Marketing the Musical Rent, Grit and All

When it was first performed, Rent, written by the late playwright Jonathan Larson, was immediately solicited by movie executives. But Larson tragically died of an aortic aneurysm 24 hours after the musical opened on Broadway. Faced with a handful of offers, Julie Larson, Jonathan's sister, went with Miramax, the New York studio run by the Weinstein brothers.

Rent's Long Road to Hollywood

Despite Miramax's enthusiasm for buying the rights, marketing the gritty musical immediately became a concern and a significant roadblock to the film's production. The story was just too dark to merit the $20 million it would cost to make.

Rent is a loose retelling of "La Boheme," the Puccini opera. It describes the sordid, tragic lives of downtown denizens. Themes include AIDS, drug addiction, homosexuality, and poverty-fueled desperation.

Marketing Downtown New York

Marketing Rent wasn't going to be easy. Throughout the late 90s, Miramax flirted with several directors and producers, including Spike Lee, Martin Scorsese, and Barry Levinson, but nothing came of it. The sticker price was always too high.

Today, times have changed, and many of the dreaded themes have become common in the American vernacular. Drugs, AIDS, and homosexuality are routine plot points in primetime TV shows. When family film director Chris Columbus came across the project, he immediately fell in love with it. He wrestled the film rights from Miramax and produced it, along with Robert De Niro, at Sony.

Marketing Chris Columbus

Strangely, the fact that Chris Columbus, the director of Home Alone and the first two Harry Potter movies, directed the film may be a marketing liability. According to an early Variety review of the film, the issues that made the film difficult to market 10 years ago are now old hat. Rent the movie has gone directly from being a marketing hotcake to a marketing bore. Executives have their marketing jobs cut out for them.

A marketing career, especially in entertainment, will often involve figuring out a way to present difficult projects to a wide audience. It's what makes marketing jobs tricky, but compelling as well.

Sources
Variety