THB #93: The Batman (no spoilers)
| March 6, 2022
“Let’s give the studios the benefit of the doubt that in this instance they can charge a ‘theater tax’: this first wave of premium VOD titles were understood to be coming to theaters, so maybe consumers will appreciate they are paying for the privilege of watching these movies in their homes. But keeping prices artificially high beyond the near future will be increasingly difficult for studios aiming to keep their margins as large as possible at a time that their core business has collapsed. The traditional system of windowed releasing that consumers have come to expect for theatrical distribution is already a fairly flimsy construct in the digital age; as the next wave of premium VOD titles are made available, the notion that they command some kind of higher price point at a time when streaming services are offering similar titles for far cheaper is going to become a problem. The PVOD-SVOD price disparity is getting more absurd. You can get multiple movies with production costs well north of $100 million along with everything else on Netflix for $12.99, but then pay $20 for studio titles that aren’t A-level output?”
The Devaluation of Entertainment Returns In Earnest, With The Question, How Long Will Households Pay $20 For New Movies That Would Cost A Family Of Four $100 Or So Just To Go Out The Door? (PW)
-30-
May 1, 2022
"Netflix, the great disrupter whose algorithms and direct-to-consumer platform have forced powerful media incumbents to rethink their economic models, now seems to need a big strategy change itself. It got me thinking about the simple idea that my film and TV production company Blumhouse is built on: If you give artists a lot of creative freedom and a little money upfront but a big stake in the movie’s or TV show’s commercial success, more often than not the result will be both commercial (the filmmakers are incentivized to make films that will resonate with audiences) and artistically interesting (creative freedom!). This approach has yielded movies as varied as Get Out (made for $4.5 million, with worldwide box office receipts of more than $250 million), Whiplash (made for $3.3 million, winner of three Academy Awards), The Invisible Man (made for $7 million, earned more than $140 million) and Paranormal Activity (made for $15,000, grossed more than $190 million).From the beginning, the most important strategy I used to persuade artists to work with me was to make radically transparent deals: We usually paid the artists (“participants” in Hollywood lingo) the absolute minimum allowable by union contracts upfront, with the promise of healthy bonuses based on actual box office results—instead of the opaque 'percentage points' that artists are usually offered. Anyone can see box office results immediately, so creators don’t quarrel with the payouts. In fact, when it comes time for an artist to collect a bonus based on box office receipts, I email a video clip of myself dropping the check off at FedEx to the recipient."
Jason Blum Sees Room For "Scrappier" Netflix
| April 30, 2022
"As a critic Gavin was entertaining, wry, questioning, sensitive, perceptive"
Critic-Filmmaker Gavin Millar Was 84; Films Include Cream In My Coffee, Dreamchild
April 29, 2022
| January 24, 2022
DP/30 Audio: Bombshell, Jay Roach
| December 13, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Last Black Man in San Francisco, Jonathan Majors
| December 4, 2019
DP/30 Audio: The Mustang, Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre
| December 4, 2019
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