By Leonard Klady Klady@moviecitynews.com

Studio Market Share 2014

Posted Monday, January 12th, 2015 - Comments Off on Studio Market Share 2014
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Domestic box office ended the year with a $10.43 billion tally, a 5% downturn from the prior twelve months. Actual admissions will dip for 2014 by roughly 7%.

Bragging rights went to 20th Century Fox, releases from which accounted for $1.79 billion and a market share of 17.1%. It was also a boost for the studio that had finished last among the traditional majors a year ago. With eight of its releases grossing in excess of $100 million, Fox saw its box office expand by 69%.

None of the majors saw a comparable boost or dip, with Universal taking the hardest hit of 22%. But that’s market share, not at all related to profitability. Universal’s lineup was absent a significant sequel or a potential tentpole and a slate of modestly-produced films such as Neighbors and Ride Along crafted a highly profitable year.

Conversely while Sony’s box office experienced an 11% boost its franchise titles fell short of expectations as well as such new releases as the RoboCop sequel and Sex Tape. Matters for that studio were not helped by the hacking of its internal security systems and the curtailed release of The Interview.

2014’s top title was Guardians of the Galaxy, with $332.9 million. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay–Part 1 ranked second with $313.3 million but is poised to beat Guardians‘  total from spillover business in 2015. Seven of the top 10 big grossers were sequels, while one of the originals, The Lego Movie, has already lined up multiple extensions and sequels.

Overall the independents experienced market shrinkage. The anomaly was IFC, whose fortunes turned on a single box office hit,  Oscar-touted Boyhood. But the likes of the Weinstein Company and Open Road respectively failed to maximize the perceived potential of such films as The Giver and Nightcrawler.

While the multiple platform release of The Interview was neither well plotted nor organized, it might well hold out the prospect of some intentional simultaneous theatrical/pay-per-view releases of films by the majors. However, for the near future such experiments are likely to be confined to marginal productions … unless some alarming financial situation transpires. The industry historically hates change unless it’s confronted with catastrophe.

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon