News flash—after one weekend, Star Wars: The Force Awakens
is already the 136th highest grossing film of all time, based on
worldwide revenues. I guess the force is
with them.
The Force Awakens will no doubt become one of the top ten
highest grossing films of all time. When
it does, it will join Avengers: The Age of Ultron, Furious 7, Jurassic World,
and Minions as the five releases from 2015 to make the top 11 (it would be top
ten but Minions is about $100 million behind Iron Man and unlikely to catch
up). So, obviously, 2015 will go down as
the greatest year in box office revenue.
Except that outside those five films, the picture ain’t that
rosy. With a week to go, total grosses
for the year ($10.316 billion) are about even with last year, which was 5.5%
below 2013. Total grosses for 2015 could
possibly come in below the total gross for 2009 ($10.595 billion), although The
Force Awakens might single handedly prevent that. However, some of that is due to higher prices;
more tickets were sold in 1993 (the year of the original Jurassic Park) when
tickets cost half as much.
So it is the best of times, and the worst of times. How to explain this conundrum, with a handful
of films succeeding wildly and other not?
It is feast or famine. Either a
film is a blockbuster, or it sinks to ignominious defeat. The window for making money has narrowed;
after opening weekend there isn’t much reason to stay in theaters, better to
get the DVDs out and start counting revenues from sales.
An article
in Hollywood Reporter recently quoted a movie executive as saying “You can’t
cheat opening weekend” anymore. If a
studio served up a turkey, in the past anticipation might draw people to the
theaters even if there was some unsettling buzz. Now with “social media” (as the kids are
calling it), once a flop sees the light of day, the word spreads to twitter
accounts, via Instagram, on blogs and whatever the latest thing is. Then the media reports, not on the failure,
but on the social network reports of failure.
The next thing you know, before you can say “Sue Storm” the Fantastic
Four is looking at a third week gross of $3.7 million.
The concept is similar to the idea of flash crowds as coined by
science fiction writer Larry Niven in 1973.
Niven posited that in a world where teleportation is available and
inexpensive, whenever something interesting would happen anywhere in the world,
a large group of people would decide to go there. The more people that were there, the more
people wanted to go there. Films that
generate buzz on social media are swarmed with movie goers, while those films
not so lucky play to empty houses. The media reports on the swarms, and more people
go.
Such a wide variation in box office grosses can only make
studio executives more risk averse. If
the difference between a film making $500 million and $50 million is subtle and
unknowable, then best to take no chances.
Test screen everything and let market research drive the decisions. One shudders to think how Raiders of the Lost
Ark would have done with test audiences (“One person didn’t like the melting
heads; better take them out. And put in
more of the cute monkey!”).
Maybe we are on a course where fewer and fewer films will go
to the expense of opening in theaters.
If studios think they have a clunker, either trash it and take the tax
write-off, or sell it to Netflix and let them stream it. There will be far fewer screens, and only
three or four mega releases will be shown at any one time (plus some arty theaters for the
crowd who like subtitles). Anything unlikely to gross $20 million on opening
weekend will be relegated to TV in one form or another.
The thing is this—I’m not sure this is bad. Well, it is bad, but not for the obvious
reason. I am still convinced, as
I said in a previous blog, that films seen with a traditional projection
system at 24 frames per second create a special rapport with the viewer. Studies indicate that watching celluloid
projected films is more interactive and engrossing than watching a digitally
projected image.
But digital project is ascendant. Watching a film with digital projection
system is psychologically indistinguishable from watching a big TV set. So you might as well watch these films on
your big TV set at home, instead of in a theater with sticky floors and people
who talk.
Documentaries don’t usually gross a lot, and they have
adapted to the new distribution mode like small mammals after a meter
strike. Documentaries are far more
available now than ever, and better documentaries are being made as a result. If your target isn’t a $200 million opening
weekend, there is something to be said for DVD distribution.
Maybe films will be like dinosaurs, getting bigger and
bigger until the system collapses under its own weight. Films will become so expensive that an
opening weekend of $150 million is a disaster, and each studio goes bankrupt after
one Fantastic Four sized failure. A few
theaters will still exist, reducing distribution costs; meanwhile revenues will
come primarily from streaming, DVD sales and merchandising.
Don’t say it can’t happen; nickelodeons used to be the
primary method of distrusting films.
When was the last time you paid a nickel to see a movie?
No comments:
Post a Comment