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George Lucas Predicts Death of Big Budget Movies
H_Fisher writes "Before the red carpet had cooled at last night's Academy Awards, George Lucas told the New York Daily News that big-budget movies will soon be history. From the article: "'The market forces that exist today make it unrealistic to spend $200 million on a movie,' said Lucas, a near-billionaire from his feverishly franchised outer-space epics. 'Those movies can't make their money back anymore. Look at what happened with King Kong.'" Lucas' prediction: "In the future, almost everything that gets shown in theaters will be indie movies ... I predict that by 2025 the average movie will cost only $15 million.""
Lucas fails to mention what has changed in the viewer or economic system. A relatively short period of time ago, big budget films were often hits. There was a placebo effect, whereby people would have high expectations of a big budget film (despite this often not panning out.... i.e. WaterWorld).. Both the Spiderman and X-Men movies have proved that big-budget films, of late, can score big. It's not just about ticket sales, but merchandising as well. Except for t-shirts and posters, "indie" films cannot compete with the merchandising opportunities of the types of movies that mandate big budgets.
Look at what happened with 'King Kong.'
The problem isn't the budget, its the lack of creativity. 'King Kong' is not a new movie, it is a remake of the 1933 RKO classic. Other big budget films: The Fog, The Nutty Professor, The Exorcist, Charlie's Angels, The Incredible Hulk, X-Men, Spiderman, Day of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, The Shaggy Dog, The Pink Panther, etc, etc, etc... And lets not even get started on sequels that should've never been made! (Anything that makes over 200m these days is just about guaranteed a sequel, whether is should have one or not)I took a History of Film class in college, and I remember learning about how "lulls" are often preceded by an abundance of recycled plot lines. The mainstream has run out of creative writers. Just about everything is a remake of something that's already been made. That's why independent, low budget films have become more popular. They are more likely to substitute a lack of special effects and big-name, no-talent casts with well developed plot-lines, creative stories, and some damn good acting.
This isn't even that big of an issue in all honesty. The big budget industries are complaining because they're only making an average of $250 million instead of $350 per crappy-remake-of-an-old-tv-show movies. They will go on spoon-feeding shit to the masses and having them eat it with a big grin on their face.
Capitalism: When it uses the carrot, it's called democracy. When it uses the stick, it's called fascism.
"I'm out of Star Wars ideas."
Ok...according to Box Office Mojo: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=kingkong05 .htm/
King Kong cost $217 million to make. And it's made, worldwide, $544 million. Now, only about half of that goes back to the studio, and there were certainly huge marketing costs, but we've still got DVD and Pay Cable and Basic Cable and Broadcast rights and Video Game Licenses and Merchandised Crappola.
Maybe they're not Titanic-happy, but it's hard to see them crying.
I believe the average home is poorer today than it was 10 and 20 years ago.
I believe that people just want to have much more stuff than they did before. 20 years ago, very few people had Computers, nobody had cell phones, thed had 1 phone for the entire house. They didn't have cable tv, and they had small 13 inch tv's. Now people have cable, and giant 60 inch TVs. You can't expect that to cost the same amount. Cars have also come a long way. A car 20 years ago is much less than what most cars are now. Entertainment is the same. Movies now are much more than what they were 20 years ago. You aren't getting the same product. You're really comparing apples to oranges in this case. Would the average american want to watch a black and white movie, where you can see the strings, and there's only 6 actors, and the director/producer/editor/cameraman/lighting tech/lead actor is all the same person?
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
On the day after Crash deservedly took the oscar for best film, hollywood needs to consider how many movies like Crash, Sideways, Munich, Serenity, Sin City, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Open Water, and Sean of the Dead are out there waiting to be made, and which could be made for much less money and make a much better return on their investment than utter piss like Mr and Mrs Smith or the latest Pink Panther.
Not all of the above are cheap films, but none of them had a couple of hundred million thrown at them, and every single one of them made a decent return. Hollywood is run by suits who dole out money to what they belive to be the safest option- a small selection of dead horses which the shamelessly flog (market) into turning a profit.
Someone please, please hand Michel Gondry, Charlie Kaufman, Darren Aronofsky, Guy Richie, and Christopher Nolan ( could go on, but am pressed for time) 100 million dollars each (that's $500m - less than the cost of cost two summer blockbusters) and sit back and watch about 15 great movies happen.
What a summer movie that'd be.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
How many movies came out last year with King Kong's budget? Just one.
The "average" cost of a movie is already far, far below $200 million... I would say that the "average" cost of movies is already in the $15-20 million range.
One of the biggest expenses of the movies is actors' salaries. Do anybody here actually believe that the studio execs LIKE paying $20 million to an actor for one film? Of course not, but they are paying the market rate for that actor. Actors draw audiences, so how does Lucas propose that the studios force the big name stars to take a lower salary?
You need to educate yourself about how movie accounting works.
You pay $10 to watch a movie. This is the GROSS.
The exhibitor (eg Cineplex Odeon) take 50% $5 and pass the rest up the chain.
The distributor (eg Lions Gate, Miramax, Gold Circle) take 50% ($2.50) and pass the rest up the chain.
The remaining $2.50 is the PRODUCER'S GROSS.
The A-list actors who have a % of gross take their cut. Say 20%. That leaves $2.
Now that $2 is used to pay off the cost of production ('negative cost') and give the investors a return on their capital. This includes things that have already been paid like producer's fees, actors' fees, writing fees, all the crew costs, etc. The studios usually get a big cut of this because the movie uses their facilities, which they charge out at exhorbitant fees.
Once the negative cost has been recouped (if ever), what's left is PRODUCER'S NET, which is what most people in the movies mean by profit.
As a writer, I usually get 5% of this, sometimes known as 'five monkey points' because only monkeys think they mean anything.
But anyway, the logic of all this is that a movie must make AT LEAST 4x it's negative cost to go into profit. So a $200m movie must gross $800m+ to go into profit.
I'm not wrong. You haven't thought about it hard enough.
Wait, you're actually arguing the point? Everyboy already knows that nothing Lucas writes or says can survive 2 neurons worth of deconstruction. I've even come up with a term for this phenomenon: Reductio ad Jar Jar. This is when you commit a single act so offensively stupid that to even agree with any of your ideas is to be negated. Effectively, your credibility has jumped the shark.
...what did you just say?
Lucas: Well, I think what we need to do here is blah blah blah excrement blah
Lucas' Aide: That's a great idea, sir
Lucas' Aide, internal monologue: JAR JAR FUCKING BINKS!
Lucas: Yes, I know. Furthur, blah blah Howard Duck blah blah
Lucas' Aide: Great, I'll take this to the ILM team
--
ILM Team: Yes?
Lucas' Aide: Here's the latest from George: blah blah Howard Duck blah
ILM Team: JAR JAR FUCKING BINKS!
Lucas' Aide:
ILM Team: Er, nothing.
See also: Howard Dean
> This is lucas we are talking about. The same man who made Revenge of the Sith. He has no business making movies any more, and less making predictions.
But he's a recognized expert on the topic of killing movies.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Brings to mind the Zappa quote: "Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff."
Think back to around 1991- dialup access was absurdly slow and ridiculously expensive, a decent computer would cost ya more than 3 grand. Cars were about the same price, but had fewer gizmos and creature comforts. If you wanted a cd of music, you had to fork over the $10 or $15 (No cd burners or emusic or piracy). If people have less real money now then then, it isn't for stuff getting more expensive, it is for their own stupidity, unwillingness to live within their means, and appetite for massive amounts of debt.
Sig cannot be found.
Okay, I'm no genius, but it appears that this is set up this way for (wink/nudge) tax reasons. I don't know about KK, but often the distributor is the same corp. as the producer (at least for these large budget deals)??? If not, then I'd bet it's a colluding oligopoly.
I would imagine (or, it wouldn't surprise me to learn...) that there's a 'floating' percentage that the distributor takes to make sure that there is never ANY producer's net (monkey points.. that's funny) and the producer's gross is inline with an average to pay the 20% for the actors. [dammit, where's my tinfoil hat!?]
The corporate structure simply has nifty ways of hiding the money so that the tax take is small (and the ACTUAL profits, paid as owner distributions, wages, and executive loans, are high) and most of the money stays in "hollywood."
I'm no expert, as I mentioned, but I realize when GM reports 'net losses' of $X billion that it's not really LOSSES, but they are able to claim a LOT of exemptions and expenses (some real-- some not).
For your next film, you should forfeit half of your *worthless* 'monkey points' for audit rights... I bet they'd balk.
As evidence of the distributor's collusion, Lionsgate dist. (who doesn't really have a competitor) is basically sucking up all the films that are too risky for mainstream corp. hollywood to finance outright. Then they take the profits (as above) and distribute them to the colluding accounts of the oligopoly. They only buy the rights to the ones that create 'buzz.' This is a 'legit.' mafia... I don't think it's a secret, either.
By the way, thanks for being a writer. I've had fantasies about becoming a writer, but the risk/reward is too low. I'm glad it's working out for you....
Jar jar was the best character in the movies.
See? There it is! Right there! That's the point where I stopped caring what you think; Reductio ad Jar Jar.
The exhibitor (eg Cineplex Odeon) take 50% $5 and pass the rest up the chain.
Unless the chains somehow got more power, this isn't the case.
When I worked for General Cinema in the late 80's, there was a sliding scale for the amount of profit the theater kept. It started out at about 10%, and increased each week the movie ran, and I believe it capped out at 50%. So, a movie had to run 5 weeks to get 50% of the box office ticket.
That's why concession prices are so high...they only made (then) about $0.75 a person for an opening showing. Most movies never stayed running for 5 weeks, so the only place they could recoup costs was to charge a bazillion percent markup on popcorn and soda.