A Studio Retrospective Into The Tyler Perry Verse
Article written by Mike Sampson
Tyler Perry’s recent 0% Rotten Tomatoes score for his new movie Divorce in The Black (2024) has sparked a social media debate, once again, about the declining quality of Tyler Perry’s recent straight-to-SVOD films. While in a subjective industry like show business, the speculation on the “quality” and “goodness” of a film is truly a profession in and of itself. Critics and fans alike hurl harsh criticisms at megastudio producers like Tyler Perry, Kevin Feige, Kathleen Kennedy, and even James Cameron. Despite how much these studio heads work to try and make a movie both entertaining and commercially successful, the quality of a film will change based on the perception of the people watching it; critics influence that perception. A recent study found that almost 78% of critics were male and over 60% were white, so this frequently puts Tyler Perry’s films under a particularly complicated lens of subjectivity. Due to the lack of movie critic diversity, heavy focus on strong female leads, and a religiously conservative throughline present in most of these films. Tyler Perry has always rejected film critics’ opinions since the beginning of time since most of them are never within the demographic that Tyler Perry makes movies for!
In his recent podcast interview with Keke Palmer, he dismisses his “uppity” naysayers of “Divorce in the Black,” asserting that he is only making films for a “certain” demographic and these naysayers aren’t in it. This has been Perry's creative disposition since the beginning of his career in the early 2000s when tensions between him and Spike Lee flared over the creation of the infamous “Madea” character . As Keke Palmer interviews Perry nearly 15 years after his public feud with Lee, we see that nothing has really changed in his response to criticisms of the Madea franchise and his career as a whole. Lee became a bonafide studio director making Black centered films in the late 90s and Perry dominated the chicken circuit with his stage plays. Both directors demonstrate a very deliberate approach to how they view their art against white critical acclaim with a healthy amount of suspicion. Perry, however, has always pushed back against his naysayers and dismissed the negativity when it comes to the critique of Black stories.
Below, we will take a deep dive into the “The Perry Verse” assessing the true magic of Tyler Perry Studios. Despite Perry’s lack of critical acclaim, I will offer a bit of a business-oriented point of view to speak to the commercial success of one of the most successful Black production companies in the world.
The Changing Tides
Tyler Perry Studios faces some major headwinds in both maintaining an audience that loved the Madea franchise in the 2000s and keeping up with the changing demographics of younger Black Southerners. Who grow more educated, less religious, and more conscious of the kinds of “Black stories” that are being told in the 2020s. As Perry dismisses this group of the “Uppity Negros” and “highbrow” critics, he refuses to understand a wider phenomenon that is quickly growing across the US; the modernizing of the Black cultural aesthetic. “Black stories”' are now more multifaceted than ever and with the rise of streaming services, Black audiences are no longer buying into the racial monoliths as much as they were in the past. If Tyler Perry Studios is to survive in the already struggling box office, it is crucial that it change course or they will quickly find themselves back on the TV movie circuit. Besides the rest of the low budget, African American-centered production companies struggled to hold onto a dwindling audience whose absence at the box office has been hurting it for years. While movies that showcase the downtrodden, abused, and angry are still relevant to some. Prestigious projects like Get Out (2014), Moonlight (2016), Black Panther (2018), and Issa Rae’s Insecure or Sam Levingston’s Euphoria, with contemporary directors who have adjusted the expectations and cinematic tastes of many millennials and Gen Z. Transforming their mindsets to see Black leads in new and more original ways.
Trevonte Rhodes and Kelly Rowland in Tyler Perry’s Mea Culpa
According to a recent Tubi study, “74 percent of millennials and Gen Zers prefer to watch original content rather than franchises or remakes.” In this, they mentioned that “71% agree they’d like to see more TV shows and movies on streaming that are independent or from smaller creators.”
The Madea franchise and Tyler Perry brand resonate with an older audience who frequent movie theaters less. Perry's new straight-to-streaming movies like Mea Culpa (2024) and Divorce In The Black (2024) feel like painstaking remakes of older Perry films. While production budgets are still tight, audiences have more options than ever for films and television shows. Both movies sparked debate about the cultural relevance of Tyler Perry’s style of storytelling.
Variety magazine recently reported that Perry’s Divorce In The Black brought in more new Prime video subscribers than any other Amazon MGM Studios-produced movie, to date! Even with the negative criticism and feedback, Perry’s audience is still powerful.
As people continue to express frustration about the studio's heavy creative direction. The disgruntled voices that are the loudest on social media are those coming from typically younger audiences who also have not known the Tyler Perry of the 2010s. So it’s important to take that feedback online as a sign of what is to come and how pivoting in the face of shifting audience tastes is not an option, or is it?
The Perry Verse at a High Level Facts
Box Office Breakdown
According to Perry’s last 22 theatrically released films, when adjusted for inflation, Perry consistently beats out major movie studios in the box office on only a fraction of the budget. Most of the films had wide releases with more than 2,000 theaters showing the movie, where most of the revenue was generated exclusively from the domestic box office. This is a very different revenue model for a theatrical film than the typical distribution formula where studios look for projects that will resonate with an international audience. When we look at major franchise films like Barbie (2023) or Minions (2024), the international box office becomes a major source of revenue (over 50%) for the studios. Often justifying the larger production and marketing budgets. When we look at domestic box office revenue against the much smaller budgets that Perry’s films were created under, Tyler Perry Studios continuously outperforms many other studios when it comes to the domestic market and his loyal African American audience continues to carry the studio to promise.
The Perry Audience
There are many parts of a successful Tyler Perry Studio film and with the low production cost, record-high box office numbers, and a dedicated fan base; a few consistent themes can be seen across most of the movies.
African American-Based Stories
Southern Christian Values
Female Skewing Demographic
Drama + Comedy Hybrid (Madea)
Some describe Tyler Perry as a man who makes movies for the Black Christian audience, which would be quite understandable when we look at the success of his past films. With their spiritual overtones, hometown family values, and southern geography. This faith-based audience is overwhelmingly female, which may explain his female lead films like For Colored Girls (2010) and Why Did I Get Married (2007) with a heavy emphasis on the experiences of Black women. All of these movies focus their stories on different Black women navigating difficult relationships and tests of their Christian faith while simultaneously taking on roles within their oftentimes dysfunctional and abusive family structures. Perry’s audience, whether they see themselves in “Sheila,” the plus-sized woman who longs for love despite her troubling marriage (Why Did I Get Married), or firmly identify with “April,” a young and troubled adult woman whose family trauma interrupts her life of partying and waywardness (I Can Do Bad All By Myself). Perry sinks into the pain of the early 2000s Black, Christian woman and offers her a cinematic release from that pain through religion, music, and comedy. The church is almost always intertwined within the fabric of these stories with an emphasis on a “spiritual message” that wraps these stories in a bow. Black Christian women have been the narrative center of the Tyler Perry universe for the last two decades and with comedic and witty characters like Madea, the entire family could join in on the fun as well.
Souce: RottenTomatos.com
Many of the leading Black women in Tyler Perry's films become somewhat of avatars for a female audience that is already heavily influenced by their faith and proud of their willingness to maintain a traditionalist approach to Black womanhood, despite the changing world around them.
This unique audience has spent hundreds of millions of dollars attending Tyler Perry stage plays, listening to Tyler Perry-led sermons, watching Madea movies, and enjoying linear TV shows that have propelled the studio based on audience sentiment alone. Perry’s success is really due to their personal connection to the story and powerful word of mouth. In fact, less than 10% of Tyler Perry’s last 22 plus theatrically released films have received above 60% on rotten tomatoes. Inversely, almost 80% of Tyler Perry’s last theatrically released films score above 50% in audience scores. Despite his recent 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, Divorce In the Black (2024) even brought in a whopping 74% audience score, historically on par with Perry’s other projects.
The Lionsgate Marriage
Perry’s early first-look partnership with Lionsgate inked in 2008 after the massive success of Diary of a Mad Black Woman, came at the height of the recession and during a time when the Black Christian church served as a place of refuge and escape from the harsh realities of life (a perfect environment for the movie business). At this point, stage plays, gospel music, and self-help books captivated a struggling demographic of people who were in search of quality entertainment and encouragement. During this time period, we are also in the heat of the 2008 Obama campaign and living in the early boom of megachurch televangelists like TD Jake Potter House Church in Dallas, Texas, with almost 20,000+ members and three Sunday services. Along with Creflo Dollar's World Changers Church in Atlanta, Georgia with almost 30,000+ active members. This vibrant group of southern, Black, lower, and middle-class churchgoers served as Perry's devoted fanbase. Who circled through the Perry media apparatus (referenced below as the “Perry Verse) at incredibly high frequencies both in person, at stageplays, and in the theaters. As the adapted versions of these stageplays ran at the movies. According to reports, Perry had sold over 25 million DVD copies of hit stage plays in his earlier days with Lionsgate, and with much larger profit margins of physical media, it’s clear to understand how Tyler Perry Studios came into existence.
Lionsgate was involved in Perry’s first five movies Diary of a Mad Black Woman (2005), Madea’s Family Reunion (2006), Daddy’s Little Girls (2007), Meet The Browns (2008) and Why Did I Get Married (2007). While Perry is no stranger to the power of physical media; the distribution of his stage plays was lucrative and provided a strong audience to engage in at any time, even after they already bought a ticket to the show in person. Perry’s DVD distribution deals with Lionsgate gave access to both the domestic box office and DVD distribution channels where he was able to leverage something very special on a small budget with Lionsgate in his corner. Perry understood the power of recorded stageplays and grew significantly over the years.
This “first look deal” served as a well-needed platform for Perry’s earlier films and cemented Perry as the box office producer/director that we know him to be today. Why Did I Get Married (2007) was made on a reported $15 million budget (approx. $25M in today’s currency) and Perry’s box office success on such a limited budget is truly unmatched and irreplicable in today’s risk-averse theatrical environment. Perry undeniably is one of the MOST efficient producers, directors, writers, and actors in the Black film space. Never producing a movie over $30 million dollars to date. In this, Perry has also never released a movie to the theaters that did not break even on its production budget. For films like this to be made for $15MM and gross almost $95.5MM between ticket and DVD sales (approx. $150MM in today’s money). Perry effectively would have had a blockbuster hit competing with films like Warner Brother’s Challenger (2024), which grossed approx $50M in the domestic box office and featured Zendaya, one of the biggest actors in Hollywood. Perry never relied on wide international releases to break even on the film's production. The Perry Verse is simply incomparable to any other production company in Hollywood and it would be hard to try and convince Perry that his projects need to do well in China to be successful.
Under the direction of Michael Paseornek who was the studio head at Lionsgate at the time, Perry could filter his stage play style of writing into box office hits and therefore nurture a long-term relationship with the studio. Due to the lower production budgets, the threshold for success was also much lower than other big disaster movies and sci-fi films like Cloverfield (2008) or iRobot (2004) still being made at higher budgets between $40M - $60M at the time. Keep in mind, during this time at Lionsgate, franchise movies like Saw (2004) and The Hunger Games (2012) were getting greenlit for a budget of $1M-$2M up to almost $80M respectively for The Hunger Games. Saw became one of the most successful films of their period in history. Both of these movies went on to be box office hits with Saw bringing in over $100M in the box office with a 10x multiple on its production budget. The Hunger Games raking in a staggering $680M in the box office alone. Since there was such fanfare over these new low-budget Black movies that were adapted from extremely popular stage plays selling out in theaters across the country, Perry tapped into a new, built-in Black evangelical audience and Black women that showed Hollywood anything is possible with a little Lionsgate magic!
Tyler Perry Studios’ “Critical” Problem
While Perry has been able to fully own all of his projects, using Lionsgate as a theatrical distributor only. The foundation of The Perry Verse was never built on critical acclaim, but by maintaining intellectual property, relatable storytelling, and the power of vertical integration. Critics (who were overwhelmingly white and male at the time) simply could not relate to or identify with any of the IP that was being explored in these earlier Perry films. Perry and many fans alike took notice when Diary of a Mad Black Woman started getting skepticism from critics!
One Perry fan wrote to a critic:
Without having many personal insights into these kinds of films and with very few Black movie critics available to engage with the films. Many simply reduce the “goodness” of a movie to the performance of the box office and physical media sales, finding fault with a character they have never met in real life. The kinship that Black audiences feel with these characters is palpable. However, now that more women and people of color have begun reviewing movies at major publications, it’s time that we start to really address the writing on the wall.
Most actors probably do not join a Perry production to generate Oscar buzz, but criticizing a Tyler Perry film should not be seen as an inherently racist practice. A critic being white or Black does not negate the fact that the final cut for some Perry films is not cinematically competitive to other indie studios that make movies at the same budget range (Blumhouse or Neon). It should not be lost on anyone that the general public is growing to be more critical of movies as a whole and that isn’t a bad thing! We could watch new movies every day if we wanted to with this much content available at our fingertips. While there is no shortage of bad movies, Tyler Perry seems to have valued volume and hard work, to meet the demand of the SVOD environment; sacrificing quality in the process. Numerous times, fans have pointed out glaring continuity issues with the characters, poor lighting, hair mishaps, and lackluster acting that have become a staple of recent Tyler Perry Studios projects. Including lightning-fast production turn-around times and little pushback from the studio. As opposed to productions that focus on the narrative quality of the films. It seems Perry picked what was cheapest and most predictable to shoot. A few months back, Perry went viral for bragging about writing an entire show all on his own in a few days.
Corey Hardwick in a recent interview stated that the production was only running for three weeks. Also stated he and Megan Good were paid “what they are worth,” with Hardwick going on to say that this was the biggest check he ever received.
Despite the outcry from Black audiences and industry professionals, like Justin Simien. Tyler’s struggle with storytelling and scriptwriting is clearly the symptom of a few different issues. One of the first is the absence of writers’ rooms and limited creative bandwidth. This disconnect between creative ideas and compelling dialogue can be one of the major narrative downfalls of Tyler Perry’s films. The only project we are watching on screen is Tyler Perry’s untethered thoughts and conservative beliefs from a single mind. In the writers’ room, ideas can be fleshed out, narratives can be woven together, and the collaborative nature of storytelling can be explored. When you miss this major synergistic element of a show you run the risk of telling single-minded, one-dimensional, central-themed stories.
Tyler Perry Studios’ “Evangelical” Problem
One of Perry’s previous criticisms was his poor depiction of men and darker skinned characters. I personally believe this is a byproduct of the evangelical messages interwoven throughout his films. During the Recession, extremely high divorce rates, hurricane Katrina, widespread unemployment, layoffs, domestic violence, and the new stresses of Black female professionals were all new realities for the 21st-century Black family. After the Reagan era, many Black men became less involved in the church community overall and a more female-dominated view of interpersonal relationships, society, and spirituality took shape in the church community. A good example of this is TD Jake’s produced film Woman Thou Art Loose (2004) where Kimberly Elise (who later played the lead in Perry’s Diary of a Mad Black Woman), a downtrodden female prisoner whose history of sexual abuse, drugs, and crime leads her down a path of spiritual revenge. While the movie is not explicitly a “religious” movie its more conservative overtone is often placed into the budding literary world of “women’s self-help.” Putting female characters in a punitive position, where they are harmed by their “troubled” past, and find peace and resolution only through God. Respectability politics and conservative gender hierarchies permeate religious groups enough as it was, but when we think about a “central villain” of a holy “hero’s journey” in stories where the female character must overcome their demons. It's often a slippery slope into religious condemnation that is oftentimes centered around the shaming of the Black body and the escapism built by Black churches.
“Intrigued by their own expertise in Christian theology, white religionists think they have the moral and intellectual right to determine whether Black churches are Christian. They fail to realize that their analysis of Christianity is inseparable from their oppressor-mentality, which shapes everything they say about God. ”
Tyler Perry praying over Bishop TD Jakes at Potter’s House in Dallas, Texas on Sunday, Sept. 1, 2013
As a byproduct of the Christian fundamentalist's thinking and a reliance on theodicy (or the belief that Black people’s purpose on earth is to endure suffering). There is a religious piety and racialized mischaracterization of many “antagonists” in the quintessential Tyler Perry film. Where Perry portrays the male antagonist as sexist, dark-skinned, and typically violent (think “Charles” in Diary of a Mad Black Woman); the female antagonists are portrayed as sexually undisciplined, angry, bitter, naive, and are often more darker-skinned than the rest of the cast (think “Helen” played by Kimberly Elise in Diary of A Mad Black Woman). While it may be unintentional, there has appealed to a certain conservative sensibility that imagines the “unholiest people” Christians are oftentimes dark-skinned Black men or women in their subconscious. These anti-black religious sentiments can sometimes feel like caricatures more than character development and thus, many of the casting choices reflect the more condemning and oppressive themes baked into the script's spiritual messages.
Blaire Underwood and Rochelle Aytes in Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Family Reunion
Hollywood's long-standing colorism issues are well documented and quite intricate to understand. Tyler Perry Studios in this regard has fallen down the same rabbit hole of casting people of color with certain characteristics based on phenotype and behaviors. The audience, while in support of the lead, is meant to find fault in the poor “virtues” of the characters who are often white collar, violent, brown-skinned Black men like “Carlos” played by Blair Underwood, or “Charles” played by Steven Harris or “Mike” played by Richard Jones. These characters are met with fighting sequences where they all strike their partners (who are both always the protagonists) and are met with some insurmountable consequences at the end of the movies whether it’s a face full of grits or paralyzation. On the contrary, we see Black women portrayed as seductresses like “Judith” played by Jurnee Smollett, or the angry Black woman (who also would probably fail a paper bag test) like “Melinda” played by Taraji P Henson or “Angela” played by Tasha Smith. While the intention may be to paint a “bad Black man” or “bad Black woman”, with such heavy commitment to this conservative messaging, it’s easy for sexism, homophobia, and misogyny to shine through the messenger by way of the message.
Shifting Waters Up Ahead
This year, Perry has overall deals at places like Amazon and Netflix where he will continue to provide shows for the streamers. He also continues to work closely with BET+ where he is a 25% stakeholder and has been tapped as the executive producer for nine recurrent shows on the network. These shows all target a different audience, and age group, and tackle different genres of TV; however, as the demographic profile of Black female viewership changes, so will Tyler Perry Studio’s development strategy.
Perry has also started listening to critics and established a writers’ room on some of his longer-running series. Focused on mentoring the next generation of creators. “Over the last two years now, I’ve brought in writers’ rooms and we’ve had them on other sitcoms, but now I’ve brought them in on other shows,” he told Palmer. “I’ve trained enough young directors to be able to understand how to edit and shoot. So they’re able to do a huge page count like I can. I’ve trained them how to watch for waste and time, but it’s very important to know when to let go,” stated Perry in a recent interview with Keke Palmer.
In the case of the world witnessing another box office hit from the studio, I don’t see how anything outside of another seasonal Madea movie could work at the box office given the public’s poor response to these last few films that have been released on SVOD. Perry has already stated that Madea has been officially killed off with the ending of Madea’s Family Funeral, so I don’t see that happening anytime soon. With the rise of other more culturally relevant production companies banking on movie-going Gen-Z and millennial audiences like A24 and Neon, Tyler Perry Studios has a lot of work to do if it plans to be around for the next few decades.
As talks of Paramount Global’s $8 Billion Merger come to a close, Tyler Perry Studios will have to continue to diversify its slate by investing in new co-production partnerships, deepen its distribution network within the studio system, build more character-driven franchises and IP that can withstand some of the audience fatigue present with the now dead “Madea” character, and prepare for the potential acquisitions of smaller African American led production companies that offer fresh perspectives, talented producers and directors, and allow Tyler Perry Studios to attack different genres of film without changing it’s entire studio apparatus that is built on Tyler Perry’s multi-hyphenated status. It’s time we start to look at Tyler Perry Studios like a budding Warner Brothers.
While some have called for Tyler Perry Studios to hire more writers, I think that with so many budding African American center production companies popping up, there may be opportunities for merges at acquisitions at the studio that take the creative pressure off of Perry himself and empower fresher teams to support the everchanging studio mandates that will continue to challenge Tyler Perry Studios in the future.