Hollywood’s Message to Red States: Our Movies Are for You

Trend spotting in cinema is a hazardous pursuit. Sometimes a movie is just a movie. “Twisters,” however, is emblematic of a clear shift in Hollywood: After a period of openly using movies to display progressive values, sometimes with success at the box office (“Barbie”) and often not (“Strange World,” “The Marvels,” “The Color Purple,” “Dark Waters”), studios seem to be heeding a message that many ticket buyers — especially in the center of the country — have been sending for a long time: We just want to be entertained, no homework attached.

Put bluntly, it amounts to an attempt by Hollywood to bend to red state audiences.

“It’s a reflection of economics and the desperation of the film industry,” said Corby Pons, a movie marketer who focuses on the faith community and is based in Nashville. “We want you to attend our movies. We need you to attend our movies.”

Disney, which owns seven studios, including Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 20th Century, has put its creative ranks on notice. “We have to entertain first — it’s not about messages,” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said at a conference late last year. “I don’t really want to tolerate the opposite.”

His comments were a sharp reversal from Disney’s shareholder meeting in 2017, when he spoke with pride about more openly weaving sociopolitical messages into the company’s movies. “We can take those values, which we deem important societally, and actually change people’s behavior,” Mr. Iger said then. (The shift seems to be going well, with escapist Disney movies like “Inside Out 2” and this weekend’s “Deadpool & Wolverine” arriving as instant smash hits.)

For 20 years, Participant Media was Hollywood’s pre-eminent maker of films with a conscience. “An Inconvenient Truth” was one of its early successes. But the company shut down in April. Participant relied on studios and streaming services to distribute its eat-your-broccoli documentaries and dramas about underrepresented communities, and those partners have cut back on such “niche” content in favor of more populist offerings. Streaming services like Netflix have also started to sell ads, and advertisers prefer all-audience, apolitical content.