Katherine Heigl's latest movie One for the Money, performed terribly at the box office with a mere $12.6 million opening weekend. Of course, it looked like a hideous movie from the very beginning. Yet for years now, Heigl’s been making really awful movies that have miraculously fared well at the box office regardless of quality. From a global perspective, 27 Dresses grossed $160 million, and The Ugly Truth brought in $205 million. It wasn’t until Killers that Heigl’s reputation began to catch up with her at the box office, and part of that movie’s failure could be the miscasting of a shirtless Ashton Kutcher. Of course, Heigl likely gathered most of the blame in that instance because of her admittedly crappy attitude while promoting films and while delivering an Emmy speech. NY Mag has weighed in on Heigl’s image problem, and it’s pretty brutal stuff:
Like Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, Angelina Jolie, and Reese Witherspoon before her, Heigl used to be a “Turn-key” — just get her signed on and you had yourself a go picture. No longer. Heigl now not only finds herself off that vaunted list, but “she’s not on any lists at all,” says one top talent agent. “She’s on a respirator. She’s not the girl anymore.” Instead, Heigl has fallen out of view, far, far behind a pack of young insurgent leading ladies — Emma Stone, Amanda Seyfried, Scarlett Johannson, Mila Kunis, Kristen Stewart, and Kirsten Dunst — who themselves have nowhere near the clout that Roberts, Bullock, and Jolie et al. once did. Even Mia Wasikowska, who isn’t known for comedy, is ahead of Heigl now, as is Another Earth star Britt Marling. In short, when all of these names are ahead of you, you can’t really claim to be on a short list.
Though she’s known for playing the statuesque blonde who’s a goody two-shoes, her frosty public image subsumes that, and it’s cost Heigl her core fan base. The studio behind Money, Lionsgate, seems to acknowledge the effect she now has on people. Says one distribution chief, “Look at the TV spots: You notice that they’re not calling her out? There’s no ‘Katie Heigl stars in …’ They’re going out of their way to not mention her. They’re hiding her; they might as well black her f&*#ing face out. Because when you don’t call out a movie star like that? They know there’s an issue. She did something to turn everyone off. Whether it’s behavior or perception, but she did something.”
Reps say there’s a great irony in that Heigl’s next film is called One For the Money — it neatly sums up her approach to most movies since 27 Dresses. “They [her agents at Paradigm] really tried to maximize her quote, but they out-priced her,” says one agent. “Then she followed that price up with bad bombs and bad attitude. She doesn’t have the value she used to have, and people think she’s incredibly difficult to deal with.”
Oddly, her flops seem to showcase a cognitive dissonance caused by Heigl’s public persona: She was playing a relatable love interest, and yet moviegoers increasingly thought of her as tough and snappy. Says a marketing exec, “In Killers, she was a pampered rich girl who’s a goody-two-shoes. She’s all kerfuffled when she bumps into [Ashton] Kutcher, because she’s a ‘nice girl.’ Come on. This [new role as a tough bail bondsman in Money] is a little off that hard-core image disconnect, but it might be too late.” Had she taken on unapologetically bitchy, maneater roles earlier, we might have less of a time suspending disbelief. After all, Angelina Jolie really popped in Mr. & Mrs. Smith when she paired her bad-girl offscreen rep with a femme fatale role that was far more edgy than Lara Croft. But the time for that course correction seems to be nearly past: Two top publicists say there’s little to be done except wait for the radioactivity to die down, and reemerge in either indie film or network television.
“I think she tried to fix this with PR once, but at this point, I don’t buy anything coming out of her mouth,” says one top flack. “It’s funny, because the question we were asking ourselves last night is, ‘Does she have really bad management, or just terrible taste?’ Momagers are never helpful, but part of the problem seems to that she seems to have become incredibly complacent with her choices: She’s out there promoting crap, and people are not respecting that.”
Another publicist is incredulous at Heigl’s temerity in her ham-handedly public disclosure that she’d been seeking a return to Grey’s Anatomy. “She wants to return to the show?” asked one PR maven, incredulously. “Once you walk away from a show like that — the way she did — there’s no going back. And to say it that way, ‘I always felt that if they wanted me to come back’ and ‘I want them to know that I’m down with it if they want me to … ‘ is amazing [chutzpah]. She needs to stay away [from the limelight] for a while, come back with a film worth seeing, and be given extremely detailed talking points to promote it. She has to prove herself as a human being and an actor.”
[From NY Mag]
Moviefone has also chimed in on the Heigl problem by discussing a One for the Money Groupon promotion that failed to help matters even while targeting Heigl’s key demographic of age 25-to-35 women who would ideally still be fans of her work on “Grey’s Anatomy” and also be familiar with Janet Evanovich’s literary source material. Moviefone has concluded that the issue is partially a matter of Heigl “need[ing] to find better material,” such as a villainous role in manner of Julia Roberts in My Best Friend’s Wedding. Still, they advise her to take significant time off before attempting to make a grand return to Hollywood’s good graces.
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