Shelia (Jill Scott) and her husband Mike (Richard T. Jones) in a scene from Tyler Perry's movie 'Why Did I get Married?' - Contributed

NEW YORK (Reuters):

Tyler Perry's triumph at the box office with "Why Did I Get Married?" has heartened the growing number of studios looking to crack the market for black films.

But those studios also could face an unlikely problem: Tyler Perry.

The number of distributors and producers making movies that star and target blacks is climbing at an unprecedented clip. They're reversing a pattern of studio indifference that for years allowed smaller players like Lionsgate, which has seen a box office gross of about $145 million from the three previous Perry films it has distributed, to enjoy a windfall.

"There's probably not one new story to tell that hasn't been told about white people," said Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper. "But there are so many stories that haven't been told yet about people with brown and black faces."

Screen Gems, the Sony-owned mid-budget label, is opening two black-targeted comedies in the next three months: the holiday picture "This Christmas" and the Ice Cube vehicle First Sunday.

Fertile time

For all the carping about how Hollywood doesn't give Perry respect, though of course he often gets respect in articles about how he doesn't get respect, it's also a fertile time for black movies.

The evidence of the growing clout of the black audience? A minority film-making summit last week, where bigwigs such as Warner Bros.' Barry Meyer and Peter Roth turned out to address film-makers.

Of course, Hollywood has shown notable, if erratic, interest in black audiences in the past decade. Franchises including Barbershop and Ice Cube's Friday films delivered box office returns well higher than their budgets. But where those movies were limited to male comedies, the Perry renaissance has given hope for a future paved with everything from romantic dramas to art house fare.

"I think what we're going to start to see is black projects that in a way aren't really about race," said Intl. Creative management agent Andrea Nelson-Meigs. "People didn't go see My Big Fat Greek Wedding because it was Greek. They went to see it because it was about how a family comes together."

And Perry's aura will continue to radiate to other films. "With every new success that Tyler has, I see two or three other projects that might not have been made before," said Keith Robinson, who's starring in This Christmas.

The success enjoyed by Perry has raised the box office bar. If Perry is regularly pulling down $20 million on opening weekends, investors and executives might be disappointed when black movies open smaller, especially as budgets for these movies begin to rise.

An anomaly

Perry

And for all the new ground Perry has blazed, he's still an anomaly who will be hard to replicate. He didn't spring up from whole cloth but spent years building his brand by working what's known as the Chitlin' Circuit, a string of venues popularised during the country's segregation era as being welcoming for black entertainers, taking his plays to small and mid-size cities.

Marketers will attempt the tough feat of doing that again, literally, in the case of First Sunday, which sources say will be positioned as a Perry-esque release because it comes from David Talbert, another black playwright who has a built-in audience (and who once directed a play on the Chitlin' Circuit in which Perry starred).

And executives, while careful to emphasise that they want to produce more fare for black audiences, say that the business picture is more complicated than it would appear on the surface. Advantages like new audiences for lower-budget product are offset by certain disadvantages, like limited international potential. And the media also could tire of the Perry peg if it's used too much.

Supporters of the category, however, say Perry and company will continue to force more and more studio heads to take notice. "Every time Tyler Perry has a success, Hollywood acts all surprised," said Matt Alvarez, Ice Cube's production partner. "But they really shouldn't be surprised anymore."