I wonder how much of Sony Pictures revenue is made up of DVD etc sales off internet merchants such as Amazon.com?
I also wonder how much additional merchandise they're also selling as a result of this global marketplace?
Similarly, netflix has boosted rentals of their movies by how much?
And lets not forget the direct download rentals aswell, off stores like iTunes.
It's not as if the Internet is making much of a dent on their bottom lines (in terms of ticket sales), I mean, this year, so far has been Hollywoods biggest year in terms of ticket sales/profit in the cinemas.
"An increase in ticket prices also helped boost January's box office. The average ticket price was $7.29 last month, up from $7.18 a year ago. But attendance surged in spite of the higher cost. Audiences bought 141 million movie tickets in January, up 16% from the 121 million sold during the same month last year."
Yep, that internet stuff, really killing the movie business.
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He complained the Internet has “created this notion that anyone can have whatever they want at any given time. It’s as if the stores on Madison Avenue were open 24 hours a day."
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And this idiot gets paid millions of dollars a year!
I didn't see your response until this had fallen off my "comments" list, and since I'm sure very few people will read this comment now, I'm going to forego the detailed response.
You can catch me via email (check my profile) and I'll take a SWAG at an answer; if you find the answer remotely compelling, I'll turn it into a blog post and thank you for the prod.
The Internet is people. It's a much less formal place for interaction than something like a bureaucratic corporate system. But both are just people, and good things come from people.
Nina Paley released Sita Sings The Blues under Creative Commons because nobody was able to watch her film because studios like Sony Pictures passed her up. Roger Ebert called it one of his favorite films. It's a hilarious and moving movie that I wouldn't have seen if it hadn't been placed online.
Nina Paley isn't the Internet. She's an animator. But the Internet is where she released her movie. I'll also say that it's better than anything Sony Pictures has released in a long, long while. (sitasingstheblues.com for the interested.)
Actually not at all, This year has so far been the biggest year on record for Hollywood in terms of ticket sales.
The thing that's sucking for them, is that budgets for movies are going way up so that they can compete with other studios (its a budget arms race) and the markets unfortunately can't cope with that.
It's hurting their bottom line, but it's their own damn fault.
He's complaining that "the big evil internet" is killing their business, because more people are consuming more media.
Yet however, the actual data shows that ticket sales in cinema are actually going up, but not at the same rate of consumption of those films. The people that had no intention of paying top shelf price for those films are not.
Yet the budgets for films have gone way up so that these studio's can compete with each other. Yet, the growth of ticket sales hasn't grown at the same rate (while rentals have stayed fairly static, just the distribution channels have changed somewhat) - so their profit margins have become less.
So he's complaining that the people who had no intention of paying to see those films, are not paying to see those films and because they've chosen to raise the budgets of those films significantly, its killing their business.
Films like Titanic and Waterworld were notoriously expensive for their time. Now that's considered nearly an average budget for a blockbuster - inflation sure as hell hasn't gone up by that much, and costs of actual production have gone down with going to digital media, digital editing etc....
What they really need to focus on, is less extravagant budgets. Take a leaf out of the book of TV.
Lost, which is a notoriously expensive TV show to produce, cost $44 million dollars for the first season which consisted of 25 episodes at 44 minutes running time each... or roughly 0.04 million dollars per minute of entertainment for the end viewer.
Similarly, lets look at Spiderman 3.. Sony Pictures most expensive film, $258 million dollars cost with a running time of 139 minutes, or 1.86 million dollars per minute of entertainment for the end viewer.
See the big divide there? It's really a function of cost of production.
You said their business model wasn't at all being made obsolete. Now you're saying they need to take a page from TV and focus on less extravagant budgets to survive? I guess if you just mean they'll still make movies, then sure.
The dollar per minute figures are slightly misleading, because if you took just the first couple of episodes of Lost, the number would be much higher. The pilot cost $10 to $14 million to produce. That's about 0.14 million dollars per minute. Of course the average cost goes down as more episodes of the same show are made. That's why they filmed some movies (like LOTR and the Pirates sequels, I think) back-to-back.
Umm, no, the business model is fundamentally sound, it's just they need to reduce unnecessary costs which they've increased themselves.
In the case of the LOTR and Pirates sequels being filmed back to back, that was a situation consisting of continuity more than anything because the story is an ongoing saga.
If you look at that list of most expensive films ever made, the Pirates sequels come in at number 1 and 4... I don't think budget considerations were part of the equation.
(Also take note, Lord of the Rings isn't on there anywhere, because Pete Jackson reduced costs by setting up Weta Digital to do lots of their special effects inhouse. The cost of the entire trilogy was $285 million, less than the cost of the third Pirates movie)
Last I heard, Disney were considering making a 4th "Pirates" film, and given the subject matter (probably the fountain of youth as was suggested at the end of At Worlds End) - it might be another extravagant budget as well.
Also, in your argument of pilots vs ongoing costs, have you ever wondered how much of that is due to cost of sets?
With TV, generally they're re-using sets over and over, so of course the cost goes down, because the cost per episode is reduced.
With Film, the medium calls for lots of "throwaway" shots, which means lots and lots of sets.
Consider your average Michael Bay film, they might have explosions that cost several hundred thousand dollars each, yet are only 1 or 2 seconds of onscreen action and they might film them several times if there are any major faults.
But at the end of the day, it's all time wasting entertainment. I'd watch 6 episodes of Frasier (which were relatively cheap to produce) over a generic Michael Bay film any day - so why should the latter cost orders of magnitude more to produce? It's the same amount of entertainment for the viewer.
I'm pretty sure budget considerations were part of the equation. Why take a gamble by committing to two or more big-budget movies at once? If the Pirates sequels had been filmed separately, they would've cost even more to make.
As for the sets in TV shows, yes, exactly. And though perhaps not to the same extent as it's done in TV, they do reuse sets in films.
Edit: In answer to your question about Frasier vs. Michael Bay films, it's because not everyone has taste as good as yours. ;)
Well, Pirates of the Caribbean has been a Disneyland staple attraction since the 1950's, so they've got nearly 50 years of data to go on, on whether they should continue it or not - it's exactly why they made the first film.
When you consider how much the first film made, given it's actual cost (and the acclaim Depp got for his character) - the 2nd and 3rd weren't really that much of a gamble, but one that ultimately paid off.
The film industry isn't entirely an exact science, WALL-E for example had an entirely different ending which Pixar redid after it's first screening, after Andrew Stanton realised he had made an error in the way the story flows.
You also have major blunders - Waterworld anyone? It cost nearly double the budget that was set aside for it and it's gross revenue was barely more than that. The budget doesn't take into account the marketing costs, so money was lost on that film.
That's my point. A big-budget film is a big risk. Film studios wouldn't take on the added risk of two or more big-budget movies at once without a good reason. The benefit is that it saves money in production, so they do it when the financial success of the sequel(s) is close to a sure thing.
What about your average romantic comedy, especially those horrible ones with Hugh Grant - They have little more production value than a Frasier episode.
I would definitely pay to go see Kelsey Grammer and David Hyde Pierce in a Frasier movie.
Probably he is only aiming for eternal fame. That quote might go around for centuries, like the "we estimate the global demand for computers to about 3 units" one.
I also wonder how much additional merchandise they're also selling as a result of this global marketplace?
Similarly, netflix has boosted rentals of their movies by how much?
And lets not forget the direct download rentals aswell, off stores like iTunes.
It's not as if the Internet is making much of a dent on their bottom lines (in terms of ticket sales), I mean, this year, so far has been Hollywoods biggest year in terms of ticket sales/profit in the cinemas.
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/feb/02/business/fi-boxoffic...
Quote from the article:
"An increase in ticket prices also helped boost January's box office. The average ticket price was $7.29 last month, up from $7.18 a year ago. But attendance surged in spite of the higher cost. Audiences bought 141 million movie tickets in January, up 16% from the 121 million sold during the same month last year."
Yep, that internet stuff, really killing the movie business.