I am fascinated that Dan Glickman, in giving his annual State of The Union report to reporters and then exhibitors at ShoWest, did NOT give a number for costs of production and marketing.
His excuse – which is not unreasonable on its face – was that there are so many co-production deals now that these numbers were inherently incorrect. But this was true last year and the year before as well.
What’s the truth?
Fewer of the highest production cost films were made last year. The middle class of productions were about the same. And the biggest dip in the number of films released by studios last year were in the Dependent sector… the cheapest group. As a result, even with some improvement on the big overspending, the average for the industry would have to be significantly higher for the loss of the low end.
Between WIP, Searchlight, Focus, and Rogue, there were 7 fewer films, plus New Line/Picturehouse had 13 fewer releases and MGM has 7 fewer releases. That’s the entire drop of 27 films released by studios from 2007 to 2008. Miramax released 8 films both years.
Sony Classics and Paramount Classics added 2 films to the 2008 list of releases from 2007.
WB actually cut its release slate by 8 films… though it released 6 New Line films, so the studio’s reduction ended up being, on paper, only 2 films.
Paramount had 2 fewer releases. Sony had 5 fewer releases. Fox had 4 more releases. Disney had 13 releases both years. Universal had 18 releases both years.
Somehow, I seem to be missing a reduction of 3 films somewhere… what would be really interesting would be if MPAA wasn’t counting the two Marvel movies and LucasFilm’s animated release, both of which were self-funded by the producers. But I don’t know if that is the case.
Anyway… you get my drift…
These numbers have been artificially low for many, many years. The real number for the average cost of a major studio release, both in production and in P&A, have seemed to be at least 50% lower than reality for as long as I can remember.
And Glickman/MPAA biting the bullet this year makes sense, because it is going to be even weirder next year, when you see another drop in the number of titles released by the majors

One doesn’t expect “Domestic Violence, Pt 1″ to be so refreshing. But Frederick Wiseman’s 2001 six and a half hour document of a shelter in Tampa, FL is so square that it’s spectacularly hip in this era of the Look At Me doc. No narration, no music, no director’s statement of position, no structured timeline… just slices of reality, bursts really… the most vivid and simple and human emotions coming at you in wave after wave.
Wow. Radical!

Traveling and finding myself responding to blog flames more than once, I pondered how to proceed. I really enjoy engaging in discussions, especially when people have differing opinions. But far too often, it has become a discussion that digresses into personal attacks. And who needs that?
Then an idea struck me… ban myself from Hot Blog comments.
And so begins the experiment…
For the next month, those of you who comment are on your own. I’m not going to be joining you – though I will read you – in the ongoing conversation. I will write what I want to write. And then, the floor is yours.
Perhaps I will do a weekly entry answering specific questions that have come up… or something like that. I’m not sure. Like I said… it is an experiment.
If things get out of hand, I will be lurking around and will suspend commenters if I feel it is necessary… which I hope it will not be, given that the first time I ever suspended anyone was just a couple of months ago… and if I do feel forced to do any of that, I won’t be blogging about that either.
Anyway… thanks for adding your two cents. See you in comments in a month.

The spark started in yesterday’s box office conversation, based on the notion that the worst five performances against openings of more than $50m were “niche” films… this based on what seems to be the fact that Watchmen will be the worst multiple (under 2.13x) in history vs opening weekend ($55.2m open… under $117.6 total).
One of the five was Spider-Man 3, which as I quickly pointed out when called on it, was an anomaly. And it, obviously, is.
And so the discussion – occasionally interrupted by insanity – was about what “niche” means now… would it include Indiana Jones, etc.
So here is my take… and as always, you are welcome to offer yours (hopefully, without the insanity):
Niche is when you can see that one portion of the audience clearly overwhelms all of the others… even when you hope that it will expand past that group. The idea of the “quadrant” has been around forever, but has really lost its meaning, as it is not nearly specific enough in the recent market. The “niche” is a section of a quadrant. It doesn’t have to be defined by age or sex, but when you look at each niche, they usually are one sex or the other, one age group that bulges outside of historic ideas, etc.
So… when Iron Man does expand past that niche, great for them. When The Incredible Hulk does not, it should not really be a surprise.
Historically, movies were made for a price that made films that cracked their niche to be hugely profitable. This is what has changed so dramatically. Because of the mega-success of some niche product, studios have chased those niches as though they were 3 or 4 quadrant draws.
The result of this is, in part, that a film that doesn

Wow… that’s called burying the lead!
Dawn C. Chmielewski at the LA Times did a story today that is, perhaps, the most important story to the film industry in the last two years. Stop obsessing on frickin’ 3D and the overhyped box office boom and take a look at this.
Let me step backwards for a second to let you know why I see this as a huge landmark (which I am embarrassed to say I didn’t know about for 6 years and 12,900 kiosks that this company has been in operation).
The economics of a movie are;
Theatrical = the most dollars per pair of eyeballs
DVD sales = a stable price per sale, with unknown # of eyeballs per sale
DVD rental = a stable price per sale with maximized numbers of eyeballs per sale, but in some cases, revenues returned to studios on a formula that approximates a per-rental basis.
Pay-Per-View = a strong number for each sale, but very, very limited number of buyers
Internet Free Stream = no revenue except for savings from unions & ad sales
Internet Paid Stream/download = smaller than PPV revenue per unit and even more limited sales
Other Ancillaries = getting smaller every year
What percentage of the pie each area has made up has changed year to year. There was a period during which DVD sales were significantly higher than theatrical revenues… and then added more dollars from the rentals. But as DVD sales have dropped for theatrical movies – and please, keep in mind that this is not this year

So now… Sharon Waxman does another piece about Nikki Finke that is both overly generous and not generous enough. Nikki responds with vague splatter.
As I explained before, none of the “reporting” bureaus actually know anyone’s real traffic. They are based on surveys of a very limited number of people. Sharon’s holy grail that she is using in this analysis is Quantcast, whose numbers must be suspect based exclusively on the information offered by the site. For instance, Variety’s traffic peaks in late December… not. They estimate that 605,709 people visit Variety each month… and that they generate only 750,190 visits. Uh, no again.
Of course, I can tell you that regarding MCN, the numbers are off. But more odd, the website that has the second highest affinity with MCN, after Variety, is something called “canhegetit” which seems to be a gay site with porn bent. What that suggests to me is that someone who comes to MCN a lot and who is on their survey list, also likes gay porn. But I don’t think this is a clear definition of our primary readership or which sites they most frequent. In addition… they claim we have 41,966 monthly readers… but 0 visits per month. Oy.
What amuses me, however, is that Nikki (and others) has forever been screaming about the Alexa ratings as regards this site… and I have been explaining forever that Alexa’s rankings come from Google toolbars and MCN’s heavily industry readership clearly does not rock many Alexa toolbars. Didn’t faze her. And then Sharon throws Quantcast’s b.s. at her and the world has come to an end. Love that.
(I shouldn’t be surprised… I used to get nasty e-mail from Nikki on a regular basis complaining about my temerity in commenting on other journalist’s work… something she’d never do. Until, of course, it was in her interest. I still do it for the same reasons I always have: 1) because if we dish it out, we should be able to take it (when it’s actually about the work), and 2) in the hope of unearthing more accuracy.)
As for Nikki, I broke down what her traffic really looks like earlier this week. Its not rocket science. And the notion that Charlie Koones was willing to drop $500,000 on buying Nikki’s site is a hoot. But to answer the question that Sharon has posed to her by someone at Variety, no, hiring another reporter instead of buying Nikki would not make a lot of sense for Variety. Nikki gets more attention than any one reporter or critic, however disgusting the attention. At the same time, thinking that Nikki could be monetized by Variety is also absurd.
But Sharon… really… learn what facts are facts and which ones are guesses. Throwing around web ratings and getting sucking into the “uniques” vs page views thing (or worse… not even considering it) is extremely weak tea. Think about the notion of Variety actually having 600,000 readers, instead of 60,000 in any given month, which is probably around the realistic number of actual people. Same with Nikki’s alleged 200,000 readers… most of who come up on Quantcast and Alexa and others via Drudge, not via regular readership.
Of course, it is in Sharon’s interest to believe in these tracking services because Quantcast is already claiming that The Wrap has over 100,000 readers… which is obviously inaccurate. Meanwhile, Alexa has traffic for The Wrap behind not only MCN, but behind The Hot Blog as a standalone, while Quantcast doesn’t have enough data to analyze The Hot Blog, but has MCN with less than half the readers of The Wrap.
It’s all a messy, blurry joke, folks. One that is probably costing me money. But still… the numbers are a jumbled mess that have people self-selecting which services they choose to believe because of which ones make them look better. I choose “none.” But I certainly would never hold any site up or down based on these random and often inaccurate surveys.
Finally, Nikki showed her truest colors in a post yesterday…
NBC Security Freaks Over Research Leak, in which she gloats about the effort to secure test screening research from the press, and in this particular case, Nikki, who ran it in full with the intent to harm and no insight whatsoever.
Do you get it, writers? She is not your friend. If her ego is fed by chasing Ben Silverman around – always via whatever source has been after him from the start of his tenure and has fed Nikki every single piece – then the writers of Parks & Recreation be damned. Nor does she care about the actors in the show… or the many other union employees of NBC, etc, etc, etc. And caring about journalism… HA! Nikki cares about Nikki. Nikki cares about being respected… even more so when she least deserves it. Nikki fears being found out to be the con artist that she has always been – which is why she has never been able to hold a job in her long career – and fear is her only tool.
It’s not funny, people. It’s not just about embarrassing the bosses, who are such easy targets. This person is the embodiment of everything she claims to be against… except for one small element… she’s ever done anything of value in her entire career… not one insight that has ever meant anything… not one contribution that has actually improved anyone’s lot in life beyond the momentary thrill of shaking your fist at the giants.
I am going to keep beating this drum because it’s what I do… and because, in the end, however boring, it’s really important. It takes a village to raise our standards. Let’s not be too lazy to do so.