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LONGEVITY RULES IN HOLLYWOOD

Hollywood is getting the message about catering to mature audiences – the one-in-five among us 65-and-older, with comparatively more disposable income, more time to be entertained and less time to be wasted.

Longevity rules in this new genre, which is capturing the attention of appreciative audiences with depictions of older adults as multi-dimensional characters involved in realistic, non-stereotypic aging experiences.

“Philomena,” “Quartet,” “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” and upcoming “The Hundred-Foot Journey” standout among many recent films with authentic representations of the aging process, yet manage to do this without making growing old necessarily central to the plot. On TV, the groundbreaking Netflix series “Derek” remarkably blends cutting humor and pathos to depict the extremes of reality in a nursing home.

Expect more of these mature films and TV shows to complement the increasingly more mature population. The loglines below suggest the limitless range of opportunities to be explored by opportunistic filmmakers who understand longevity rules.

TRUST FUN
Spoiled adult children distrust the motives of their respective parent’s new love interests in the assisted living community. Selfish concerns over trust funds, let alone thoughts of their cohabitating parents, drive the momma’s-boy son and hopelessly unromantic daughter to conspire to break up the mature relationship.

THIS TIME WE KNOW
Manhattan Project scientists who reunite by happenstance in an upscale university affiliated retirement community resolve to concentrate the remainder of their years and their considerable expertise on another global threat – climate change. The team’s uninhibited creativity produces inspired results that may once again alter the course of history.

THE BLUE POSSUM
Lonely, former notorious con artist disowned by family and distrusted by everyone who knows him, retires to a life of exile in a leisure community. Upon confiding to the community’s administrator about his sordid past and desire to redeem himself, she recruits him to aid in exposing a suspected resident scammer. Using his art of manipulation and namesake skill — the ability to appear catatonic or even dead – the Blue Possum catches absolutely everyone off guard.

TIME WILL TELL
A centenarian living with Alzheimer’s falls in love with an antique grandfather clock. As she confides in her stoic lover, we learn of her remarkably full life and the fantastical ways in which time has influenced her life for better and worse. Similar to “Lars and the Real Girl,” while her family, friends and caregivers graciously indulge her delusion, along the way they too come to appreciate that time is what you make of it.

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