Stephen Follows - Film industry data and education

The fate of Stephen King movie sequels

September 18, 2017 0 comments

I am putting the finishing touches on a big report into horror movies, due for release in the coming months. One of the many things I looked at was horror adaptations and so I thought it would be fun to share a small part of what I found as it’s become rather topical.

A new adaptation of Stephen King’s It is currently doing great business in cinemas worldwide, leading Warner Brothers to start work on a sequel, entitled Chapter One. Details are still few and far between, but as the current film only adapted half of the original novel, the plot and characters are already common knowledge.

Excitement for the sequel is high, but the history of Stephen King adaptations contains an ominous warning.

Let’s …

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Patterns among the most profitable movies budgeted $10m to $20m

September 11, 2017 0 comments

This is the latest in a series of research projects I am conducting with Bruce Nash of The Numbers, on behalf of the American Film Market. In previous articles, we’ve looked at patterns among the most profitable films budgeted between $20 million and $50 million, and those budgeted between $500k and $3 million. This time around, we start to fill in half of the gap by looking at films made for between $10 million and $20 million.

As before, we’ve reviewed all the films in Nash Information Services’ database in that budget range released between 2000 and 2016. We then identified the sixty most profitable movies, after accounting for all sources of revenue and estimating marketing and distribution costs. That gives …

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A data dive into Patreon

September 4, 2017 2 comments

As long-time readers will know, I’m keen to cover the speed and scope of changes within the film business. The industry has experienced a greater degree of flux in the past decade than in the previous century, and yet more shape-shifting is on the horizon. This transformation makes it a fascinating time to be entering or studying the film industry.

One of the areas of significant change is the evolving relationship between artists and audiences. Historically, there have been many levels of middlemen between the artists (i.e. writers, directors, actors, etc) and their audience (i.e. the people who actually pay to watch their work). Money and feedback from audiences flowed back to artists via a long chain of studios, sales agents, distributors, exhibitors, retailers …

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How many stunt performers work on a movie?

August 21, 2017 2 comments

The film industry is full of under-appreciated people whose work doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Visual effects teams make movie stars look younger, body doubles make them look sexier and writers make them seem normal and likeable. But only one set of such heroes put their lives on the line in the course of their day jobs – stunt performers.

There has been a long-running campaign to get stunt performers recognised by the Oscars. Despite campaigning for over 25 years and gaining over 50,000 signatures, stunt performers haven’t yet managed to convince the Academy to add a stunt category.

Not only is their work under-recognised, it’s also often extremely dangerous. The past two months have brought us two tragic stunt accidents. Stuntman …

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