The $11 Billion Year
Page 28
BOX-OFFICE CHARTS
The following charts are updated versions of box-office analyst Tom Brueggemann’s year-end wraps for Thompson On Hollywood. They break down movies into categories reflecting box-office results, adding estimated production budgets to provide a look at the films’ costs vs. returns.
Also in the equation are marketing costs. In the United States an average movie campaign costs about $25 million, while a studio-backed wide release covered by TV and other media over several weeks can reach $50 million or more in “prints” (now digital) and ads.
Most media report opening-weekend ticket sales, or lists of seasonal hits and top-ten grossers. Few reveal how movies perform over the global long haul.
Many people don’t know that U.S. distributors collect an average of 50 percent of revenue that comes into theaters. The biggest hits often take in more, while smaller releases collect much less.
If the cash returned to studios is less than what it costs to make, market, and release the movie, it’s a flop—unless they recoup via DVDs, cable, TV, VOD, or other ancillary revenues. (Many indie films are acquired by studios for U.S. distribution but are released by various other distributors in foreign territories.)
NA means that numbers are not available. Total grosses on titles are through the end of their 2013 runs.
For 2012, Box Office Mojo, which supplies numbers based on data that distributors give to the media, counts 663 movies released for a total of $10,957,460,255, which, rounded up, provided me with the title of this book. Other sources for box-office revenues include Exhibitor Relations Co., Rentrak, and the Numbers.
GLOSSARY
actioner
A B-movie in the action genre, violent, with a fast-moving plot targeted toward the global male demographic. Examples, the Lethal Weapon, G.I. Joe, and Die Hard series.
ancillary markets
Any market other than the primary domestic theatrical market for feature films, including foreign markets. Home video (DVD and Blu-ray), cable, pay-per-view, hotels, airplanes, and television are ancillary windows. VOD and streaming services are starting to compensate for declining DVD revenues in the home-entertainment realm.
animatics
Rough animation assemblages developed during preproduction and production, often in the form of storyboard pictures synchronized with a soundtrack or, for animated films, voice-overs.
arthouse
Theaters that play high-brow independent, foreign, and specialty films catering largely to an older audience, although some theaters attract a younger clientele. (My variation on this well-known industry term is “smarthouse.”)
biopic
Biographical picture about a real person, either slice-of-life or cradle-to-grave. A subset is the biodoc, or biographical documentary.
blockbuster
A movie that is a huge box-office success. The term applies to films with a domestic box-office gross that far exceeds their production budget and marketing costs—over $100 million in North America. The Avengers, The Hobbit, and The Hunger Games were among 2012’s blockbusters, all passing $400 million domestic.
CGI
More and more animation companies have abandoned 2-D hand-drawn animation in favor of 3-D computer-graphic imagery, which has become more complex over time. CGI can be used in the live-action realm for environments, costumes, fixes, visual effects, and fully animated characters, from Gollum to King Kong.
dating
Distributors often set a release date for a film years in advance in order to plant their flag on a key date like the Fourth of July weekend. They try to pick a date that will maximize the film’s box-office potential.
day-and-date release
When a film opens in theaters and becomes available on video on demand on the same day.
Digital Cinema Package (DCP)
A Digital Cinema Package is a set of files used to store a film’s images and sound; it’s essentially the high-definition digital replacement for a 35-millimeter film print, usually opened with a computer key provided by the distributor.
fanboys
Usually male and often the target demographic of genre films—sci-fi, comic-book adaptations, and actioners—these enthusiastic audiences will often follow a film or film series to the point of obsession. San Diego’s annual Comic-Con is the Valhalla where fanboys worship as studios promote their summer tentpoles.
four-wall
When a distributor or filmmaker rents a movie theater for a period of time at a fixed rate and collects all the box-office revenue, as Roadside Attractions did with day-and-date sleeper hits Arbitrage and Margin Call.
franchise
A series of related films, often in the form of sequels and prequels, and frequently based on a preestablished and known piece of intellectual property. James Bond, Bourne, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Mission: Impossible are all active franchises.
granola film
A well-intentioned, earnest film that is educational and/or “good” for you.
gross
The total amount of tickets sold during a movie’s run at the box office. Approximately half of that is returned by theaters to the distributor. That final sum is known, confusingly, as the film’s “rental.”
hit
A hit is a film that takes off with audiences (often backed by critics), exceeds expectations by connecting with viewers, and has a profitable box-office payoff. There are blockbusters, like The Avengers and The Hunger Games, but also surprise word-of-mouth hits, like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Lincoln.
intellectual property (IP)
The new Holy Grail in Hollywood is owning a well-known preestablished brand that will yield multiple iterations—that is, a franchise like Star Wars or Star Trek or characters from Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan to Ian Fleming’s James Bond.
juttering
A jittery characteristic of the 24-frames-per-second motion picture camera that James Cameron and Peter Jackson are trying to avoid with faster 48 frames per second.
keyframe animation
A single still in an animated sequence—often picked up and built upon by computers.
majors
The deep-pocketed motion picture and television studios that have reigned over Hollywood since the twentieth century, with a significant breadth of films annually and big stakes at the box office. As originally defined, a major studio was housed on a lot with soundstages and post-production facilities and owned theaters: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros., and Paramount Pictures.
Before the studios were divested of their theaters in 1948, the distributors that did not own theaters were known as the minors: Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and Walt Disney Studio.
In today’s entertainment industry, the six majors are defined as MPAA signatories: News Corp–owned Fox, Sony (which acquired Columbia, as well as the old MGM lot in Culver City), Warner Bros. (which owns HBO), Viacom-owned Paramount (which owns CBS and Nickelodeon), Comcast-owned NBCUniversal (which owns USA and the Sci-Fi Channel), and Disney (which owns ABC and ESPN). Non-MPAA member Lionsgate, once considered a mini-major along with New Line Cinema (which was acquired by Warner Bros.), is now considered a seventh major studio, while the mini-majors are such companies as MGM, which is now largely a library and film and TV production company that partners with major film distributors, and independent The Weinstein Company. One-time mini-major DreamWorks now releases its films through distributor Disney’s Touchstone label. And sadly, the late great United Artists, while technically a label at MGM, is now defunct.
microindie
An independent film produced on a microbudget of less than six figures.
motion capture
A visual-effects technique, also called performance capture, in which an actor like Andy Serkis, who played Gollum in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings and the title role in his King Kong, is covered with dots and shot with digital cameras that can track his motions, which animators then plug into a
complex computer algorithm for that character.
Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA)
A Washington, D.C.–based lobbying group for the six major studios, which comprise a diverse set of global needs.
mumblecore
Coined by Andrew Bujalski’s sound editor Eric Masunaga in 2005, the term has now been applied both to a generation of young independent filmmakers and the microbudget relationship films they shoot with a low-key naturalistic aesthetic. Key filmmakers of the movement include Bujalski (seminal mumblecore film Funny Ha Ha), Joe Swanberg (Drinking Buddies), Lynn Shelton (Your Sister’s Sister) and the Duplass brothers (The Puffy Chair).
negative pickup
An independently financed movie acquired for release in certain territories by a distributor.
prints and advertising (P & A)
The budget accorded to pay for marketing, delivering 35-millimeter prints or DCPS to theaters, and releasing a movie.
platform release
A platform or limited release is the way distributors roll out films on a piecemeal basis, tuned in to audience demand, and gauge the appeal of specialty films. Major studios typically stage a limited release in New York and LA in the fall and winter to qualify for Academy consideration, with a wide release to follow in January. Video on demand (VOD) is now a significant piece of the limited-release equation, as distributors such as IFC Films or Sundance Selects coordinate their theatrical play with a film’s wider availability via digital downloads and cable VOD rentals.
rotoscoping
An animation technique by which animators trace over live-action movements frame by frame. Though its origins date back to early Disney and Warner Bros. cartoons, in 2001 director Richard Linklater created the first full-length rotoscoped feature, Waking Life.
run and gun
A fast-paced verité-style of guerilla filmmaking on location with a small crew and hand-held cameras.
screener
An advanced copy of a film sent to critics, awards voters, and industry professionals as a DVD, Blu-ray, or digital file, often without color correction or post-processing. Particularly during awards season, DVD screeners have been a source of Internet piracy, leading to much debate in the MPAA as to whether they should be eliminated entirely. More and more publicists are providing Vimeo links to films so they can be viewed on a computer.
sleeper
An unexpected hit that connects with audiences without the aid of huge marquee stars or a massive marketing campaign. Examples: The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, 21 Jump Street, Magic Mike, Chronicle, The Grey.
split rights
A split-rights deal is a film finance and distribution method whereby a producer presells some rights (international or VOD rights, for example) to a distributor but retains others (such as domestic theatrical or television).
Steadicam
A portable camera rig worn by a cameraman so that he can follow the action on foot. John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978) was one of the first films to use a Steadicam to move fluidly with the action.
studio
A major entertainment company and MPAA signatory that produces, finances, and releases films and television domestically and overseas.
tentpole
A costly wide-release movie expected to hold up and balance out the financial performance of a studio. When they hit, a tentpole pays for a studio’s overhead. The flop of John Carter ignited a major shift in how the industry views such films.
turnaround
A studio often decides not to pursue a given project and allows the rights to become available to another buyer; they are often sold to a rival studio for cost plus interest, but studios will occasionally help out a favored producer, filmmaker, or star who wants to take over a project.
video on demand (VOD)
Video on demand allows users to view content when and how they want, whether streaming on a set-top box such as Roku or TiVo, on computers or television via Netflix or Hulu, on smartphones or tablets via iTunes or Amazon, or through cable providers.
VFX
Visual effects describe myriad and increasingly complex digital enhancements to live-action images that are manipulated to add computer-generated environments and characters. With its ambitious visual environment, the Oscar winner Life of Pi is a gold standard in VFX imagery, and revealing the economic weakness of the field, the film’s VFX house, Rhythm & Hues, declared bankruptcy after winning the Oscar.
wet print
A 35-millimeter film that is fresh from the lab, still dripping wet from bathing in chemicals. Industryites still apply the term to a brand-new DCP “print.”
wicket
Theater box office where tickets are sold.
INDEX
The page numbers in this index relate to the printed version of this book; they do not match the pages of your e-book. You can use your e-book reader’s search tool to find a specific word or passage.
A
Abbass, Hiam, 92
Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, 260
Abrams, J. J., 57, 65
Academy Awards (Oscars), 234–44; night of, 239–44; TV ratings, 242–43; winners and losers, 234–39. See also Oscar race
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), 122–23, 160, 206–7, 230–31; increase in Best Picture nominees, 205–6; lack of diversity and membership invites, 220–21; nominees lunch, 228–31
actioners, 43–66; defined, 263
Act of Valor, 172, 257
Adams, Amy, 93, 102, 104, 116, 237–38
Adele, 240, 242
Adrift (Callahan), 139
Adventures of Tintin, The, 72–73
Affleck, Ben, 119; Argo, 123, 126–30, 221–22, 223–24, 233–35, 243; Good Will Hunting, 127, 129–30, 234–35
AFI Fest (Los Angeles), 145–46
Ain’t It Cool News, 54
Alamo Drafthouse (Austin), 83
Albert Nobbs, 29
Alex Cross, 260
Alfredson, Tomas, 181
Alibar, Lucy, 19
Alice in Wonderland, 47, 50–51, 72
Allen, Paul, 87
Allen, Rick, 83
Allen, Woody, 89, 233
All the President’s Men, 164, 172, 175
Almodóvar, Pedro, 222
Amazing Grace, 29
Amazing Race, The (TV show), xiii
Amazing Spider-Man, The, 58, 66, 256
Amazon, ix, 12, 249
AMC Networks, 92, 248
McQueen, Steve, 221
American Beauty, 227
American Film institute, 223–24
American Hustle, 102–3, 134
American Reunion, 256
American Splendor, 110
American Teen, 10
amfAR’s Cinema Against AIDS, 87
Amour, 94–97, 126; Cannes Palme d’Or, 106–7, 217–18; Oscar race, 208, 217–18, 221, 236, 239
ancillary markets: defined, 263
Anderson, Paul Thomas, 150; The Master, 70, 101–2, 104, 122, 124–25, 237–38
Anderson, Wes, 88–89, 180; Fantastic Mr. Fox, 89, 180; The Grand Budapest Hotel, 108; Moonrise Kingdom, 89–91, 108, 180
Andrews, Mark, 48, 230, 232, 238–39
Angels in America, 147
animatics: defined, 263
Aniston, Jennifer, 241
Anna Karenina, 181–82, 230, 236, 241, 259
Annapurna Pictures, 8, 100, 101–3, 162
Annie, 236
Another Earth, 6, 28
Ant-Man, 119
Apollo 13, 233–34
Apparition, The, 261
Apple, 76, 249; iTunes, 30, 31, 40, 77
Apted, Michael, 213
Arbitrage, xiv, 13, 26–30, 123–24
Argo, 123, 126–30, 169–70, 256; Oscar race, 221–22, 223–24, 233–35, 238; Screen Actors Guild award, 233–34
Arkin, Alan, 128, 129
Arkush, Allan, 125
Arndt, Michael, 7, 57, 232
Arndt, Stefan, 94<
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Arnold, Andrea, 92
Aronofsky, Darren, 98, 124
arthouse: defined, 263
Art House Convergence, 1
Artist, The, 98–99, 104, 125
Aselton, Katie, 21, 25–26
As Good As It Gets, 17, 211
Asner, Ed, 174
Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, 101
Atkinson, Rowan, 181
Atlantic (magazine), 177
At Long Last Love, 184
Audiard, Jacques: Rust and Bone, 93–94, 99, 106, 218
Auteuil, Daniel, 95
A.V. Club, The, 163
Avatar, 46, 52, 55, 65, 66, 72, 73, 75, 136, 154, 157, 206
Avengers, The, 50, 57, 78, 117–19, 256
Avid digital editing systems, 69
Awards Daily, 207
B
Babel, 60, 128
Bachelorette, 31
Badass Digest, 14
Bailey, Sean, 50, 52
Bale, Christian, 65, 131, 134
Banks, Elizabeth, 61
Bardot, Brigitte, 87
Barker, Michael, 4, 13, 15, 92, 94–95, 215, 218, 229, 239
Barks, Samantha, 186
Barrie, J. M., 138
Basner, Glen, 100, 102
Bassey, Shirley, 242
Battle of Algiers, The, 94
Battleship, xiv, 58–59, 79, 260
Bearman, Joshuah, 127
Beasts of the Southern Wild, 16, 18–20, 39, 258; at Cannes, 91, 106; Oscar race, 210–11, 235, 236, 246; Sundance Grand Jury Prize, 41, 91, 210–11
Beatty, Warren, 223, 224, 233
Beautiful Mind, A, 176
Beauty and the Beast 3-D, 258
Beaver, The, 134
Bee Movie, 88
Begley, Dori, 13
Behind the Candelabra, x–xi
Bejo, Bérénice, 98, 220
Bell, Lake, 25, 26
Bendjelloul, Malik: Searching for Sugar Man, 14–16, 40, 211–12, 215, 239
Bentley, Wes, 62
Beresford, Bruce, 222
Berg, Peter, 58
Berger, Albert, 125
Bergman, Ingmar, 95
Berman, Gail, 48, 56
Bernal, Gael García, 94, 125