Michael Douglas, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson proved there’s a market for the over-50 movie audience – and one producer aims to tap into it
- Despite hits like Last Vegas with Douglas and Robert De Niro, and Something’s Gotta Give with Nicholson and Diane Keaton, few Hollywood movies target over-50s
- Amy Baer, who produced Last Vegas, is determined to make more movies like them in the future, believing there’s a big market being overlooked
Even before the pandemic corralled Americans – and the rest of the world – onto their couches to binge and consume a steady churn of content, producer Amy Baer knew the entertainment industry was missing an opportunity to sate viewers.
Hollywood is a fickle, numbers-obsessed business but Baer, who’d run CBS Films and was executive vice-president of production at Sony, was convinced that the industry had long disregarded one particular area: making movies and TV for the over-50 demographic.
“I’ve always had an affinity for, as I like to call them, people movies as opposed to visual effects or, you know, superhero movies … movies that speak to a more mature audience that is about a phase of life that everybody reaches but that sometimes get overlooked in the development and production process,” Baer says.
The result is Landline Pictures, a label launching this month under independent studio MRC Film, with the goal of releasing three to four films each year for both theatrical and streaming.
Aimed at the 50-plus audience, Landline’s mandate is to generate textured, uplifting and inspiring stories that will cross over to a broad audience both conceptually and commercially. Based in Beverly Hills, the label has a staff of four.
Back in 2003, Nancy Meyer’s blockbuster romantic comedy Something’s Gotta Give proved there was a place in filmdom for stories about and led by the older demographic.