Each week I look at a different topic around the film industry, focusing on the data and statistics which reveal what’s going on.
Earlier this year, I looked at how many people work on a film, and how that figure has shifted over time (up from around 200 in the year 2000 to around 300 today). This prompted a number of readers to get in contact to ask about the changes in more detail. i.e. which jobs were […]
Change in the film industry is often an extremely gradual process. The views of those involved tend to be entrenched and hard to shift. Therefore, how the film industry will operate one year can reasonably be expected to be very close to that of the year before. Not so 2020. The current COVID-19 pandemic has […]
The current pandemic has shut shown pretty much all filming worldwide. As we start to leave this lockdown period, we will need to consider how to restart our industries. Social distancing on a film set will be tricky (albeit not impossible) and some have proposed that crews could quarantine together. However, it’s not just the […]
I have been contacted by a number of readers asking how many people have lost work due to the cancellation of film productions. Sadly, the complexity of the industry means I cannot calculate the exact number of people unemployed. However, it is possible to look at how many people would typically work on a feature […]
A common belief among sales and distribution professionals is that “names sell”. As in, films starring famous actors (“names”) are more marketable than films without any famous names. But how true is this? Bruce Nash and I teamed up to find out in the latest of our research projects for the American Film Market. Studying […]
It: Chapter Two is an unusual horror film because it’s almost three hours long. This means it is longer than 99.78% of all horror films made over the past twenty years. Earlier in the year Avengers: Endgame was one minute over the three-hour barrier and Martine Scorsese’s up-coming epic The Irishman is expected to be […]
Over the past few weeks and months, we have seen an increase in press articles covering music–based feature films. Only last week, The Guardian stated, “We are in an uncommonly busy period, if not a flat-out golden age“, the BBC declared that “2019 has been the year of the music film” and The Independent claimed […]
In the last couple of weeks, I have looked at a number of topics around movie budgets. To complete this trilogy, I am turning to the connection between a movie’s budget and the amount of money it collects at the box office. Specifically, I’ll be looking at the “Domestic” gross, i.e. all the money spent […]
According to news reports, Netflix boss Ted Sarandos has privately been telling producers that his company will be more cost-conscious going forward. This comes on the heels of Netflix’s Triple Frontier (a movie which reportedly cost $115 million but which has gone down poorly with audiences and critics alike) and their up-coming blockbuster Red Notice (which […]
Among the most frequent questions I’m asked by those new to the film industry is “How much does the average movie cost to make?” The short answer is “it depends”. It’s similar to asking “How much does the average meal cost to make?” It depends where you are, who’s making it, for whom and whether […]
