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March 05, 2008
The Year In Money by MPAA
The MPAA rolled out their "Theatrical Market Statistics 2007" report in a conference call this morning, much in the spirit of their first-domestic-morning of ShoWest breakfasts we in the media have attended for many, many years... aka The Jack Show.
Jack Valenti was always a great showman, but Dan Glickman, who has been in the job for almost 4 years now, is much more of a straight-forward player. But that doesn't make him any less the consumate politician.
The stats that jumped out at me were...
These are The Studio Dependents. And as you can see, the numbers are leaping. When the cost of releasing a film from your "specialty arm" is 75% of the big studio, who can really call these companies independents?
Moreover, a major issue in the MPAA numbers has arisen, noted first in the conference call by Gregg Kilday... none of these numbers include outside investment. So, in the Dependent business, where a significant percentage of original productions and all pick-ups are funded elsewhere, you have to wonder if the real number is even higher. (Original production numbers push it up, pick ups, bought for less, would bring production down and be reflected more on the marketing side.)
Here you can see the significant annual growth in the "other" category... films not released by MPAA companies. (For the purpose of this study, MGM is NOT included... which I believe is a quiet first acknowledgement that MGM isn't really an active member of MPAA anymore.)
For all the whining in the media about "too many movies" being released, there were fewer overall last year and about 10% fewer by the studios and their dependents... again, not including MGM and thier ragtag suppliers.
The cost of production and diretribution continues to rise at the major studios as well... but note again... huge chunks of the production costs - and more than a little marketing, especially in family films - is coming from elewhere and is not reflected in these numbers.
So, the easy journo stat that "it now costs $106 million to make and market a movie" is not the fact. MPAA officials could not offer a specific number or even hazzard a guess about what the real number is. But my estimate would be that it is at least 30% higher than $106 million.
I have to leave this here for the moment... but I thought these charts would make a nice starter kit for y'all...
Posted by poland at March 5, 2008 10:13 AM
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