highlights & comments

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  In the case of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, New Line covered almost the entire cost by using a combination of German tax shelters, New Zealand subsidies, British subsidies, and pre-sales.

  4 months ago · Like · 0 likes · Share
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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  Second, it arranged to have part of the film shot in Britain so that it would qualify for Section 48 tax relief. This allowed it to make a sale-lease-back transaction with the British Lombard Bank through which (on paper only) Lara Croft: Tomb Raider was sold to British investors, who collected a multimillion subsidy from the British government, and then sold it back to Paramount via a lease and option for less than Paramount paid (in effect, giving it a share of the tax-relief subsidy). Through this financial alchemy in Britain, Paramount netted, up front, a cool $12 million.

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  For the most part, stars do not tell these tall tales of daredevilism on television out of either personal dishonesty, vanity, or egoism. It is their job to play a character in publicity appearances, just as it is the job of studios to hype their movies.

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  Schwarzenegger’s lawyer Jacob Bloom is without peer in the entertainment business

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  The studios’ business nowadays is entirely driven by huge franchises that serve as worldwide licensing platforms.

  4 months ago · Like · 1 like · Share

  • 
    Aaron Kelly

    Sigh.

    4 months ago
• 
  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  At this point, after the theatrical release, the $103.4 million movie was about $95 million in the red.

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  No matter how great their acting skills and box office drawing power, stars cannot get lead roles if they are uninsurable. Great acting skills and box office drawing power may make the star, but insurance is what it takes to make the movie.

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  The skill that movie executives have honed over the years is audience-creation. Even if it takes $30 to 50 million to herd teens to the multiplexes, and the movie fails to earn back that outlay, they hope it will lead to a future franchise. To abandon that hope means the end of Hollywood, as they know it.

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  Audience-creation is a very expensive enter-prise—in 2007 the studios’ average cost for advertising a film was $35.9 million.

  6 months ago · Like · 0 likes · Share
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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  The Hollywood studios tried to counter television with technology dazzle, including wider screens (CinemaScope), noisier speakers (surround sound), and more visually exciting special effects, but technology did nothing to stem the mass defections.

  6 months ago · Like · 0 likes · Share
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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  In 1948, 65 percent of the population went to a movie house in an average week; in 2008, under 6 percent of the population went to see a movie in an average week.

  6 months ago · Like · 0 likes · Share

  • 
    Aaron Kelly

    Wow.

    4 months ago
• 
  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  In the New Hollywood, as far as studios are concerned, no nudes is good news.

  6 months ago · Like · 0 likes · Share
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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  For a film to play in movie theaters belonging to the National Association of Theater Owners—which includes all the multiplexes in America—it first needs to obtain a rating from a board organized by the Motion Picture Association of America, the trade association of the six major studios. All the expenses for rating movies are paid to the MPAA by the studio out of a percentage deducted from box office receipts.

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• 
  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  “The real secret is the salt.” As a veteran of the movie exhibition business, he explained that the more salt that a movie theater added to the butter it poured over its popcorn, the more money it made since it drove customers back to the concession stand for drinks—where they buy more popcorn. Stephenson concurred, adding, “We are in a very high-margin retail business.”

  6 months ago · Like · 0 likes · Share
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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  While they voiced some concern about the proximity of July’s Armageddon, in which the earth is on a fatal collision path with an asteroid, with Paramount and DreamWorks’ Deep Impact, in which the world is on a fatal collision path with a comet, they had an ingenious scheme for differentiating their product. Holding up a rectangular box, their executives explained that it contained a kit that would help theater managers to build a mock asteroid. Disney planned to distribute this package to theaters playing Armageddon and award prizes to theater managers who used it to create the most forbidding cosmic rock.

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  “They all tend to blur together,” he said, and plots were never described. Instead, the accompanying pitches identified them in such jargon as “Clearasil” (coming-of-age), “genre” (teen-age horror), “romantic comedy” (love story), “ethnic” (black characters), “franchise” (the carbon-copy sequel of another film), and “catastrophe” (volcano, comet/asteroid/monster, loud sound effects). The Holy Grail was a film like Titanic, which appealed to all five quadrants.

  6 months ago · Like · 0 likes · Share
• 
  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  For example, regarding Godzilla, the executive outlined the enormous marketing campaign, supported by worldwide licensees of three thousand Godzilla products, as well as promotional tie-ins with such retail partners as Taco Bell, Sprint, Swatch, Hershey’s, Duracell, Kirin beer, and Kodak, which were designed to drive a huge and voracious audience of teen-age boys to their theaters. This particular audience, as he described it, was not concerned with the quality of the film, or even whether it was in focus, as long as there was action and popcorn.

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  Soft drinks are an important part of the movie business. All the seats in Stephenson’s new theater, and most other multiplexes, are now equipped with their own cup holders, a feature that theater executives consider one of the most groundbreaking innovations in movie-theater history.

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  The major studios spent, on average, $19.2 million in 1997 to advertise each of their films

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  Like all theater owners, though, he has a second business: snack foods, in which the profit margin is well over 80 percent. And with the snack foods, Hollywood Theaters made a profit of $22.4 million on the sale of $26.7 million from its concession stands. “Every element in the lobby,” Stephenson told me, “is designed to focus the attention of the customer on its menu boards.”

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  Of the $50 million customers that paid for tickets in 1997, he said his 450-screen chain, Hollywood Theaters, kept only $23 million; most of the rest went to the distributors. But, he continued, since it cost $31.2 million to pay the operating costs of the theaters, his company would have lost $8.2 million if it were limited to the movie-exhibition business.

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  Aaron Kelly highlighted

  The only useful thing that the newspaper box office story really provides is bragging rights

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