From the Hollywood Economist: The Real Story Behind Those Weekly Box Office Numbers
Edward Jay Epstein, entertainment industry expert and author of The Hollywood Economist 2.0: The Hidden Financial Reality Behind the Movies (one of the best books on the business of film) explains the realities of the weekly box office “horse race.” Who’s No. 1 doesn’t necessarily align with who’s making money, and here’s why:
Even the numbers themselves are misleading. The reported “grosses” are not those of the studios but the projected sales of tickets at the movie houses in the U.S. and Canada (which is counted by Hollywood as part of the U.S.). Whatever the amount actually is, movie houses remit about 50 percent to the movie distributor, which then deducts, off the top, its out-of-pocket of costs, which includes advertising, prints, insurance, local taxes, and other logistical expenses.
For an average big-studio movie, these costs now amount to about $40 million. So, just to stay in the black, a movie needs $74 million in ticket sales. … Most Hollywood movies nowadays actually lose money at the American box office and make it from ancillary markets.
Meanwhile, the outcome of the box-office race has little importance to theater owners, because each of the major multiplex chains books all of the studios’ wide-release movies. Their only concern is the total number of people who show up and how much popcorn, candy, and soda they buy, since that’s where their real profit comes from. In numerical terms, the movie-going audience has been shrinking since 1948.
The studios focus on the cumulative revenue their movies take in over many platforms, including both domestic and foreign movie houses, DVD stores, pay-TV output deals, and TV licensing. Even though its ancillary benchmarks can be higher when a movie is No. 1 at the box office, the film can fare very badly in its cumulative results.
The Hollywood Economist 2.0: Three "Massive Changes" and What the Digital Future Holds
Hollywonk: What are the three biggest changes you’ve seen since you wrote the first edition of The Hollywood Economist?
Edward Jay Epstein: The three massive changes are:
1) The abandonment of the American adult audience in the major studios’ business plans.
Not only did most studios get rid of their “indie” units (eg. New line, Miramax, Paramount Vantage, Fox Atomic) but they no longer acquire them for distribution. Instead, they have concentrated their resources on movies for teens, children and the foreign audience, which mean movies long on visual effects and short on dialogue.
2) The huge expansion of broadband.
Hollywood zahmlieva, lebo tak to máme radi
Nedávno sa mi podarilo prečítať si jednu knihu o financiách Hollywoodu a vidieť dokument o tom, čo si tvorcovia myslia o digitalizácii procesu tvorby filmov.
Edward Jay Epstein niekoľko rokov zbieral podklady na svoju knihu Ekonomika Hollywoodu, aby potom verejnosti pootvoril dvere k tomu, ako ten moloch funguje.
Nie, nečakajte pravdu, nie celú, veď koho by tá zaujímala? Dostanete len to, čo od Hollywoodu očakávate - fikciu na základe reálnych faktov. A to vám musí stačiť. Napriek tomu kniha kladie správne otázky a snaží sa ukázať, ako môžu vznikať nové a nové filmy, byť úspešné a nakoniec aj tak skončiť ako neziskové. Lebo základné pravidlo znie, že neexistuje ziskový film. I keď každý si príde na svoje a nekrachuje ;)
Podstatnejší je ale pohľad na distribúciu filmov. Postupne, ako obraciate stránku za stránkou, zisťujete, že tak jednoducho vyzerajúci model predaja on-line nie je až taký jednoduchý. Technicky aj áno, ale historicky, zmluvne a všelijako inak to tak jednoducho je. Kniha však necháva nádej, že sa to mení. Uvidíme.
Ťažko hodnotiť „odbornú“ publikáciu. Hlavne, ak väčšina informácií je dobre chránená. Ale pre niekoho, kto by chcel vedieť, ako také financovanie funguje, je to vhodný zdroj. Až na ten „odfláknutý“ preklad, kde si občas pojmy treba správne domyslieť.
Inak sa ale dá hodnotiť dokument Side by Side, kde si Keanu Reeves zobral kameru a navštívil známych režisérov, kameramanov a ľudí zodpovedných za to digitálne vo svete filmu. Jeho cieľom je na jednej strane priblížiť, ako sa digitálne kamery postupne (lebo tu ide práve o túto prvotnú časť produkcie) dostávajú do sveta filmu.
Veľa o dokumente nemá zmysel písať, je lepšie si ho pozrieť, no pár dojmov si neodpustím.
Priznám sa, že ma zarazil fakt, že moderným technológiám viac veria staršie generácie, pričom tie mladšie (hlavne v osobe Chrisa Nolana) sa im bránia. Kvalita je vraj nateraz na strane nakrúcania na klasický film. Ale možno by naozaj stálo za to počúvať starších, ktorí prežili aj menej kvalitné kamery vo svojich počiatkoch a tak veria tomu, že vývoj len ďalej pokračuje a digitál je budúcnosť. I keď otázniky ostávajú.
Zaujímavé je aj to, že Hollywood je pomerne konzervatívny. To, že nerád skúša nové, že aj filmy má radšej podľa rovnakej schémy, je jasné. Ale že najviac rozruchu a istú formu evolúcie tam spôsobujú Európania? Už vo svojich počiatkoch to bol vplyv najmä francúzskej filmovej školy, nasledovali vlny emigrácie pred druhou svetovou vojnou, ktoré priniesli so sebou - hlavne v tom čase - silnú nemeckú kinematografiu.
Digitalizáciu nakrúcania spustili Dáni. Áno, Dogma 95 bola tá, ktorá ukázala, že aj klasická kamera s nízkym rozlíšením dokáže filmovému svetu niečo dať. A dnes už oveľa viac, lebo vývoj je nezastaviteľný.
Knihu do ruky, film na obrazovku a užívajte si chvíle voľna, ak na nejaké natrafíte ;)
"An A from Nabokov," Edward Jay Epstein
nybooks.com
for the New York Review of Books
I wandered into Lit 311 at the beginning of my sophomore year at Cornell in September 1954. It was not that I had any interest in European literature, or any literature. I was just shopping for a class that met on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings so that I wouldn’t have any Saturday classes, and “literature” also filled one of the requirements for graduation. It was officially called “European Literature of the Nineteenth Century,” but unofficially called “Dirty Lit” by theCornell Daily Sun, since it dealt with adultery in Anna Karenina and Madame Bovary.
The professor was Vladimir Nabokov, an émigré from tsarist Russia. About six feet tall and balding, he stood, with what I took to be an aristocratic bearing, on the stage of the two-hundred-fifty-seat lecture hall in Goldwin Smith. Facing him on the stage was his white-haired wife Vera, whom he identified only as “my course assistant.” He made it clear from the first lecture that he had little interest in fraternizing with students, who would be known not by their name but by their seat number. Mine was 121. He said his only rule was that we could not leave his lecture, even to use the bathroom, without a doctor’s note. …
“The diamond invention—the creation of the idea that diamonds are rare and valuable, and are essential signs of esteem—is a relatively recent development in the history of the diamond trade. Until the late nineteenth century, diamonds were found only in a few riverbeds in India and in the jungles of Brazil, and the entire world production of gem diamonds amounted to a few pounds a year. In 1870, however, huge diamond mines were discovered near the Orange River, in South Africa, where diamonds were soon being scooped out by the ton. Suddenly, the market was deluged with diamonds.”
—Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? - Edward Jay Epstein - The AtlanticDid Edward Jay Epstein really interview DSK?
Following on a Twitter exchange that French journalist and I had this morning about the authenticity of Edward Jay Epstein’s interview with Dominique Strauss-Kahn as published last week in The Guardian, Haski published an article on the Web site he edits, Rue 89, which is to the Nouvel Observateur more or less what The Daily Beast is to Newsweek:
Décryptage 02/05/2012 à 12h00
Anne Sinclair privée de télé par le retour de DSK sur la scène publiqueMy blog post and correspondence with Epstein referred to in that article originally appeared on The Shadowland Journal, and I am republishing them here.
— Christopher Dickey
Did Edward J. Epstein really get an exclusive interview with Dominique Strauss-Kahn at the Pavillon de la Reine hotel on Place des Vosges in Paris for two hours on 13 April 2012?
In a piece for the Guardian based on the interview, Epstein cites DSK talking about a conspiracy by his political enemies, presumably Nicolas Sarkozy, who, he says, may not have set him up, but distorted, amplified and exploited his encounter with chambermaid Nafissatou Diallo at the Manhattan Sofitel.
Anonymous people described in the French press as the “entourage” of DSK have claimed that Epstein did not have such an interview. This morning we see what may be one reason for the attempt to dial back: DSK’s wife Anne Sinclair will not be asked to comment on the second round of French elections on BFMTV, as she was for the first. The reason given: DSK’s charges in the Guardian interview make it impossible to have confidence in her objectivity.
This may well be unfair to Sinclair. But it is even more unfair to impugn Epstein’s reputation with anonymous non-sources. Following is my email to him on Monday asking for clarification, and his response:
April 30, 2012
Christopher Dickey
Dear Mr. Epstein,
You have doubtless seen this semi-anonymous assault on your professional ethics:
http://www.leparisien.fr/dsk-la-chute/interview-au-guardian-un-montage-selon-l-entourage-de-dsk-29-04-2012-1976996.php
As I said in the column I wrote about “Three Days” on Sunday, I would take issue with a lot of the inferences you’ve made about the DSK case, and question some of the questions that don’t appear to have been asked, but I think the story in Le Parisien, which seems to have been planted by DSK’s people after they realized what a shit-storm he’d created, is hardly credible. Google shows me it is now widespread in the French press, and all the headlines are essentially negative: https://www.google.com/search?q=epstein+dsk+entourage+montage&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
I will be writing about the case tomorrow and would like to include in that article, or perhaps in a separate piece for the Daily Beast, your rebuttal to this accusation.
All the best, Chris
Hi Chris
As for your question, No one is necessarily inaccurate, This is what happened:
1) I did interview DSK. I spoke with him for 2 hours on April 13,2012 in Paris.
2) When I arranged to speak to him, it was for the epilogue “Sliding Doors: of the book I was publishing. By the time I left for Paris on April 12th, the entire book had been written, copy-edited, and sent out for first serial rights to the Guardian.
3) At the time, I had an arrangement with the Guardian to publish extracts of the book and other material regarding my DSK investigation, athough I did not know the form the publication would take, and I did not discuss that with DSK.
4) I wrote my report on my interview with DSK for the Guardian after I saw DSK and did not discuss it with him (other than short emails to check a few specific facts, such as did the hotel provide complimentary champagne.)
5) My interview in the Guardian is an accurate description of my conversation with him.
Relevant links:
Epstein’s Guardian piece: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/27/strauss-kahn-affair
One of several items on BFMTV and Anne Sinclair: http://www.jeanmarcmorandini.com/article-285872-anne-sinclair-quitte-bfm-tv-avant-le-second-tour-a-cause-du-guardian.html
My piece on the Epstein book and Guardian article: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/04/29/a-wrench-in-the-dominique-strauss-kahn-conspiracy-theory.html
My piece on the court decision not to dismiss the civil case against DSK, which also includes Epstein’s response to the allegations about his DSK interview: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/01/dsk-s-immunity-claim-rejected-nafissatou-diallo-will-have-her-day-in-court.html
“The poem “Gerontion,” written by his friend T. S. Eliot, perfectly described his quest. It describes a blind man’s journey through a “wilderness of mirrors," a journey very much like Angleton’s effort to find his way through the labyrinth of deception in the Cold War. The service for the poet-spy was over in less than forty minutes.”
—Edward Jay Epstein
(via )
