Blockbusters are Doomed

On The Long Tail blog, Chris has posted a great, crunchy, stats-rich piece on the death of the Hollywood blockbuster. According to Chris's research, the proportion of Hollywood's money coming from blockbusters is falling, while the cost of making blockbusters is up, and the number of people going to blockbusters is falling. It doesn't take a psychic to see that this means trouble for Hollywood, which has been mainlining $200MM box-office turds for half a decade now.

[T]he fraction of total box office that comes from the blockbusters (top 25 films) has been steadily falling, even as the cost of making those films (expressed here as a percentage of total box office revenue) has been rising.

Bottom line: even in Hollywood, the home of the blockbuster, hits are losing their power. It's not nearly as dire as in music, but it's trending in the same direction. Does this mean the end of movies? Not at all--there have never been more films made, just as there has never been more music available than today, despite the fact that the bestsellers sell less.

It's not that people aren't watching films and listening to music, it's that they're watching different films and different music--we're just not following the herd to the same hits the way we used to. I'd guess that most of the decline in box office is due to the rise of the DVD, not a loss of interest in movies. Likewise for music, where the ubiquitous white earbuds suggest that music has never been a bigger part of our culture, despite the fact that CD sales are back to mid-90s levels.

I squeed about this elsewhere, but as a PSA:

Sony Pictures just released The Cary Grant Box Set. [link]

It contains Holiday, Only Angels Have Wings, The Talk of the Town, His Girl Friday, and The Awful Truth. I'm particularly excited about Holiday, which has never been released on DVD before. The extras are apparently not that great, but who cares? Five of best Grant comedies for $35! I would have paid as much for Holiday alone.

Originality is doomed

Paramount rejected a recent project that had attached stars, an approved script, and a bankable director by telling the producer, "It's a terrific idea; too bad it has not been made into a movie already or we could have done the remake." Studios today tend to greenlight four types of movies for wide openings: remakes, sequels, television spinoffs, or video-game extensions.

The fuckheads at Paramount apparently need to read the article tommyrot just linked to.

We're ALL DOOMED! DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!!!

You're just saying that because we're all doomed.

The fuckheads at Paramount apparently need to read the article tommyrot just linked to.

Yes.

And then they should give me money.

DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMED

llama....

The comments on the Long Tail blog make the point about the misuse of the data in the Blockbusters Are Doomed! post that I would make. The biggest problem is confusing B.O. receipts with the success of a movie. B.S. As Edward Jay Epstein notes, ticket sales provide less than 20% of the studios' revenues. [link] After the advertising, studios are losing money on ticket sales. [link] But that doesn't matter. They are making their money on the ancillary sales-- DVD and TV. So, yes, the proportion of cost to box office is up-- but what that means is not that blockbusters are going anywhere, merely that B.O. is simply not the bellwether it used to be. Keep in mind also that it's in the studio's interest to make more money off the ancillaries than off the B.O.-- they have to share that with the exhibitors and profit participants. But the DVD and TV business is not shared to that extent.