Question by L: Hollywood casting: Do white people just have more box office appeal?
hollywood regularly replaces potential minority actors with white ones when it has the chance. If you don’t think this is true, watch any documentary about minority actors in america. The reason they do this is for box office revenue. Do you think movies do better at the box office if there is a white face on the poster instead of minority? Some examples of ‘whitewashing’:
21 – base on the true story about the MIT blackjack team headed by an asian male and comprised of mostly asian men and i think a white girl and guy. They changed all the characters to white and even wanted a sexy asian girl to play the love interest for the white protaganists.
The Weapon – this movie is in production and is based on a comic book where a chinese american named Tim Kang fights crime. The comic book also explores the characters struggles as a chinese american minority. Some white pop star was cast for his role
The last airbender – no matter how racially ambigious the characters were, it was still in an asian setting and widely assumed that characters were asian. In the movie the 2 main characters where cast as white and the rest were minorities.
Dave chappelle’s movie project – in his ‘inside the actor’s studio’ interview, he told us about how he had the perfect black girl cast for his project and then the studio made him change it to a white girl. They explained to dave how they need a girl with “universal appeal”… which apparent black women lack.
If you’re white. Does it make it more appealing to see whites in movie roles? If you saw a DIE HARD poster with an east indian guy on it. Would you watch it? Do you think america would accept it?
Best answer:
Answer by Robsthings
Wow, that’s a rough one, but unfortunately true, I think.
Hollywood is a money machine, and they are only interested in making money. So, they go for the largest common denominator which unfortunately whitewashes the universality of any good story.
It’s sad that “race” is still an envelope that has to be pushed, but I’m sure they have the numbers on the profitability. Studios, like all businesses, do focus groups and get data to make sure their movies make the most money possible.
What do you think? Answer below!