwide. So why did everyone flock to see a bulging Ellen Page?
Teenage pregnancy is a subject that would often be handled in complete seriousness, focusing on the pain, sorrow and possible repercussions of what that teenager is dealing with. While there are elements of this in Juno, the film is essentially classified as a comedy. Doing so makes it more appealing to the masses. Otherwise your film simply ends up being a low budget serious depress-fest that will win critical praise, but isn’t exactly mainstream friendly, with few people ever hearing about it (e.g. A Way of Life). However, Juno is actually very funny. Even the marketing made sure to focus on the funny, with the trailer describing the film as, “a comedy about life,” which sounds utterly vague, but the key word that Fox Searchlight wanted to get across here was “comedy”.
Adding humour to a serious subject is a risk that doesn’t always work, yet with Juno its strength lies in Cody’s writing, particularly of the title character herself, and Page’s performance. Cody and Reitman also highlight the uniqueness of the character in the film itself. Juno’s father mentions how she has “a wonderful sense of humour, just one of her many genetic gifts,” while Bleeker’s mother describes Juno as “different.”
Reviews were overly positive, with many critics praising Cody’s script, using words like smart, witty, real and quirky. Some noted the dialogue of the teenage characters, in that while it sounded like teenagers, apparently no teenager would speak this way. Cody justified this during an interview with Entertainment Weekly, saying, “God knows people might say the dialogue in Juno is too stylized, but I've met so many hyperarticulate teenage girls who are not just shallow and image-obsessed.”
Page also told Entertainment Weekly how her character is, “'a teenage female lead we’ve never seen before. She dresses like she wants, says what she wants, and doesn't apologize for it.... Girls haven’t had that sort of character before.”
One of the possible reasons as to why audiences haven’t seen such a character before is because once a film goes into production, the writer often has little to no involvement. What’s on the page can sometimes turn into The Invasion. With Juno, Cody was on set and was able to chime in. Speaking to Cinematical, she said, “[Jason] felt that the script was so specific, that the person who wrote it simply had to be involved.” This was generally unheard of for a first time screenwriter. Cody even described the film as better than her script.
For a low budget film, Reitman, Cody and their stars did a lot of press and were happy to promote it, which kept the film on everyone’s radar before and during its release. As highlighted by Gilula, with positive word-of-mouth it became clear that there was no one target audience, for Juno managed to reach a wide demographic. The film was able to appeal to different generations, be it teenagers looking for a high-school dramedy with a difference, or parents getting to grips with children having children.
With Juno one can assume that the reason most studios initially turned it down was because the subject is not one that is profitable. There’s the assumption that studio executives and producers will try to rework a script and during the conversation they’ll start spouting off names of other films - because audiences want to see something like “that film” which “made a lot of money.” With Juno there was no real comparison (the closest probably being serious foreign films). It was a case of taking the template of teenage pregnancy, but telling it in a new way. That Reitman allowed Cody to be on set meant that her script was largely undiluted.
The quality of the script itself and the title character that Cody created felt unique. Producer Russell Smith of production company Mr. Mudd summed Juno up saying, “This movie feels authentic to young people and doesn't cast adults as idiots.” Juno was not the stereotypical high-school teenager that audiences were used to seeing on the big screen. Here was a teenager throwing out smart quips as she speaks her mind, and teenagers themselves were drawn to that (Cody also noted how teenagers were coming out of a screening quoting lines from the film). Cody won a total of 20 awards for her screenplay, including a BAFTA and an Oscar. Along with its worldwide box office, it was proof that originality can be rewarded in a big way.