The Hot Blog Archive for October, 2009
Movie Biz Myopia
It drives me CRAZY… all the time… when smart writers who have been around forever get involved in trend stories that so utterly miss the point they are trying to explain. I just don’t f-ing get what the major malfunction is.
Well, maybe I do… a bit. Hollywood’s journalistic corps have a very bad tendency to get sucked into believing the bullshit being fed to them by studio execs, agents, and idiot financial analysts and then, when something happens, they see the story in the reflection of the bullshit, unable to get any real perspective on what’s happening.
And so, Michael Cieply writes a story like, “The Skinnier Look of Studio Management,” which somehow takes the various firings and reductions of The Seismic Industry Economic Destruction of the lack of anticipation of the DVD downturn by the studios and turns it into some silly (and essentially inaccurate) bit about head count at studios.
Can a guy who has been around as long as Cieply really believe that John Lesher was dumped by the man who hired him as the result of the studio making a strategic choice to make fewer movies? Is he kidding? The absolute failure of John Lesher as big studio chief followed directly on the heels of significant, but not absolute failure of Lesher as Dependent chief. But the reason he was fired was the same reason he was hired… to provide cover for the boss. And why hasn’t Paramount ramped up production under Brad Grey in the ENTIRE time he has been in the job? Well, good question. But it’s not a strategy of 2009.
Disney is a completely different thing. Bob Iger has decided on a major shift in corporate strategy. But getting rid of Dick Cook was most certainly NOT about getting rid of a salary or head count. Like Lesher and Universal’s Shmuger & Linde, there will be massive payouts for years to come to get rid of these guys… if there is any financial malfeasance, it would be in how recklessly the post-firing deals are made and how many tens of millions are thrown away on execs that studios either no longer wish to follow or who are massive failures.
And about Universal… again… the notion that dumping Linde & Shmuger was some sort of $ issue is just plain stupid. For one thing, both of the jobs that Langley and Fogelson had will be filled… and on down the line. But moreover, the idea that firing the co-chiefs was about their salaries in any way… really… are you kidding? Does the NYT know how little money their salaries are in the big picture? Let me put it this way… NYT is bleeding more red ink quarterly than double the combined annual salaries of those two men… and life goes on…
And was I clear enough? The move to move two top execs up, much like the same exact move that brought in the regime that this new one is replacing, is about covering Ron Meyer’s ass. It is not like the LA Times making Betsey Sharkey (and I really don’t mean to be picking on you, Betsey) a film critic because she already had a job slot with TribCo and so they didn’t need to manipulate a way to hire from outside. (This is also how Turan’s previous partner, Ms Chocano, was slotted in as film critic, having already taken a slot as TV critic.) This is Meyer, in a time of pressure, dumping his familiar old guys to bring in some new familiar slightly less old guys to show that they are not going to make the same mistakes again. That’s what the top dogs do.
And the New Line dump… again… not about dumping bodies… about a short-sighted idea of how to tighten things up as the division was having a couple of rough years after being an absolute cash cow for the previous five. And as it turned out, was a major profit center in 2009 for WB – with films made by the old team – after the company was absorbed into the bigger studio.
And this crazy irrelevance about whether Horn and Meyer will be replaced by one person instead of two… Cieply has been around long enough to know that the guys they replaced, Semel & Daly, were the only two man show in their day. It worked. And WB maintained the tradition when they left. But the idea that it will or will not continue based on payroll considerations is just plain dumb.
Seriously… Fox is the fattest studio in town by this standard, not just with a two-man crew leading the studio, but with divisions below and across. Is Cieply going to theorize that Peter Rice was not replaced, as such, at Searchlight because they didn’t want to pay someone? Crazy. He was not replaced because the machine was built so that it could keep going and going effectively without him and with the team he worked with and showed complete respect to during his tenure. And if it ever crashed and burned… guess what… they would go find their next Peter Rice.
Vantage was shuttered because it lost a shitload of money. Warner Indie was shuttered because it was never a serious interest of the larger company and it lost the big studio in-house talent that needed a Dependent platform. Miramax is going small because the “middle business” is not anyplace anyone wants to be and Battsek can do 90% of what he’s been doing without that part of the business in place. And the definition of what Focus will continue to be is being defined daily now.
Studios are shrinking because they got FFFAAAATTTT. But people, even very expensive people, are the cheapest commodity in the movie business. If your movie studio is going through $1.5 billion in production and marketing a year, a $5 million salary is NOT going to change the dynamic or the bottom line much.
Yes, it matters a lot to the people who have those salaries and are dead afraid that those jobs will be going away. (Well, mostly THEIR jobs going away scares them. Fuck everyone else.) The same overhype is true when studios push back against out of control agents demands and want to pay huge, but almost reasonable prices for talent. “Woe is us… the whole business is collapsing…” Silly. A $8 million payday against only 6% of the gross instead of $20 million plus 8% is not the end of anyone’s world, even if it means that someone who is already too wealthy can’t buy their 4th vacation house in cash this year.
None of the big executive salaries cut end up trickling down to people who work for a living… under $400k. Never!
You know, ass covering and tap dancing and fear of losing the platinum diamond-studded ring is part of the game and really, I don’t mind it that much. It is what it is. But using that whining to distract NYT readers from the very real change that is coming/here that does/will have a major impact on everyone and the general disposition of movies that reach the public just pisses me off.
There was nothing shocking about The Hangover getting made… except that studios were making so many similarly dumb comedies for twice and three times the budget! Why?!?! I’m not taking anything away from the success of that film. But that is why they have always done cheap comedies. When they pay off, they are massive successes. (Todd Phillips personal payday will be over $45 million on the film.) But the question is not about trying to make more films like that one, but why any comedies are made for more than the $38 million that one was made for.
But media so often gets distracted by the wrong question. The idea of Hangover 2 being made is a no-brainer. That ship has sailed. It’s a distraction. Imitation is death. But what steps will studios take to put themselves in position for the next one… the one they don’t see coming… because no one can see them all coming, just as no one can see all the ones that miss.
It will not be about how much the person in the job makes or how many persons are in the job slot. And that you can take to the bank.
Weekend Estimates by Klady – Oct 25
Paranormal has clearly found normal, holding for what is estimated to be 3x Friday over the weekend… which is better than most horror genre films do. More congrats to Paramount marketing.
As for WTWTA, not sensational, but not deadly. You have to go back to July to find a movie other than Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs that opened to $30m or more and dropped less than 49% in the second weekend. My sense is that its still rather blurry about who the movie is for. But the door is closing on WB after this next weekend. $80m domestic is going to be a fight and foreign is going to define whether the film is profitable.
The most interesting number on the board, for me, is $1.3m for Aida Live… 1 screening… 4 hours long… in just 403 theaters. I have never been much of a believer in event programming satellited to theaters. But this is very interesting.
There is a certain amusement about An Education and AntiChrist having about the same per screen.
Friday Estimates by Klady – pre-Halloween
The Friday before Halloween is stunningly consistent for horror/kill movies… $14 million has been the magic number. It started before Saw ever happened.
2002 – The Ring (wknd 2) & Ghost Ship – $10.2m – interrupted a little by Jackass opening
2003 – Scary Movie 3 & Texas Chainsaw Massacre (wknd 2)- expanded by comedy
2004 – The Grudge (wknd 2) & Saw – $14.2m
2005 – Saw II & The Fog (wknd 3) – $13.1m
2006 – Saw III & Grudge 2 (wknd 3) – $15.6m
2007 – Saw IV & 30 Days Of Night (wknd 2)- $17m
2008 – Saw V – $14m
So… $14m for Paranormal Activity & Saw VI combined is not terribly surprising. The question was always how those dollars would be split up and whether the duo would expand the market.
Lionsgate can’t be happy. And really, Paramount may have cost both companies money by doing their big expansion directly against the Saw franchise… but not for sure. Paranormal is a created phenom and how the timing works on it is, honestly, a bit of a mystery. What works works… what doesn’t doesn’t. And this is already a win for Spielberg & Paramount Marketing.
Astroboy and Amelia should not be too surprising to anyone either. Astro is an improvement on the Fly Me To The Moon opening, but they also spent a load more on marketing and there is a known character, even if the young generation has no idea who he is. But it’s easier to sell Iron Man meets Pinocchio than astronaut insects.
But Universal’s flop with Cirque du Freak seems like a seriously missed opportunity. Yeah, the world is a bot vampired out. But the film never seemed to find a clear sell. And that’s always a bad thing.
And let’s not go crazy on the WTWTA drop. It is not a great hold. It will get better over the whole weekend. But it is also going right into the face of two new strong openings, plus Astro.
BYOB Monday
Been drivin’…
Salinas is beautiful.
Review: Amelia
I take no joy in participating in the disappearance of Amelia. I like Mira Nair and her work. Even though she is the most surprising 2-time-Oscar-winner in history, Hilary Swank seemed to be once again well cast for an oddball role. And really, Richard Gere was a pretty good call too, though perhaps he remains a little too good-looking for it not to obscure a barely-there turn by Ewan McGregor.
But the movie feels like no one was on instruments, guiding the thing to someplace safe.
The accents by both Swank and Gere, are legendarily bad
Soupy Sails Away
Soupy Sales was one of those legendary characters of television who I was a little late to discover, missing the full impact of his magic. But from the first time anyone got an eyeful of that smile and that gentle, goofy energy, you had to love the guy.
I was unaware of it at the time, but he was the distinctly Jewish uncle any kid might want. He was silly, happy to be the butt of jokes, and while undeniably a grownup, one of us. I know it may seem a little odd to note his jewishness with Jewish performers dominating so much of early television, but so many of “us” were trying to be less Jewish and while Sales didn’t wear a yamaka, there was comfort in the Northeastern ethnicity of his gentle growl.
One of the best remembered events of all early television is Sales’ call on New Year’s Day to kids to take “little green pieces of paper” out of their parents’ pants and purses and to send them to him at the TV station.
And of course, there was Match Game…
Activity Chasing Paranormal
Universal is pushing out The Fourth Kind as though it was Paranormal Activity with a b-action…
… even though Universal was headed down this road before Paranormal started its careful roll out. The campaign also has shades of White Noise, which opened to $24m. Gold Circle, which produced the low budgeter, also made White Noise 2: The Light, which Universal sent direct-to-DVD and The Haunting in Connecticut, which Lionsgate opened to $21 million.
This might also be a good time to note that Paranormal itself is now sporting a DreamWorks logo next to Paramount’s. Good thing Steven came up with a new ending.
Anyway, this entry was inspired by a director, Amanda Gusack, who is now out trying to get attention for her unreleased 2005 film, In Memorium…
Hey Guys – Before writing and directing THE BETRAYED for MGM (Melissa George, Oded Fehr) I wrote and directed a microbudget horror movie, entitled IN MEMORIUM, which premiered at the Hamptons Film Festival in 2005 and is still unreleased.
In recent weeks, it’s received numerous comparisons to PARANORMAL ACTIVITY…
DP/30 Junket Quickies – Fantastic Mr Fox
The Movie Needed A One-Sheet. They Gave Us A Handsome Conceptual Piece With Unrecognizable Stars.
The poster also have the air of familiarity…
Even more interesting, the vast majority of posters for movies starring Eastwood are a giant headshot of Eastwood with various dark colors behind him.
Press Release – In Spite Of The Media Disdain For It…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
WOLVERINE CONTINUES TO SLASH ITS WAY THROUGH RECORDS ON THE
HOME ENTERTAINMENT CHARTS
Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment Announced Today That
X-Men Origins: Wolverine Now Holds the Record as the
CHANGING LANDSCAPE – 10/22/09
It’s a new Hot Blog offering… inspired by the last few days of noticing how many little changes were going on all at once. So, I am going to do a step more than we do on the front page and use these to note and comment on some of what is going on…
35MM 3D FROM TECHNICOLOR – This effort started rolling out publicly in September with tests of the 35MM 3D version of WB/NL’s The Final Destination.
Now, as we head into an even bigger glut of 3D films without enough 3D screens to land on and evidence that movies promoted as 3D experiences demotivate 2D viewing with a significant percentage of the interested audience, there is a sense of urgency about expanding the screen count for the 3D opportunity.
So now, Technicolor announces some progress with more specific news to land at ShowEast… and you can expect pretty much every studio except Disney to jump on board before year’s end.
This step could well be the tipping point for 3D and start the maturing process in earnest. Will people pay premium prices for 3D in non-IMAX, non-big-sound, regular movie theaters? We’re gonna find out.
I think it will take the next year or so – at least through next summer – to find out what kind of traction they can get when virtually every theater becomes capable of being a 3D theater. There is still a very real novelty factor. But that never lasts too long.
Still, a big moment.
DISNEY’S DIGITAL CLOUD – It’s news, but it’s one of those stories that will get wildly overhyped before reality sets in. Disney has been going this way for a while. It’s major DVD releases now get the Blu-ray treatment that includes a free digital download AND a non-Blu disc. The studio gets what many of us have understood for years. it’s not the specific delivery system that matters, it’s the availability and what people are willing to pay for it.
I am a firm believer (and have been for years now) that every studio will go in this same direction. That post-theatrical will be paid as one of number of “all-access” levels, which can start with delivery like this, but may also involve cross-charging of cable channels, radio, etc. The one sacred cow is and will remain theatrical release because it is the single opportunity to generate the largest per-person price point in this industry, because the experience is so unique and demands infrastructure (which buyers appreciate).
Like HULU, there will be some joint ventures along the way, but the bottom line remains the same. Every piece of content stands on its own as each studio/owner attempts to maximize revenues using all of the tools/delivery systems that are available.
Media needs to catch up with this. It is a world of multiple menus. You will be able to buy a la carte or you will be able to buy the entire Disney (or whomever) universe on a monthly basis. The studios will have to be concerned about the attractiveness of both kinds of packages in order to maximize revenues.
There will even be a direct-to-Redbox business build – you can bet – and it will act like direct-to-DVD used to at Blockbuster… and then Netflix Red Envelope. Someone will realize that promoting someone for Redbox exclusively, with the goal of reaching 2 million renters, generating about $5 million gross and $2 million net for the owner of the film, is a great opportunity. Of course, it will be for titles that are not likely to do huge sell-thru business. If I were Sony Home Ent, the next Left Behind movie would be the launch.
REPORTER LIFE 2K+10 – The Chicago News Co-Op signed the New York Times, which is a big step towards something really important. The basic notion is that serious reporting can be done by serious reporters on a local basis and that the shared revenues can be enough to make a good living… or at least a living, for now. The NYT (and everyone else) needs the help, really, as cutbacks on in-house reporters keep piling up. And with some sound editorial judgment from the leaders of the business, it should be an idea that can become viable all of the country and across the globe.
Add – 2:40p – Another communal concept
CIRCULATION REVENUE BEATS AD REVENUE @ NYT – “At the company
Wolverine & Sookie Stackhouse Duet, Circa 2000
Finally, Answers!
Q: Why Did Amelia Earhart disappear in 1937?
A; To avoid being embarrassed by the movie about her 72 years later.
Q: Can three horrible fake accents equal one irredeemable movie?
A: You bet ya.
Q. What’s the difference between Amelia and two hours of uninterrupted sleep?
A. The latter is uninterrupted.
Q: What’s so funny about Amelia and Trannys 2’s DVD being released in the same week?
A: Trannys 2 is more entertaining.
An actual review to follow…
