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Women should watch their Failures to Launch and Confessions of Shopaholics and like it!

Kim Hollis: Is Sex and the City's opening weekend a fluke, or is it proof that Hollywood isn't providing enough quality product for women?

Max Braden: The pack behavior is unusual for this genre, especially when you consider how many 'girls night out' parties were organized around the movie's release. The movie is notable in that it features female characters (of drinking age) who are die hard supporters of each other, rather than pitted against each other as in movies like The Devil Wears Prada. I think movie producers are still thinking mostly about how a project will sell to either college age males or kids. Producers who learn from SATC and try to create 'event chick flicks' stand to make a lot of money, and no doubt there will be many attempts due to SATC's success. I wonder how many phone calls were made to the producers of Desperate Housewives this weekend.

Pete Kilmer: Hollywood isn't making near enough product for women. Let's face it, Cameron Diaz rom-coms are a bust, Kate Hudson hasn't hit that market either and Matthew McConaughey tries and tries and those movies fail as well. Failure to Launch didn't and it had Sarah Jessica Parker in it! Meg Ryan lost any chance she had at continuing to make romantic comedies with the whole Russell Crowe fiasco, so Hollywood has really needed something like this for a long time. Max is right, I wonder what kind of pressure Mark Cherry is going to get to make a Hollywood movie of Desperate Housewives or something of that nature.

Joel Corcoran: I think it's a bit of both, actually. It's a bit of a fluke because its opening was strongly based on the six-year run of the HBO series (which won several Emmys and Golden Globes, remember). So, this wasn't the standard original romantic comedy aimed at women. That being said, it's also proof that Hollywood isn't putting out quality product for women at all. The fact that women turned out in such huge audiences and made it into a cultural event as much as a movie opening just shows the dearth of good, quality movies out there aimed at female audiences.





Calvin Trager: I think this is lightning in a bottle personally. I wouldn't expect to see an uptick in the box office for movies directed at women. But Hollywood being Hollywood, I do think you'll see an uptick in the production of said movies. Now that the template has been created I think everyone will set about trying to find the "next" Sex and the City. But that's a lot like saying Prince Caspian will be well received because the LOTR/Harry Potter movies have done so well. Certain properties can't be cloned.

David Mumpower: The correct answer is both. The result is a complete fluke. I would make the argument that what happened on Friday and Saturday evening almost did so independent of the movie title. Someone got the idea to have a party and take 40 of their friends to a movie. Others thought, "Hey, I love getting sloshed on cosmopolitans, too!" and the whole thing took on a life of its own from there. Could that be duplicated? Of course. Will it be easy to do? Absolutely not. Hollywood faces the same dilemma they did after The Passion of the Christ came out. They have to figure out what they could create that would strike the same chord without feeling redundant. That's a tiny needle to thread. The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe eventually managed to do so, but that's the only one in the four years since The Passion of the Christ's release. Finding the right film to coax women to flex their new-found opening weekend box office muscle will be a maddening process.

Kim, would Shoes: the Movie entice you?

Kim Hollis: No, but Sneakers: The Movie might. Especially if it starred Chuck Taylors.

I have to agree that this is essentially a one-time shot sort of thing. I'm sure that other studios will be scrambling to try to figure out how to capture this audience in a similar way, but nothing can resonate culturally like SATC, I don't think. I mean, it's been tried with Nancy Drew (which should theoretically have drawn nostalgic moms *and* their kids) as well as any number of Jane Austen novels. I'm having trouble imagining something else that would be as exciting for women and their friends.

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