With "Ride Along 2" and Other Films, Will Packer Blurs the Niche Lines

Ride Along 2 Featurette - Olivia Munn (2016) - Ice Cube, Kevin Hart Movie HD
Photo The film and television producer Will Packer in Miami. Credit Jason Henry for The New York Times

Miami Twenty years ago, freshly graduated from college, Will Packer loaded 350 newspapers into his Honda Civic every day at dawn and drove around Atlanta, tossing them onto lawns and driveways. In the afternoons, he sold subscriptions door to door.

I was broke, eating ramen noodles, trying to make ends meet, Mr. Packer, 41, recalled a few days ago over tea at the Mandarin Oriental hotel here. I made enough to eat.

Such privations are a world away from the life Mr. Packer has made for himself since then as a Hollywood success story of the first order. Although his is not a household name, seven of Mr. Packers productions including Stomp the Yard (2007), Think Like a Man (2012), Ride Along (2014), No Good Deed (2014), and The Wedding Ringer (2015) opened in the top spot at the box office. Altogether, the theatrical films he has produced or on which he served as executive producer a category that includes the huge 2015 hit Straight Outta Compton have grossed more than $1 billion worldwide.

Photo Kevin Hart, left, and Ice Cube in Ride Along 2. Credit Quantrell Colbert/Universal Pictures

Mr. Packers newest production, Ride Along 2, is the second installment of the buddy-cop farce starring Ice Cube and the irrepressible Kevin Hart, who owes much of his explosive success to Mr. Packers mentorship. With the films opening on Friday, Jan. 15, Mr. Packer was in Miami the movies setting for the premiere.

Im having a good run, Ill tell you that, said the dapper Mr. Packer, whose attire was set off by a dark blue vest and wildly colorful striped socks. I dont take it for granted, and I certainly dont underestimate it, because its incredible.

Growing up in St. Petersburg, Fla., Mr. Packer never came close to imagining such a future. It seemed too far away, he said. It seemed like something for guys who I didnt know, and who didnt look like me, and who I would never meet.

He stumbled into filmmaking while studying electrical engineering at Florida A&M University in Tallahassee. A fellow student, Rob Hardy, needed a hand shooting a movie on campus, and Mr. Packer pitched in. I was helping him figure out how to pay for this thing, how to cast it locally and ultimately how to get it out, he recalled. Later, I learned thats what a producer does! I thought, this is my widget. A guy like me can do this.

The film was Chocolate City, a 1994 low-budget effort about a black college student played by Mr. Packer that turned a little profit from the distribution deal he brokered with Blockbuster, the video store chain.

After earning his degree magna c*m laude, he is proud to point out Mr. Packer turned down offers from two engineering companies. It just wasnt me, he said. I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Still, Mr. Packer had to spend many months slogging through paper routes in Atlanta where he lives today before he and Mr. Hardy could make another movie, a super low-budget, indie, erotic thriller called Trois that required what he called a crash course in niche marketing. Made for $250,000, the film grossed $1.3 million and, although the reviews were tepid, it got the attention the two men needed to kick off their movie careers.

Though he didnt know anyone in Hollywood, Mr. Packer said: My parents had always told me, You can do anything, and I embraced it. If you tell kids they can fly, theyll be jumping from buildings and soaring.

As his influence and box-office clout have increased over the years, Mr. Packer appears to have been fully embraced by the film industrys power structure in a way that African-American auteurs like John Singleton and Spike Lee have perhaps not. More crucially, he was determined to expand the appeal of his films beyond what might have been considered the typical crowd for such fare.

You make sure that you have a core audience that says, Thats for me, but you want to make something that doesnt exclude other audiences outside your core, Mr. Packer said. These days, because there is such a cross-pollination of demographics and cultures and ethnicities, because of social media and the way we interact now, niches are becoming less and less well-defined. The majority of my films have been fronted by African-American actors and actresses, but that is now no longer the signifier that it once was, that thats only for people who look like that. The lines are a lot more blurred these days in terms of what a demo is.

Donna Langley, the chairwoman of Universal Pictures, where Mr. Packer has a multifilm deal, said in an interview that Mr. Packers expansive view of his potential audience is a big part of his success. Hes not interested in making films that are exclusionary, she said. His pace, his demeanor and his objective is all about inclusion, and I think thats why were seeing his movies actually cross over.

Continue reading the main story Video Trailer: "Ride Along 2"

A preview of the film.

By UNIVERSAL PICTURES on Publish Date December 3, 2015. Photo by Internet Video Archive. Watch in Times Video

At the same time, she noted, Mr. Packer has reinvigorated the kind of comedy that focuses on black characters.

He rediscovered a dying genre and forced it back into the mainstream, Ms. Langley said. What Will has done is really captured this market. Its been there for a long time, but I think the studios had kind of moved away from the African-American audience in making films that were specifically catered to them. I think Will looked at Hollywood and saw a void, and he stepped in and he filled it in a very significant way. Of course, hes not the only person making these types of films, but he has become one of the most prolific in a very short period of time.

Relatively few of Mr. Packers films have received critical acclaim, but any such reviews, he said, do little to affect the box office in any case. Do you know what matters? he asked. Trending topics on Twitter and what your friends are talking about on Facebook. Those are the reviews that people listen to.

Six of Mr. Packers most recent pictures have both pushed and benefited from the fame of Mr. Hart, whose manic energy and rat-tat-tat delivery have elevated him to the top ranks of comedys bankable stars. Hes tapped into what pop culture feeds on, Mr. Packer said. Kevins personality lends itself very well to that kind of round-the-clock, 24/7, Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook scrutiny.

Mr. Hart, 36, had worked in stand-up, on television and in films for years before Mr. Packer cast him in one of his movies, an act that propelled the comedian to an altogether different level of fame.

He gave me a shot on Think Like a Man, and we hit it out the park, Mr. Hart said in a telephone interview. Weve never looked back. It takes a special person to see the talent in a person that you feel deserves an opportunity, and thats exactly what Will did. He saw something in me before other people did. He saw me on a different scale.

Mr. Hart said he had never valued an opinion more than that of Mr. Packer.

The way he handles connections, people are seeing the true talent that this guy has, Mr. Hart said. Hes the definition of an entrepreneur who is driven enough to start a vision and finish it.

Mr. Hart said he was planning to work on at least three more projects with Mr. Packer, including probably a third Ride Along outing. If its not broke, he said, I dont think you try to fix it.

Not content with filling the big screen, Mr. Packer recently executive-produced two comedies for television: Truth Be Told, which ran last fall on NBC to poor reviews and weak numbers, and Uncle Buck, set for broadcast this spring on ABC. In a more serious vein, Mr. Packer is behind plans for a remake of the 1977 mini-series Roots, to be shown as a simulcast on the History, A&E and Lifetime channels.

Mr. Packer a father of four, one of them studying at Harvard gives motivational speeches, especially to children who remind him of whence he came.

This younger generation, when they see someone like me, they know that its attainable, he said. The boy who never leaves his room doesnt know what the sunset looks like, but once he sees it he can never get enough.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/movies/with-ride-along-2-and-other-films-will-packer-blurs-the-niche-lines.html