THE OBENSON REPORT

"Obama On My Mind," a stage musical about the historic campaign of President Barack Obama, is due to premiere in London this spring, producers announced this week.

The play's book, music and lyrics are by U.S.-born writer Teddy Hayes. On Wednesday, he described the show as a humorous romp set in an Obama campaign office, with songs that mix pop, gospel, jazz, "some Motownish stuff" and even tango, reports the Associated Press.

The musical will run at the Hen and Chickens theater in north London from March 3 to March 21. Casting has not been announced, but producers won't have to worry about finding a presidential lookalike — the Obama character never appears onstage.

"Nobody can really impersonate Obama, can they?" said Hayes. "He's a one-off."

Another Obama musical ran in Kenya, homeland of the president's late father, in November.

It is often said in Hollywood that no one sets out to make a bad movie, but the truth is that people cheerfully set out to make bad movies all the time. It is more accurate to say that no one sets out to make a movie without having a particular audience in mind. Many studio executives argue that films can’t objectively be categorized as “good” or “bad”: either they appeal to a given demographic—and make the studio at least a ten-per-cent profit—or they don’t. “Most critics are not the target audience for most of the films being made today, so they’re not going to respond to them,” Sony Screen Gems’ Clint Culpepper says. “How a fifty-six-year-old man feels about a movie aimed at teen-age girls is irrelevant.”

An unexpected corollary of the modern marketing-and-distribution model is that films no longer have time to find their audience; that audience has to be identified and solicited well in advance. Marketers segment the audience in a variety of ways, but the most common form of partition is the four quadrants: men under twenty-five; older men; women under twenty-five; older women. A studio rarely makes a film that it doesn’t expect will succeed with at least two quadrants, and a film’s budget is usually directly related to the number of quadrants it is anticipated to reach. The most expensive tent-pole movies, such as the “Pirates of the Caribbean” franchise, are aimed at all four quadrants.

The collective wisdom is that young males like explosions, blood, cars flying through the air, pratfalls, poop jokes, “you’re so gay” banter, and sex—but not romance. Young women like friendship, pop music, fashion, sarcasm, sensitive boys who think with their hearts, and romance—but not sex (though they like to hear the naughty girl telling her friends about it). They go to horror films as much as young men, but they hate gore; you lure them by having the ingénue take her time walking down the dark hall.

Older women like feel-good films and Nicholas Sparks-style weepies: they are the core audience for stories of doomed love and triumphs of the human spirit. They enjoy seeing an older woman having her pick of men; they hate seeing a child in danger. Particularly once they reach thirty, these women are the most “review-sensitive”: a chorus of critical praise for a movie aimed at older women can increase the opening weekend’s gross by five million dollars. In other words, older women are discriminating, which is why so few films are made for them.

Older men like darker films, classic genres such as Westerns and war movies, men protecting their homes, and men behaving like idiots. Older men are easy to please, particularly if a film stars Clint Eastwood and is about guys just like them, but they’re hard to motivate. “Guys only get off their couches twice a year, to go to ‘Wild Hogs’ or ‘3:10 to Yuma,’ ” the marketing consultant Terry Press says. “If all you have is older males, it’s time to take a pill.”

Michelle Obama's hairstylist has landed a development deal to star in a reality show.

Former Chicagoan Johnny Wright has styled the first lady's coif for the Democratic National Convention, her upcoming appearance on the cover of Vogue magazine and other occasions. He has signed a deal with 44 Blue, which produces such reality shows as Style Network's "Split Ends" and A&E's "L.A. Gang Unit."

44 Blue executive vp Stephanie Drachkovitch said she discovered Wright while searching for a reality host.

"There aren't many people of color doing makeover and beauty," she said. "We figured there's got to be somebody out there with a mainstream clientele, but brings a different point of view."

Enter Wright, who moved to Los Angeles recently and also has worked on Vivica A. Fox, Rebecca Gayheart, Lauren London and Candace Bushnell, among others. Drachkovitch said she was impressed with the hairstylist's personality before she knew his Obama connection.

"They are all different types of movies that I bought the rights to, and we're developing projects. You will see different things from me in the future," he said.

Hours after the film’s debut last night, the North American rights to Scott Sanders’ “Black Dynamite,” an homage to the blaxpolitation films starring Michael Jai White, was sold to Sony Worldwide Acquisitions Group for $2 million. While the deal has yet to be announced, insiders said that the pact closed in the wee hours of Monday morning here in Park City. The film debuted on Sunday night at 11:30 p.m. and the deal with Sony Worldwide Acquisitions Group was negotiated at the Endeavor Independent condo where Graham Taylor, Alexis Garcia, Mark Ankner and Liesl Copland negotiated the pact repping the filmmakers.

The film will be released theatrically later this year.

BLACK DYNAMITE is straight up pure comedic genius and totally bad ass!

Expertly towing the line between satire and spoof, Scott Sanders’ film utilizes a wonderfully crafted retro aesthetic and a massive cast to transport us back to the campy world of 70s blaxploitation. The pitch is perfect and the leading man is the quintessential badass, causing the movie to attain a palpable momentum. Not affraid to bang on the fourth wall with boom mics appearing in shots and camera crews visible in windows — clear callbacks to classics such as Dolamite — Sanders’ film shamelessly kicks and punches the hell out of its audience, leaving only the stiffest and humorless viewer without loads of laughs. Its real brilliance though, is in the details.

PARK CITY - The Sundance Film Festival has its first major deal. Senator Distribution snapped up North American rights to Antoine Fuqua's cop drama "Brooklyn's Finest" on Saturday evening.

The Marco Weber/Mark Urman banner (Weber is CEO, and Urman is president) is believed to have paid in the low- to mid-seven figures for rights to the pic, which played strongly at its Eccles debut Friday night.

Sony Pictures, which has a deal with Senator, will partner with the outfit, with Senator handling theatrical and Sony handling all ancillary rights.

CAA and WMA are co-repping rights to the morality tale, which stars Richard Gere, Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke as cops at very different stages of their career, each faced with moral dilemmas.

While billed as a thriller, it also operates as a character study of its trio of complex protagonists.

A number of distributors were circling the picture, though some were concerned about the length and potential for backend deals for the many star actors.

Fuqua will edit the film as part of the deal, insiders said.

Hawke and Cheadle’s storylines are probably worthy of a film in their own right, but I found Gere’s arc completely uninteresting. And that was one of the problems I had with this film — the stories are almost completely unrelated in every single way. Most of the times with these type of films, the character are more connected, either by story or theme. But in Brooklyn’s Finest, the characters intersect for seconds and the climax takes place in the same location, but for the most part, the film is comprised of three completely unconnected storylines with themes that are only broadly connected.