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How old's the TCP/IP stack running most computers?

TCP/IP isn't protected by copyright. Anyone can write code to communicate via TCP/IP without paying any copyright holder.

How old's the Linux/OSX/Windows kernel?

Focusing just on Windows for a second (since admittedly that's the one I know the most about), it is almost a year old (Windows 7). It was preceded by a version (Vista) that is now 3 years old. That, in turn, was preceded by a version (XP) that is now over 8 years old. This is where most people who use Windows will stop, though a minority might use previous versions like ME (9 years old), 98 (nearly 12 years old) or 95 (closing in on 15 years old). You can also go all the way back to Windows 1.0 if you want, but virtually nobody uses that anymore.

Since XP is still the most used OS (followed by Vista and Windows 7), I'd say that the lifespan of a Windows kernel is somewhere around 10 years at the most. (Certainly not 95 years!)

What about the MP3 file format?

How many other file formats were created that aren't being used anymore? Should long copyright terms be maintained on them to protect MP3?

To bring this back to the world of film, there were 47 films released in 1977. (Source: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1977.php ) Of these, one (Star Wars) is still a major money earner and perhaps five are still moderate money earners. The rest likely bring in only the occasional DVD sale. So for the sake of profits from perhaps 6 movies, the copyright on 41 movies is lengthened. Going back another decade to 1967 ( http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1967.php ), there are 33 films of which maybe 5 still make moderate amounts of money. Why should we keep copyrights on 85% of works lengthened for the sake of 15% of works?

How old's the TCP/IP stack running most computers?

TCP/IP isn't protected by copyright. Anyone can write code to communicate via TCP/IP without paying any copyright holder.

How old's the Linux/OSX/Windows kernel?

Focusing just on Windows for a second (since admittedly that's the one I know the most about), it is almost a year old (Windows 7). It was preceded by a version (Vista) that is now 3 years old. That, in turn, was preceded by a version (XP) that is now over 8 years old. This is where most people who use Windows will stop, though a minority might use previous versions like ME (9 years old), 98 (nearly 12 years old) or 95 (closing in on 15 years old). You can also go all the way back to Windows 1.0 if you want, but virtually nobody uses that anymore.

Since XP is still the most used OS (followed by Vista and Windows 7), I'd say that the lifespan of a Windows kernel is somewhere around 10 years at the most. (Certainly not 95 years!)

What about the MP3 file format?

How many other file formats were created that aren't being used anymore? Should long copyright terms be maintained on them to protect MP3?

To bring this back to the world of film, there were 47 films released in 1977. (Source: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1977.php ) Of these, one (Star Wars) is still a major money earner and perhaps five are still moderate money earners. The rest likely bring in only the occasional DVD sale. So for the sake of profits from perhaps 6 movies, the copyright on 41 movies is lengthened. Going back another decade to 1967 ( http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/index1967.php ), there are 33 films of which maybe 5 still make moderate amounts of money. Why should we keep copyrights on 85% of works lengthened for the sake of 15% of works?

I'd bet "good" stars are happy to take less to play in good movies.

See Jim Carrey in The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), another $20 million movie. He made that movie just a year after charging a salary of $25 million for Bruce Almighty.

Make good movies that real actors can be proud of being in, and they'll settle for way less.

Not only are there fewer sales due to piracy but even more so there are fewer taxes paid.

Except the numbers don't seem to bear that out. They grew, even during a period of economic downturn in the US. Note that for movies, the total tickets sold increased, so it's not just a result of twiddling ticket prices.

2009
Total Box Office Gross: $10,800,428,340
Tickets sold: 1,440,057,129

Music: $1,545 million

2008
Total Box Office Gross: $9,945,355,274
Tickets sold: 1,385,146,979

Music: $1,513 million

Sources: The Numbers, Rolling Stone

It turns out that many movies are actually cheaper than these big games.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/allbudgets.php

$20M was the budget for Into The Wild - no blowing up tanks there, but lots of location shooting.

28 Days Later: $15M
Bubba Ho-Tep: $1M
El Mariachi: $7000

What makes you say that people aren't willing to pay for books, music and films?

Yes, e-books are gaining popularity now that the technology is becoming more portable and easier. This just means that it is easier for some/most people than carrying around/keeping shelves worth of books (compare how much space a season of TV takes up when comparing VHS and DVD).

Yes, because it is digital it is easier to copy. But what about the people scanning print books to create digital versions of them (legitimately for out of copyright works on sites like guttenberg, or illegally)?

Pirates will be pirates.

You say how do people make their money, but lets think about this...
  * 2009 is the first time that films in cinemas have grossed over $10 billion!
  * 2008's The Dark Knight made over $500 million in the US and over $1 billion worldwide. [1]
  * Avatar has the second biggest opening week performance, below The Dark Knight, and is well set to becoming the 5th film to earn over $1 billion worldwide (Titanic [1997], Lord of * the Rings: Return of the King [2003], Pirates of the Carribean: Dead Man's Chest [2006], The Dark Knight [2008]) -- all when piracy is supposed to be killing the movie industry. [1]
  * Then there are runaway indie hits like Paranormal Activity ($107 miilion for a $15 thousand budget!) [3]

For music and books, i don't know what the figures are, but:
  * Nine Inch Nails released an album for $4 or $5 (with limited edition versions for a lot more that sold out very quickly) and as a thank you released an album for free under the creative commons license, giving you permission to rework and remix it how you want
  * Sandie Thom's career was launched via a webcast
  * Various artists (such as Helen Austen, Poko Lambro and Lizzie Hibbert) are using YouTube and MySpace to help promote themselves as well as performing in pubs and bars, allowing them to gain a wider fan base
  * The internet and the digital age are helping authors and musicians reach a wider audience (I like a lot of German music artists) -- especially new and upcoming authors and artists (I read quite a bit of internet fiction and buy some of their work where possible as a thank you)
  * Self-publishing sites such as lulu.com are helping would-be authors publish their own work

The digital book formats are helping would-be authors publish their own works.

As for advertising, why would I want to have that take up space on a website I am viewing, be forced to watch it on the DVDs I own or have to be interrupted while watching a TV program or film with annoying adverts (Sheila's Wheels, anyone!). If the solution is to put advertising in the middle of electronic books for any of the new books from major publishers, then count me out (same with DRM).

And before you ask, I buy CDs, DVDs and books (but will be buying more electronic books in the future).

[1] http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/#alltime
[2] http://www.movienewsmovietrailers.com/hollywood-breaks-box-office-records-in-2009/90348
[3] http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=paranormalactivity.htm

Another way to look at it:

If you took the money that went into making "Waterworld" and "Van Helsing" you'd almost have $400 mil. Throw in "King Arthur", and you've got an extra $35 million left over. (Source)

I would gladly have sacrificed those gems of cinematography for the sake of space exploration.

And that is Disney's real problem. The thing that they have of value is the ability to produce new films. They need to stop fixating on trying to sell copies of their films and focus on how to persuade people to pay them to make new films. That is the kind of innovation the industry needs, not new forms of DRM.

Another poster here talks about Disney's new system as being "an industry solution in search of a consumer problem". What you've proposed is a consumer solution in search of an industry problem. DVD sales are a huge cash cow, and they'd be fools to give that up easily. Making new movies is a risky, expensive undertaking. Selling DVDs is a cheap, reliable revenue stream. There is increasing consumer demand to move away from physical media towards downloaded content, and Disney is sure as hell going to try to find a profitable way to make that switch.

Tens of thousands of people? Really? Maybe for a movie near its time of release. And this is compared to how many people who pay to watch it at the cinema or buy/rent the DVD? Tens of millions? Is the proportion of people torrenting the film even statistically significant? Picking a movie at random, I see that 14,961,840 people have bought Transformers on DVD (it was the first recent film I could think of that would be out on DVD). The gross from cinema attendance was $319,014,499. Guessing that people paid $10 per ticket, that's 30 million watching it in the cinema and 15 million bought the DVD. A quick search on The Pirate Bay shows the top result has 1 seed and 12 leeches.

As far as safe bets go, a Pixar film is a safer bet than a sequel. Have they ever failed?

I'm not sure what "fail" means, but no, they have never failed. Excluding Up, every Disney-Pixar movie has grossed at least 3x their production budget. Toy Story had the best return at 10x, Wall-E the least at 3x.

In absolute numbers, Toy Story and A Bug's Life grossed the least at about $360,000,000 each. The worst take this decade was Ratatouille at $450,000,000, but it still grossed 6x its budget.

Over the course of 10 movies, Disney/Pixar has grossed $5,000,000,000 on a budget of $1,000,000,000.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/Pixar.php

The movie apparently is the most expensive of the Star Trek movies. The first weekend box office was half it's budget which relatively speaking is a bit below average for Star Trek movies. However, given the high quality of the movie and the legs that most Star Trek movies have, I imagine this movie will make an ample profit.

Yeah, but this one cost a whole lot more to make than any of the previous ones. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/StarTrek.php

Hm. What are you, 12? It's not possible for a Trek movie to fail. It won't win an Oscar but they're not supposed to. It can't do that and fulfill Roddenberry's vision for social change through fantasy.

Not one Trek movie has ever failed to get more box office than its production cost, let alone before you figure DVD sales and merchandising. Nemesis came close but over the history of the franchise they're running 2:1 just in box. With a Costneresque budget on Trek XI they're doing their best to see if they can spend more than any box office can handle and it might just happen, but net of DVDs and books and merch the movie will make money. Old jerks like me will still drag their kids out to see it no matter how much they don't want to. We'll buy the new lightsabers for birthday gifts and the scale models for Christmas, the desk calendars and action figures and hundreds of cobranded happy meals with the cheesy Chinese lead-based toy. We'll do it because we're struggling to connect our spoiled brats with the hopeful social message of yesteryear when you didn't know the doomed guy's shirt was red because the TV was black and white. As a side effect we'll perpetuate the exploitation of a franchise that's gradually losing the vision of its creator, but hey -- that's what memes and pop culture are about.

One day my kids will be dragging their kids to Trek films. They won't know why and the films won't contain anything that makes the endeavor worthwhile. Perhaps the tradition will die with that generation. In the meantime the landfill is going to see billions of those happy meal toys. Hollywood is going to try to milk this one long after it's dry because they ran out of new ideas 15 years ago if they ever had any.

Let me condition that: If Sony buys the franchise from Viacom/Paramount it's over in one movie flat. Sony just doesn't get it and they never will.

Looking purely at the numbers, by the third week the worldwide box office receipts are $148,909,463. The production cost was around $130,000,000. Factor in publicity and a few non-production costs and they are probably around break even right now. Anything they earn from here on out is profit.

That is not true. Theaters get to keep about half the box office. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box_office http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/budgets.php

I'm not sure you can compare the HPL and a research paper. The actual text in Harry Potter is the basis of a billion dollar industry and Rowling's publishers have very good lawyers. Fair use has rules about quote length and attribution and it seems like this guy broke them. Of course a lot of research papers may break those same rules but it would be very unlikely anyone would sue over that.

Slashdot is schizophrenic about copyright, if someone had taken big chunks of GPL code and used them in a closed source application everyone would be baying for blood, but for some reason Harry Potter is considered entertainment and therefore OK to copy, a bit like movies and music. In a sense Harry Potter is open source - the text is freely available. It definitely isn't Creative Commons though, so while you are free to cite it you are not free to make derivative works, unless you have an agreement with Rowling herself.

From what I've read this guy cut and pasted big chunks of the original text and didn't add much himself. While the whole thing was non commercial he was safe but as soon as he started to make money he wasn't. It's actually the literary equivalent of using GPL code in a commercial, closed source application.

You're right, he was in a movie which cost $150 million to produce, but which grossed about $125 million. No blocks were ever at risk of being busted.

That's the US gross. The worldwide gross was $287 million.

Considering that TDK broke the 2nd Week record, I'd say that it pretty much shoots down that "piracy kills sales" theory.

Another thing. I saw a Pirate version of TDK after seeing it the first day. I can say without any doubt that the Pirate version ruins this movie. If you watched this movie pirated, you'll probably think it sucks. It just doesn't work the same as it does in the theater, since they use detailed shots and surround sound extensively to build up tension and effect, especially in the shock moments of the film. Basically, this movie deserves your money, so do yourself a favor and watch it in a Theater.

It's all fine to say that copyright is too long and the public (i.e., us) shouldn't have to pay three billion dollars to see these 1955 stories in film. However, the 3 billion dollars was paid. This argument is only about who should get it. We certainly aren't going to get it back.

for a property that has made New Line north of $1 billion in revenue...

Quite a bit north, actually. In point of fact, just shy of three billion dollars. And that's not considering merchandising tie-ins, DVD sales, and all the rest of the "film related" revenue.

So I guess we now know the answer to "what has it got in its pocketses?" A shitload of other people's money!

Look at how much money they make! if they even put 10% of that into buying politicians every law could be rewritten!

We all know that labels screw artists and DRM is bad and blah blah blah, but what happens if your favorite action films cost $50 million to make, but suddenly all of the customers have "digital content wants to be free" philosophies?

I talked about music publishing and laptop production, not DVDs and cinemas.

But, since you asked so nicely....

No they don't *need* DVD sales to survive, but they are part of modern film making as much as 'bums on seats' in the cinema.

Film budgeting is based on how much the film will cost to produce, and how much money it is likely to make.
Now DVDs exist, their sales can be translated into larger initial production budgets.

Hence, film budgets are at a historical high.
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/allbudgets.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films

So, while there were a few very expensive films made when there were only movie theatres, they don't really compare to the budgets available since DVD, video, television etc enlarged the market.
Also, the higher budgets have widened the quality gap between the commercial and amateur efforts, enabling the large film producers to keep hold of the market and thus recoup their huge investments.

Of course, it's possible to make music and films without DVDs, CDs, the internet and cinemas. But if you want to make *commercial* films, you need distribution to the customers and some kind of budget.

You sound like Robert Rodriguez, before his checks from the Weinstein's started to clear. He STILL goes on endlessly about how you only need a few people to make a movie, and how it's such a personal experience for him and how digital technology has changed everything, while he spends his $53 million dollar budgets.

Maybe the DV cineastes are the Incas! They are quaint and provincial and riven by internal divisions; they often venerate their leaders, living and dead. They have many resources, but lack some critical innovations of the Spaniards; many among them are easily co-opted with blandishments of power and money. They have gold, all the better for the Spaniards to smelt into crucifixes! They'll change cinema for ever in the way they changed the Spanish; they got a little darker (a little).

but #1 is pretty much done already

As long as people are paying $80 for a 4 ft. Monster RCA cable, I'm dubious on this point. It just ain't the same. 50% of the acoustics is having a big room, thousands of square feet, and 50% of the visual experience is having 120 degrees of your field-of-view filled at meters distance. BTW, if you think you're getting theater resolution from HDDVD or Blu-Ray, you aren't -- that's still another generation up.

#2, well, the dinner and a movie date was never the best one for me. I don't know how many young people still do this now that it'll cost you $60+ for the 'experience'.

\me steps off your lawn... $60 is pretty competitive with any night out at this point -- dancing with a cover and drinks will run that out pretty fast, and you haven't even fed the girl yet! I can't even begin to describe how much funnier Knocked Up is with an audience than alone.

#3, I agree changing actors, producers, directors, etc.., will probably help get some new ideas out there and not the same old sequels and remakes we seem to be getting lately.

I'm not really criticizing the content (it might be crap but you people paid a lotta money this year to see it!) My point is that filmmakers hate the internet for their movies, and they're in the drivers seat when it comes to where things show for $$$.

I don't see how this counteracts the first two points though. If the movie looks good, I'm probably still more apt to rent it than see it in a crowded theater with sticky floors, improperly focused projectors, wimpy sound systems, peoples cell phones ringing, a mad rush to get the good seats... you get the idea.

This is an issue and some theater chains like Arclight and Pacific are catering to a higher end, doing proper QC of their sound and projection, offering better food, alcohol, etc. One of the issues the US film industry has, going forward, is that many of the exhibitors are bankrupt, and have really bad business models, mainly because they skimped on quality to maximize screen and seat count (and they get a really shitty end of the box-office split). An end-to-end digital cinema distribution system may address this, but they've only been talking about that for, what, 10 years? It costs a theater on average $100K to equip a (remember, bankrupt) theater for DLP and HiDef video, and there are no unified standards yet as to delivery formats (Sony [HDCAM-SR] and Panasonic [D-5] up to their old mischief, as always).

Exactly how unprofitable was it?

Very, very unprofitable:

Production Budget: $30,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $185,724,838

Anybody have a URL for a site that compiles DVD sales data? For example I see The Big Lebowski made $17M at the US Box office, but I suspect DVD sales are higher than that. It's my conjecture that most Jeff Bridges movies fit that trend since he tends to go for the unpopular genres but does a really good job at them.

Factoid:

Titanic, the most successful film in non-inflation-adjusted dollars (the most successful inflation-adjusted is still Gone With the Wind), has collected $1.8 billion since its original release in December, 1997.

Al you have to do is repeat that revenue 74 times, and you'll have enough cash to buy 51% of Microsoft. Oh but remember, Titanic was at the time the most expensive movie ever made (the present champion is Spiderman 3, and rising), costing well over $200 million and requiring the budgets of two studios to keep it funded to the end.

There is alot of money in the world, but in order the buy MS you have to trade your real dollars for imaginary dollars; you know, the dollars the stockholders believe they have on account of holding MSFT paper.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/Anaconda. php

Released Movie Name 1st Weekend US Gross Worldwide Gross Budget
4/11/1997Anaconda $16,620,887 $65,598,907 - -
8/27/2004 Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid $12,812,287 $31,526,393 $47,026,393 $25,000,000
Totals $97,125,300 $112,625,300 $25,000,000
Averages $48,562,650 $56,312,650 $25,000,000

5) Slashdot sucks, because most people here don't see the immorality of file sharing, and don't see that incredibly expensive shows like 24 and Lost WON'T EXIST if they can't make money. We might actually be seeing the fall of good video programming. It may not exist in 10 years, except for amateur junk.

I see this argument popping up again and again. I can see that it's a pretty intuitive argument - if you download, you don't and won't pay to see/hear the work again - but remember that intuition and reality have always had a less-than-rock-solid relationship. Has Linux, being free and all, killed proprietary OSs, notably Windows? Has FOSS in general, or piracy, killed proprietary software? Of course not, and it won't, for the same reasons that professional entertainment won't be killed by pirating it.

The morality of downloading may or may not be a question, but I won't discuss it, because morality doesn't feed or starve anyone, which, by and large, seems to be what it's about. Besides, as we can see (not only) from the story at hand, the "other side" as represented by the *AAs of the world at least also has some issues with generally accepted morality. So it boils down to whether piracy has a significant negative net impact on sales, i.e., a significantly larger negative than positive effect, and that's what I doubt.

For example, can you cite, say, 3 examples of artists/companies/whatever which had to go out of business because of and only because of piracy? If you can cite such examples, can you show beyond reasonable doubt that the very act of downloading and obtaining the work has killed all incentive to buy the work, and not the insight that the work was of poor quality or simply not of the viewer's taste? What do you think of the positive advertising effect of pirated works? How do you explain that, according to this site, movies of the past ~3 years are over-represented (number of entries in a period divided by length of same period) in basically every box office chart, despite rapidly growing movie piracy in the same period? If you say "inflation", then did you just admit piracy doesn't even make a dent in sales? It would seem unlikely that the hypothetical sales growth *without* piracy had been offset by piracy so exactly that you can fully explain observed sales change by inflation.

So, my layman advice to record labels and movie studios: If your motivation really is to protect the artists, then drop the scare campaigns and the pillory court cases and put the money into higher-quality work, sponsoring more artists instead of fewer high-profile ones; or simply cut your moon prices for a simple and easily understandable change. If people want to have what you offer, they will generally buy it and you will sell it at a profit; the die-hard pirates will not stop pirating anyway; legislative and law enforcement branches can focus on actual crime. Thus everybody can be happy. But as long as the "piracy funds terrorism and eats babies" mindset is hammered into an increasingly criminalized society, things won't change for the better, that's for sure. I very much admire the Swedish people who are protesting against this police raid, because it shows an attitude sorely lacking, at least here in Germany.

According to "The-Numbers.com" it only made $26,918,576 at the box office in 1982. Still, that would be a decent ROI for $17,000,000 you'd think. But that $17M number - which is only an estimate it seems - may exclude marketing etc etc, which would explain that it was considered a flop compared to the expectations.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1982/0TRON.html

Ah but those great movies didn't all gross as well as some movies you or I might consider to be piss-poor. Let's do some numbers, shall we?

Capote, after 22 weeks in theater, made 23 million

The Pink Panther, after 3 weeks in theater, made 60 million.

Another example!

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, opening at 8million, made a total of 34 million in the states

King Kong, opening at 50 million, made 216 million in the states

checking here, we see the highest return on a low budget film were films like the blair witch, or titanic. We also see that 'the boondock saints', which I consider to be a fantastic film, is on the biggest flops list! (hard to figure how they got up the money to make a sequel...)

so with ridiculous things like the 'warner bros independent films' line coming out, indie means only a film which has some cred and seems cooler to people.

indie films are ending up with big budgets and big names and are not our saving grace, nor (sadly) are simply making higher quality films. lucas doesn't know what he's talking about.

This movie isn't aimed at you and me.

The original Dark Crystal was excellent but it was a kid's movie. We liked because we were kids when we saw it. When we look at the original through adult's eyes, it won't be anywhere near as impressive, because the new Dark Crystal will also be a kids movie.

Studios know where the best target market for these sorts of films is, and it isn't us.

E.g. compare the box office of Harry Potter movies with Serenity. First one was unashamedly aimed at kids, second one aimed at 30 something sci fi geeks. Harry Potter makes hundreds of millions of dollars, Serenity just about broke even. If you look at the whole HP franchise - all the HP films, it will make literally billions of dollars, hundreds or thousands of times more than the Serenity franchise, because Serenity was only one film, and it's much harder to make the first film of a series than the subsequent ones. Just imagine trying to raise money for Serenity vs the next HP movie. The people that lend you money for HPn+1 know that it will make x% of the last movie - the numbers are big enough that you can probably plot a graph of profit vs series member and know best and worst case estimates. Since the worst case is still a sh*tload of money, it's an easy case to make.

The people that lend you money for Serenity will moan about how it is based on a 'failed' series and have no idea if the rabid fans will get enough of their friends into a cinema to make the whole thing work.

Simple economics predicts that this movie will disappoint fans of the original. It's a sad fact, but it's the truth.

And before all the browncoats start pointing out that I'm ignoring DVD and foreign sales, you have to remember that it applies to HP too. If you add up all the possible sources of money, Serenity probably did ok. HP on the other hand did far better than ok. I'd like it not to be true, since I'd much rather watch Firefly than HP, but wanting something to be true doesn't automatically make it true.

Here are the numbers for Serenity
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2005/FRFLY.php

And here are the numbers for the HP franchise
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/HarryPott er.php

You could reasonably predict that you can spend $150,000,000 on "HP: Order of the Phoenix" and get back between $800-$900M.

For a movie aimed at the same demographic as Serenity, i.e. us, you're unlikely to make any real profit.

So which demographic will the Dark Crystal target?

This movie isn't aimed at you and me.

The original Dark Crystal was excellent but it was a kid's movie. We liked because we were kids when we saw it. When we look at the original through adult's eyes, it won't be anywhere near as impressive, because the new Dark Crystal will also be a kids movie.

Studios know where the best target market for these sorts of films is, and it isn't us.

E.g. compare the box office of Harry Potter movies with Serenity. First one was unashamedly aimed at kids, second one aimed at 30 something sci fi geeks. Harry Potter makes hundreds of millions of dollars, Serenity just about broke even. If you look at the whole HP franchise - all the HP films, it will make literally billions of dollars, hundreds or thousands of times more than the Serenity franchise, because Serenity was only one film, and it's much harder to make the first film of a series than the subsequent ones. Just imagine trying to raise money for Serenity vs the next HP movie. The people that lend you money for HPn+1 know that it will make x% of the last movie - the numbers are big enough that you can probably plot a graph of profit vs series member and know best and worst case estimates. Since the worst case is still a sh*tload of money, it's an easy case to make.

The people that lend you money for Serenity will moan about how it is based on a 'failed' series and have no idea if the rabid fans will get enough of their friends into a cinema to make the whole thing work.

Simple economics predicts that this movie will disappoint fans of the original. It's a sad fact, but it's the truth.

And before all the browncoats start pointing out that I'm ignoring DVD and foreign sales, you have to remember that it applies to HP too. If you add up all the possible sources of money, Serenity probably did ok. HP on the other hand did far better than ok. I'd like it not to be true, since I'd much rather watch Firefly than HP, but wanting something to be true doesn't automatically make it true.

Here are the numbers for Serenity
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/2005/FRFLY.php

And here are the numbers for the HP franchise
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/HarryPott er.php

You could reasonably predict that you can spend $150,000,000 on "HP: Order of the Phoenix" and get back between $800-$900M.

For a movie aimed at the same demographic as Serenity, i.e. us, you're unlikely to make any real profit.

So which demographic will the Dark Crystal target?

Even if you go with $200m, you're still forgetting a few things:

(a) you're talking about US box office numbers, not international [see the box office breakdown here]. International BO numbers will bring that figure way up.

(b) DVD sales, licensed merchandise (plush, books, lunchboxes, tshirts, etc), and theme park attractions will all contribute to the bottom line on top of the BO numbers.

(c) Pixar was sitting on $1b in cash themselves, so the stock swap actually netted Disney a little bit of cash, making the quoted $7.4b number a bit of a misnomer.

It would be still be slightly in the red if it weren't for the DVD sales, which are killing right now. (I haven't found any links to projected DVD sale profits.)

I think the people who believe there's going to be enough net profit to greenlight a sequel are seriously deluded. But bottom line, it didn't really lose money. (Unless Universal needs a big tax writeoff.)

Well according to that list they made Napoleon Dynamite. And Election. I'd say that's enough of a raison d'etre for any movie studio. And look at the size of those budgets! Napoleon Dynamite cost only $400,000 to make! Vote for Pedro indeed. MTV Films has definitely been a profit center for Viacom. Look again at the numbers. These guys are (normally anyway) smart.

Missing from that list: Beavis and Butt-Head Do America. Cost $10 Million to make. Made it back twice the first week of release. It came out through Paramount *as* an MTV Films release.

http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1996/BEAVI.html

As far as Aeon Flux goes, they should have done it right. Give it to Peter Chung to make it as an animated feature. Thanks to this very *stoopid* move on the part of MTV Films, it will *never* happen. Thanks a lot. :P

Did you expect anything more from MTV Films? Just look at the movies they've made: http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/series/MTVFilms. php

That list is missing The Blair Witch Project which cost 35K to make and grossed over 140 million (248 worldwide).

How's that for ROI?

Can you mention one whale in the history of mankind that has had a record in the top ten?

What about Free Willy??!

Lost in Translation made $106 million off of a $4 million dollar budget, $44 million of that being domestic box office. Not exactly what I'd call overlooked. :-)

According to:
http://www.the-numbers.com/charts/daily/2005/20050 930.html
it did $4,200,000 over 2,188 cinemas, for an average of $1,920 at each.

Not bad for the first day out, I guess. It's recouped about 10% of the cost to make it. There are three new releases reported. Serenity is doing best, by a wide margin.

Disclaimer: I know nada about the movie biz, historical accuracy of data provided by the-numbers.com, etc. I was just curious, and Googling around.

It seems to me that we're seeing here the evolution of two distinct business models for movies.

Major studio movies will continue to use a similar model to today, possibly with a smaller theatrical window. Although the home market provides bigger revenues, the studios aren't going to give up the $100m - $200m they can make from a theatrical run. Insted they'll optimize the release window so as to maximize revenue. For example, have a global Summer release of a blockbuster, then put out the DVD in time for Christmas, with pay TV in between.

The goal for the studios in this model is to maximize the number of times one person will pay for the movie. Ideally they want someone to buy a ticket at the movie theater, then buy the DVD three months later, then buy a DVD special edition a couple of years after that. (And an HD-DVD after that, and so on...)

For independents, the model will be different, I think. The advertising dollars involved are much smaller, and people are much more likely to base their viewing decision on reviews. In this model, it's better to spend you marketing bucks once and generate as much money as you can, however you can. You might forgo someone paying twice for a movie, but more likely you'll increase your revenues by having multiple distribution channels.

The reason this is still evolving is, I believe, partly because newspapers (mostly) only review theatrical releases, and partly that the independent distributors generally focus on one type of distribution, not all four (theatrical, home theater, TV, online). Cuban and Wagner's innovation is really in having a single distribution management system for independent movies, not in releasing in multiple formats at the same time. Now they can tweak the variables to maximize revenue.

Bruce Nash
http://www.the-numbers.com/

Don't you understand their revenues are down! Only digital pirates armed with cameras are going to the movies! They aren't making any money! However, 12 films grossed over $100,000,000, 5 of those broke $200,000,000, and one grossed over $300,000,000. You know what "they" say. A hundred million here and a hundred million there and pretty soon you're talking about REAL money. Numbers are from http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/100milli on.html.

Based on the statistics, comic-turn-movies are bringing in around $350 millions each after cost.

Sure - if you pick and choose your sample.
a few more Marvel movies:
The Punisher (1989)
Fantastic Four (1994) (yes there are caveats with this one)
Nick Fury: Agent of Shield (1998) (David Hasslehoff!?)
Captain America (1991)
and I'm sure there are more..

Based on the statistics, comic-turn-movies are bringing in around $350 millions each after cost.

It's a pretty safe investment, they just need two good ones to break even, and another 8 crappy ones @ $20m each to have 30% return.

Q. I always thought the most profitable movie of all time (based on percentage return) was "The Blair Witch Project." However, the movie poster for "Inside Deep Throat" claims that "Deep Throat" is the most profitable movie ever. Is there an authority who can settle this once and for all?

Andrew Woodhouse, Tempe Ariz.

A. Startled by the claim in "Inside Deep Throat" that the original movie grossed $600 million in circa-1970 dollars, Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times ran the numbers and wrote an article suggesting that figure was a fantasy that has been repeated for years without any fact-checking.

Hiltzik writes me: "The Web site www.the-numbers.com says $40.8 million. That could be in the ballpark, keeping in mind that given the cash nature of the distribution, it's a pretty muddy ballpark. At the time of the Memphis verdicts, the standard newspaper estimate seemed to be $30-$50 million, and then it abruptly jumped up to $600 million and no one ever looked back. When Linda Lovelace appeared before a Congressional committee in the mid-'80s, the chair, Arlen Specter, said something like, 'So it grossed $600 million and you got a lot of bruises?' and she replied, in effect, 'Yeah.'"

Since the mob owned most of the porn theaters in the pre-video days and inflated box office receipts as a way of laundering income from drugs and prostitution, it is likely, in fact, that "Deep Throat" did not really gross $600 million, although that might have been the box office tally.

Y'know, if you're gonna troll, at least take the time to make sure your claims aren't completely wrong.

Released in US: May 25, 2001
Total US Gross: $198,539,855
Production Budget: $135,000,000
Prints and Advertising Budget :$45,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $450,500,000

Assume that roughly 50% of gross goes back to the studio, factor in things like DVD/Video sales and merchandise, and you've got a seriously profitable movie.

they would have to add in some kind of love interest in there. Jennifer Garner

Look at the box office returns for Elektra. They may want to cast someone who could attract audiences to pay to see the movie.

-patternjuggler (slashdot is logging me out when I try to reply)

Yes, they did. Now here is my counter link. Movie Budgets and Gross

Make sure you look at that column at the end, the one that says "Worldwide Gross." And please feel free to notice that these are all American or American style films. I would love to see numbers like this matching bollywood or any other non-hollywood films.

Take your time, I'll wait. And yes there are some stinkers down at the bottm.