Top Illegally Downloaded Movies 2011
Dec 30, 2011 Digital Technology, Movie Industry, Movies, Piracy
It seems Paul Walker still has what it takes. But no wonder the studios are pissed off about piracy. Let’s do the math.
Box Office Mojo works with an average per ticket price of $7.96 for 2011 (although I usually pay twice that). I’ve included the revenue discrepancy if everyone who downloaded had instead bought a ticket at a theater for that price – although I know some of these pirates might have rented or bought the DVD instead.
1. Fast Five – 9.2m downloads ($73.23M of lost ticket sales)
2. The Hangover II – 8.8m downloads ($70.05M of lost ticket sales)
3. Thor – 8.3m downloads ($66.07M of lost ticket sales)
4. Source Code – 7.9m downloads ($62.88M of lost ticket sales)
5. I Am Number Four – 7.6m downloads ($60.5M of lost ticket sales)
6. Sucker Punch – 7.2m downloads ($57.3M of lost ticket sales)
7. 127 Hours – 6.9m downloads ($55M of lost ticket sales)
8. Rango – 6.4m downloads ($51M of lost ticket sales)
9. The King’s Speech – 6.2m downloads ($49.4M of lost ticket sales)
10. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 – 6m downloads ($47.76M of lost ticket sales)
For a movie like Sucker Punch, which managed a worldwide gross of only $89.8M, these numbers must be particularly galling. If everyone who downloaded the movie had actually bought a ticket instead, then it might have been considered a middling success, rather than a dismal failure. The same goes for Source Code, which barely scraped $55M as a domestic gross, and could certainly have used an extra $62.88M in its final tally.
The money lost on each one of these movies, had it gone to the studios, would have funded a mid-budget movie (and employed hundreds of people). So, next time you go to the multiplex and wonder where all the “missing” movies are, the non-sequels, the non-remakes, the non-adaptations, this is what happened: pirates ate them.
The Guardian has the full breakdown.
The People vs. Drive: Is Bad Marketing A Crime?
Oct 10, 2011 masculinity, Media Effects, Movie Industry, Movies
Michigan resident, Sarah Deming, is suing her local multiplex and the distributors of Ryan Gosling-starrer Drive.
Deming says the movie was promoted “as very similar to the Fast and Furious, or similar, series of movies” but actually “bore very little similarity to a chase or race action film, having very little driving in the motion picture”. She also claims that
“Drive was a motion picture that substantially contained extreme gratuitous defamatory dehumanizing racism directed against members of the Jewish faith, and thereby promoted criminal violence against members of the Jewish faith”
and hopes that anyone who feels the same way will join her in a class-action suit. She’s seeking the price of her ticket and further damages.
There have been many rumblings about the way Drive was marketed prior to this lawsuit. The movie itself doesn’t have any identity problems. It’s an extremely violent, Euro arthouse flick from beginning to end. However, it was shot within the Hollywood system and contains many Hollywood stars – who all love to play against type given the opportunity – and has to earn its nut at the box office. This always creates a headache for the marketing department who have to ask “How do we reach the biggest possible audience for this movie?” rather than “Who is the best audience for this movie?”.
Thomas Rogers, movie critic and editor at Salon.com, was
“…fascinated by the target demographic of the movie — like, who’s supposed to see it in the first place? There are people who are going to see it because of Ryan Gosling, but I feel like the normal Ryan Gosling audience isn’t all that fond of seeing someone stomp people to death. The movie has these gay movie references — mostly to Kenneth Anger’s underground film “Scorpio Rising” — but there’s really nothing overtly gay about it. The title sequence has this campy 1980s lettering, which is duplicated in the film’s ad campaign — and a hilarious, awesome fake-’80s synth score — which makes it seem like it might have a romance or comedy element to it. But the film’s only sex scene involves two people touching a stick shift, and there’s probably only one joke in it. I think, basically, this movie manages to frustrate everybody’s expectations of it — to its great credit.
By attempting to broaden the target audience (including Ryan Gosling fans, Fast and Furious Fans, crime caper fans, even Mad Men fans thanks to the presence of Christina Hendricks) the studio ended up disappointing a lot of people and generating some horrible word of mouth. That’s the kiss of death in today’s Twitter-driven marketplace. And now it’s generated a lawsuit.
Whether Deming’s case ultimately gets dismissed as frivolous, or settled out of court just so it will go away, remains to be seen. However, it does raise some interesting issues about what audiences feel they are being duped into by the Hollywood machine, and makes an excellent case study for marketing degree students to discuss.
For decades, movie trailers have attempted to make bad acting and story-telling look palatable, cherry-picking the six good moments from an absolute bomb in order to lure an audience into going to see it. Is this artistic licence, or classic bait-and-switch? Do movie-goers have a duty to inform themselves about the actual content of a film (Sarah Deming could have saved herself a lot of time and trouble by reading some of the advance reviews of Drive online) or do they have a right to expect that the general marketing honestly represents what they are about to see?
Are US audiences so infantilised by the constant stream of superheroes and aliens and fighting robots that they are unable to deal with human-on-human violence as part of a fictional story? The Italian poster for Drive (see right) makes no bones about the tone of the movie. Like the US version (top), it features Ryan Gosling, but shows him striding purposefully along a dark road, (bloodstained?) hammer in hand, murder in his eyes, NOT looking dreamy behind a wheel. Was this so unacceptable to Gosling fans entranced by his recent performance in Crazy, Stupid, Love? Was it fair to lure them into watching Drive anyway?
The furore also raises questions about why the kind of easy, casual violence and prejudice that runs rampant in summer blockbusters is acceptable to mainstream US audiences, whereas the one-on-one gritty and realistic violence depicted in Drive is not. The body count of Transformers: Dark of the Moon was way higher than Drive‘s, but Michael Bay glosses over deaths as collateral damage, the inevitable consequence of a thrilling action scene, nothing anyone in the audience has to deal with emotionally or viscerally. The potentially negative impact of the racism represented by Mudflaps and Skids in Transformers 2 far surpasses any of the anti-semitic snarls of the hoods in Drive (clue: one movie is aimed at children still forming their view of the world, one is not).
No one’s bringing a class action suit against Michael Bay and his corporate paymasters, Hasbro and Paramount. Perhaps Deming and her attorneys should be litigating against more culpable targets?
Watch the Drive trailer for yourself:
The Drive Backlash: Too violent, too arty or both? – Salon
Detroit Woman Sues “Drive” Film-makers- Click On Detroit
My “Drive” review – Planet Fury
Shriekfest: why low budget horror matters
Oct 4, 2011 Horror, Movie Industry, Movies
The first weekend in October is always one of my favorites in the year. It’s Shriekfest, three days of low (and micro) budget horror features and shorts, with plenty of heated genre discussions between screenings at the Raleigh Studios. And this year there was a great food truck on site.
Shriekfest showcases the kind of movies that will never make it to local multiplex screens. They’re usually labours of love, funded personally and piecemeal. Most focus on a single location, with a limited number of characters, and are shot on a really tight schedule. Whatever budget there is (and that’s often less than $100K for a feature) is mostly thrown at practical special effects – this is horror, after all, and the stories demand buckets and buckets of blood. These are the kind of constraints that inspire genuine creativity. There are no easy answers or quick cash fixes. Film-makers are dealing with raw story and only the most basic of film-making tools in order to communicate with their audience. The resulting entertainment puts big budget studio movies to shame.
The 2011 program included vast numbers of highly entertaining – and slick – shorts, as well as some stand-out features. My personal highlights included:
The Moleman of Belmont Avenue, a horror comedy, follows the misadventures of bumbling brothers, Marion and Jarmon Mugg, as they attempt to eradicate a basement-dwelling pest from the apartment building they inherited from their mother. A sharp and inventive script, two excellent central performances (from John LaFlamboy and Mike Bradecich), and a lively supporting cast (including Robert Englund) make this a gem from beginning to end.
Isle of Dogs, a stylized and bloody tale of revenge, won the Best Thriller award. The narrative starts out as a typical gangster flick, all about testosterone and disputed women, but it spirals upwards into Jacobean tragedy. Barbara Nedeljakova (Hostel), Edward Hogg (Bunny and the Bull) and Andrew Howard (I Spit On Your Grave, Limitless) relish the material and deliver dynamic performances from the top all the way through to the blood-soaked, Grand Guignol climax.
Best Horror Feature went to Absentia, a low budget but nonetheless chilling supernatural thriller. This tale of two sisters in suburban Los Angeles provides a great example of a simple story simply told. The horror derives from the modern mundane – a pedestrian tunnel under the freeway – but incorporates myths from many different cultures in order to tap into the audience’s primal fears.
In the current climate of remakes, rehashes and plain ol’ regurgitation spewed out of Hollywood by the studio machine, it’s always refreshing to be reminded that there are film-makers out there with the ability to tell an original story in a fresh way – and spend less than most studio movies’ catering budgets in the process. Kudos to Shriekfest for bringing the best of independent horror to a wider audience.
2011 Summer Box Office Review
Sep 5, 2011 Advertising, Movie Industry, Movies
The numbers are in: overall box office receipts are up, thanks to higher 3-D ticket prices, but actual attendance in North America is down to its lowest levels since 1997. This is the fourth year of decline.
It’s the usual picture, a few big hits (Harry Potter 8, Bridesmaids, Fast Five) compensate for the massive, expensive flops (Green Lantern, Cowboys and Aliens), and studio honchos express surprise that adult audiences turned out in droves for Midnight In Paris and The Help.
Ad Age provides a helpful round up of studios’ performance, with a quick assessment of how important marketing was to success or failure.
Ad Age’s Second Annual Summer-Movie Report Card- Ad Age
The New York Times crunches some of those numbers and they don’t make happy reading for anyone who has stock in a studio. Even a $1BN+ hit like Pirates of the Caribbean 4: On Stranger Tides, doesn’t generate that much profit, once the theater chains have received their cut (usually about 50% of takings).
Summer Movie Attendance Continues to Erode- NY Times
It looks like the 3-D bubble has burst (again), with 3-D shoots cancelled to save costs, so where will that leave takings this time next year?
“This Summer”, “Epic Battle”,”A Love That Will Stand the Test Of Time” etc: the art of the movie trailer
Aug 2, 2011 Advertising, Movie Industry, Movies
Thanks to YouTube, movie trailers are no longer ephemera, glimpsed on TV over a couple of weeks then relegated to the Special Features section on the eventual DVD release. Trailers have always been a cornerstone of any movie marketing campaign, but now they’re analysed, angsted over and recut almost as much as the movie they’re promoting. Trailers for a tentpole release start appearing online up to a year before the actual movie appears, and now they stay online, forever a testament to what the studio hoped people would think the movie was about.
The Independent profiles the format today:
The trailer came into being in 1913 when the Loews Cinemas company created one for the musical, The Pleasure Seekers, which was playing on Broadway. But the early days of trailers were usually maladroit and audiences immediately knew they were being sold something. The Bishop’s Wife in 1947 gave a knowing nod to such tactics with a self-referencing trailer staring David Niven and Cary Grant on their way to film a promo for the movie.
Until the 1950s, American trailers were produced by the National Screen Service, although some directors such as Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford liked to produce their own. In the 1960s film directors took a keener interest, leading to more stylish trailers. Plot spoilers in trailers still existed into the 1970s although trailers were less brash than today. “This is Universal’s extraordinary motion picture version of Peter Benchley’s best-selling novel, Jaws,” intoned the gentle voiceover on a trailer for Speilberg’s shark fest which, during its three minutes, showed so much footage and dialogue, it was akin to an abridged version of the film.
By the 1980s, trailers were more vague and teasing. Today, producers of trailers understand they are not selling a narrative but an abstract representation of one. They tend to make films seem like an offering (“the producers of Film X bring you…”) and they stick to strict time limits of two minutes and 30 seconds as laid down by the Motion Picture Association of America.
While a good trailer can make a bad film seem awesome (at least until the first audiences start tweeting their opinions on their way out of the theater), a bad trailer can be an expensive mistake that takes many months to put right in terms of advance word.
And of course, there’s a well-established set of clichés…
The science of the trailer- The Independent
Are studio movies pricing themselves out of the market?
Jul 28, 2011 Movie Industry, Movies
“Is there any reason The Hangover II needed to cost more than twice what The Godfather did?”
After recent grumbles about the flood of superhero movies giving a very poor bang for their buck, Cord Jefferson at Good does some number crunching on what some of the greatest movies of all time would cost if they were made today, and how that compares to current box office fodder.
The best movie of all time, according to IMDB users, is the critically acclaimed The Shawshank Redemption. In 1994 it cost $25 million to produce, but even in 2010 dollars that’s only $36.2 million, almost $30 million less than the average film now. The Godfather, IMDB’s second-best movie of all time, cost $31 million in 2010 bucks. Once again, that’s much less than the average movie nowadays. In fact, save for Inception and The Dark Knight, numbers nine and 10 on the list, respectively, every single one of IMDB’s top 10 movies cost less to produce than the average current film, some by leaps and bounds. Pulp Fiction’s budget was $11.6 million when adjusted for inflation, and Schindler’s List, a hugely important film, only cost $37 million.
These numbers represent a fraction of the costs of hit movies from 2010-11. While there will always be expensive, SFX-driven blockbusters (the top earning movie of the year so far is Transformers 3, which had a production budget of $195M), it seems that the studios can’t even churn out a character-driven drama or comedy for less than those top two movies of all time. The Hangover II cost $80M. The Adjustment Bureau cost $50M. The horrible The Dilemma cost an eye-popping $70M (for what?). Add to these figures the marketing costs (which for big movies usually constitutes a sum at least equal to the production budget, if not higher), and that means that studios are routinely pumping out movies that won’t make their nut until they put the $100M box office mark a long way behind them.
These expensive movies translate directly into high ticket prices for moviegoers, and a studio system that’s reluctant to punt even relatively modest budgets (less than $20M) on original ideas. The only thing that will change this costly culture is concerted action on the part of audiences, as Jefferson suggests.
maybe it’s best in the long run for everyone to agree to stop going to movies in the theater. Let’s all stay home, watch Netflix and Hulu, and thus help whittle away at the film companies’ coffers more than people already have. When the studios can no longer pay to make every film a $70 million undertaking, perhaps then they’ll get back to doing what real filmmakers have been doing for as long as cinema has existed: Making more with less. When that happens, not only will we be able to afford the ticket, we’ll actually want to see the movie.
How the Film Industry’s Big Budgets Are Killing Movie Theaters-Good
Death of the Movie Superhero?
Jul 21, 2011 Comics, Movie Industry, Movies
For a while now superhero movies have been a valuable cash cow for the studios, supplying familiar stories with built in brand recognition and a global audience. However, it turns out that audiences can’t be fed entirely on a diet of rehashed comic books, largely because they all start to look the same. And we’ve seen a glut of them this year, with less than spectacular box office results once you factor in production and P&A costs.
Deadline comments on media analyst Vasily Karasyov’s report this morning:
The analyst says that the boom in superhero movies began around 2000 as computer generated imagery (CGI) made it easier for filmmakers to credibly show action that defies the laws of physics. Virtually all of the most popular films of the last decade couldn’t have been made without CGI. Within that group Karasyov counts 16 superhero films, not counting sequels, resulting in four franchises: Fox’s X-Men, Sony’s Spider-Man, Warner Bros’ Batman, and Paramount’s Iron Man. Yet nothing has taken off since Iron Man came out in 2008, he says, largely because studios have already tapped their hottest properties. “As film studios dig deeper into catalogues for characters for new films, we think the chances of finding a break out property are diminishing fast” — even though the films still come with high production costs.
Harry Potter is done. Twilight has the two final instalments already in the can. Where should Hollywood studios look for the next lucrative franchise?
Studios Should Prepare for the Death of Superheroes- Deadline
History Repeats Itself
May 30, 2011 Digital Technology, Movie Industry
It seems the latest 3-D movie boom is over, and with it the boost to box office receipts that Hollywood was counting on to bolster their income against falling video rentals and DVD sales. The same rejection of 3-D happened the first time the technology was introduced in the 1950s, and again with the brief flowering of 3-D in the 1980s, with audiences getting tired of wearing the glasses (or not being able to wear them if you’re colour blind), and paying extra for tickets for 3-D movies.
In 2011, audiences have started to buy tickets for “flat” (or 2-D) versions of the big movies being released in 3-D. Whether this is because they baulk at the price of tickets (which can be anything up to $20), or because they prefer watching movies with a traditional depth of field is not known. However, the numbers are clear:
Ripples of fear spread across Hollywood last week after “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides,” which cost Walt Disney Studios an estimated $400 million to make and market, did poor 3-D business in North America. While event movies have typically done 60 percent of their business in 3-D, “Stranger Tides” sold just 47 percent in 3-D. “The American consumer is rejecting 3-D,” Richard Greenfield, an analyst at the financial services company BTIG, wrote of the “Stranger Tides” results.
One movie does not make a trend, but the Memorial Day weekend did not give studio chiefs much comfort in the 3-D department. “Kung Fu Panda 2,” a Paramount Pictures release of a DreamWorks Animation film, sold $53.8 million in tickets from Thursday to Sunday, a soft total, and 3-D was 45 percent of the business, according to Paramount.
3-D (or stereo vision) has been around since 1894, so it’s not going to disappear anytime soon. However, as happened in the 1950s and the 1980s, many of the movies currently being shot in 3-D may only ever see a 2-D theatrical release. Will we lose a classic 3-D experience because of this? Hitchcock shot Dial M For Murder in 3-D in 1954, and included some sophisticated and innovative use of the technology, especially in the scenes with Grace Kelly wielding a pair of scissors that bring a whole new level of tension to the narrative. Unfortunately, this came at the end of the 3-D boom, and the move was eventually released as 2-D (although there are occasional screenings held of rare prints of the 3-D version).
Will the studios keep pushing 3-D onto audiences? This time, 3-D TV has a part to play, as those who have invested in 3-D sets will demand content to justify their investment. However, the signs are that 3-D 2010s style is just as much of a short-lived gimmick as its predecessors, until the next Avatar comes round to spark interest in the format once more.
3-D Starts to FIzzle, and Hollywood Frets – New York Times
A history of 3-D cinema – The Guardian
“I Do All My Own Stunts”
Mar 28, 2011 Digital Technology, Movie Industry, Movies, Representation of Women
Everyone loves a chance to put an Oscar-winning actress down, now it’s Natalie Portman’s turn as her dance double for Black Swan claims credit for the performance.
Sarah Lane, soloist with American Ballet Theatre, was hired to depict all the complex dance sequences that Portman, with only a year of training under her leotard (as opposed to the two decades that go into making a professional dancer), could never have pulled off. So far, so usual: stunt doubles are routinely hired for fight, chase, dance, ski-ing, driving or riding sequences that demand an elaborate set of physical skills. It’s almost part of the illusion expected when we go to the movies, that at some point, the actor will disappear back to their trailer and let a bewigged stunt person of approximately the same height and build get down to the death-defying gymnastics. There are two main reasons for this 1) stunt people are professionals who are really, really good at the physical stuff, and b) if it all goes pear-shaped, stunt people can be replaced halfway through principal photography, while a lead actor cannot.
Lane’s beef is not so much about the illusions created within the film-making process, which involved having Portman’s head digitally superimposed onto her body for the long shots, as she knew that was going to happen. She is more concerned about the way Portman’s people claimed credit for her dancing as part of her Oscar campaign. She accuses them of
“trying to create this facade that [Portman] had become a ballerina in a year and a half… How unfortunate it is that, as professional dancers, we work so hard, but people can actually believe that it’s easy enough to do it in a year. That’s the thing that bothered me the most”.
A big part of Portman’s pre-award press did include coverage of how she suffered for her art during the making of the film, both with the year of training beforehand, and the pressures put upon her during the actual movie to come up with convincing dance performances. And Academy voters love to see actors suffer, as well as push their physical limits. A movie is only one part of a media phenomenon, like Black Swan, which consists not just of the film narrative, but of all the narratives swirling round it – like the love story between Portman and her principal choreographer.
Darren Aronofsky jumped to his star’s defence for Entertainment Weekly:
Here is the reality. I had my editor count shots. There are 139 dance shots in the film. 111 are Natalie Portman untouched. 28 are her dance double Sarah Lane. If you do the math that’s 80% Natalie Portman. What about duration? The shots that feature the double are wide shots and rarely play for longer than one second. There are two complicated longer dance sequences that we used face replacement. Even so, if we were judging by time over 90% would be Natalie Portman.
And to be clear Natalie did dance on pointe in pointe shoes. If you look at the final shot of the opening prologue, which lasts 85 seconds, and was danced completely by Natalie, she exits the scene on pointe. That is completely her without any digital magic. I am responding to this to put this to rest and to defend my actor. Natalie sweated long and hard to deliver a great physical and emotional performance. And I don’t want anyone to think that’s not her they are watching. It is.”
Sarah Lane is a performer in her own right, an artiste who is used to getting credit and acclaim for her work. And she has a day job. No wonder she’s pissed – but she is in a uniquely privileged position to bitch about it. Portman is also a relatively soft target – it seems easier to accuse an actress of not being able to cut the physical stuff than a male star. No one would dream of making similar allegations about Jason Statham or Dwayne Johnson. There are legions of stunt artists out there who will forever remain silent about their contribution to the work of actors (usually macho action heroes) who claim that they, also, do all their own fighting, chase, dancing, ski-ing, driving or riding on screen. If these stunt doubles speak up, they never work again.
Much of Hollywood’s allure – and marketing – revolves around the larger-than-life abilities of “the talent”. The audience want to believe that what they see on screen is the singular performance of one very special person, when, in fact, it’s the result of hundreds of hours of work by whole teams of people, both on set and in post production. But bottom line is that the star always gets the credit – that’s showbusiness.
Natalie Portman Accused In Black Swan Row – Digital Spy
Darron Aronofsky Defends Portman – Entertainment Weekly
Actors Who Do Their Own Stunts – Moviefone
Hollywood Stuntman reveals tricks of trade – NPR interview with Hal Needham
Want to make a Monster movie? It’ll cost ya $15K
Mar 16, 2011 Digital Technology, Movie Industry, Movies
Gareth Edwards’ Monsters was a huge hit on the film festival circuit last year. Here’s his account of how he managed to create sci fi realism on such a tight budget:
