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After they spend $100 million to make movies like Stealth or $130 million to make The Island, I'm a little surprised. Oh? Their study didn't take those kind of "costs" into account? Well no wonder it's only 6 billion.

They Live. Screenshot.

...would be extremely controversial as the entertainment industry is increasingly demanding that ISPs disclose the names of suspected file sharers.

Which is a shame since the entertainment industry is suffering so badly. I mean, those poor, poor starving, homeless bastards. Oh. Nevermind, that's not true:

The figures are in, and the Thursday gross for Episode III is a record-breaking $50 million from 3,661 venues and about 9,400 prints.

So movies are able to open with revenues are at a record high. Wow. So maybe it's the music industry that's suffering from all this online piracy. Or maybe not in the case of Warner Music:

Recorded Music revenue expanded 4.9 percent to $621 million, "led by digital sales mostly offset by declines in physical sales," the company said.

So they're selling less physical copies of music - but selling digital music, yet their revenue is actually up. Universal and Sony aren't public (Warner just went public), so they're not accountable to public stockholders and they can continue to woefully lie about how file sharing is ruining (just RUINING!) their business.

It's not like I didn't see Star Wars available for download yesterday - but I still went to see the movie today with friends - and will still buy the first three episodes when all of them are available on DVD. (I already have the original trilogy).

No, man, he looks just like Peter Boyle as the monster in "Young Frankenstein".

Here he is on stage with Scott McNealy.

I knew we shouldn't have hired Boies Schiller.

Here's Ballmer's secret meeting with Richard Stallman.

The Longhorn Beta doesn't go so well.

I gotta do something about Google!

I prefer Ludicrous speed!

How did Joss get a studio to green light on a show that didn't make it out of its first season?

You assume that it made it into the first season. I can only presume that Fox didn't know what the hell they bought and so killed it out of sheer panic. Here's an overview of the Serenity background.

It's also possible that it wasn't very friendly for the typical Fox advertiser: a series about a subversive group of space cowboys who were on the wrong side of a galactic civil war doesn't exactly fit with the facist "you're with us or against us" attitude of Fox.

I actually think that DVD is the perfect medium for Firefly. I wish that instead of moving on to film, they'd made a second series specifically for a DVD release - but that probably would have meant dealing with Fox. :(

And he's currently doing P.K. Dick's A Scanner Darkly the same way.

Because the marketing for this movie was split. They had two parallel campaigns running - one that played up the Sci-Fi aspect, another that played up the romantic love story aspect. They were hoping to appeal to two different core audiences.

Ultimately it failed likely because it alienated both audiences.

I saw Solaris opening night on Friday. I quite enjoyed it, but probably because I enjoyed the cinematography, design and overall feel of the movie. Character development is fairly good, despite the sparse dialog and join-the-dots plot. Even so, I was suprised by the very gentle and understated warmth of the movie - allowing the subtle emotions of the characters to be observed in the relative calm of rest of the movie. It's also worth noting that most (if not all) of the action events and violence takes place off-screen, which was a nice change and felt very mature compared to the current Hollywood "lots of things explode" mentality of movie making.

Overall, this movie seemed like someone's art project that somehow received a couple of million to turn into a full blown theatrical release. If you treat it as such, you'll probably enjoy it. I'd give it a B+ rating.

I wrote an article about my experiences with digital projection (it can be read here), based on my background as a projectionist.

As to the question of print length for MaxiVision, the print will not be 2x longer. One change for MaxiVision is the reduction of the 35mm frame to 3 standard sprocket holes high (as opposed to the current standard of 4). They can get away with this due to the fact that the top and bottom of a standard 35mm frame is wasted space for 'flat' films, as that extra space is matted out in the projector by a 'key' (which blocks the light from passing through that portion of the frame). The lens on the projector expands the frame so the left and right image edges match up with the screen width, and the extra material on the top and bottom (beyond the 1.85:1 window) is lost.

This is one of the interesting ideas in MaxiVision, yet it also leads to a major complication: the anamorphic process (often called "CinemaScope" in shorthand) uses the entire current 35mm frame, so the 2.35:1 widescreen format would not work in this revised frame design. Anamorphic processes need the full frame height, as the width is derived from squeezing the image horizontally. Unless you also developed lenses to squeeze on the vertical as well, you'd have either a REALLY widescreen image (somewhere around 3.2:1), or you'd have to 'key' out the right and left sides of the image (losing image resolution).

While the MaxiVision process is interesting, choices in theater equipment always come down to finances: and since the studios control product, they're in the drivers seat, long-term, in forcing the theater companies to go their way. (The terrible financial state of theatrical companies also limits their ability to experiment with technologies not supported by the studios.)

This list shows a nice (and generally correct) trend, but it's not complete-- most films that likely break the trend are absent.

Something more correct would look something like this (not counting Pixar/Disney joint releases). Additions are in bold:


The Lion King 1994
Production Budget: $50 million
U.S. Box Office Take: $312 million

Hercules 1997
Production Budget: $100 million
U.S. Box Office Take: $99 million

The Little Mermaid (reissue) 1997
Production Budget: virtually nil for rerelease
U.S. Box office Take: $28.73 million

Mulan 1998
Production Budget: ????
U.S. Box office Take: 138.62 million

Tarzan 1999
Production Budget: $150 million
U.S. Box Office Take: $171 million

Doug's First Movie 2000
Production Budget: ???
U.S. Box Office Take: $20.69 million

Fantasia 2000
Production Budget: ???
U.S. Box Office Take: $58.33 million

The Tigger Movie 2000
Production Budget: ???
U.S. Box Office Take: $45.54 million

The Emperor's New Groove 2001
Production Budget: $100 million
U.S. Box Office Take: $89.2 million

Peter Pan II 2001
Production Budget: ???
U.S. Box Office Take: $89.2 million

Atlantis: The Lost Empire 2001
Production Budget: ???
U.S. Box Office Take: $84.4 million

Lilo & Stitch
Production Budget: $80+ million
U.S. Box Office Take: Unknown


I think there was just a rerelease of Beauty and the Beast that did pretty well and had extra footage too. This says nothing of international BO + ancillary profits from branded toys, etc. Not to mention the straight-to-video sequels (Cinderella 2, etc.)

Source: Box Office Prophets, except for Peter Pan II, which I didn't see listed.

it isn't.
Spider-Man: 3615 Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones: 3161

from here [boxofficeprophets.com].
500 less screens.