If You Can Promote The Movie Yourself, What Is The Studio Doing?
from the isn't-that-what-the-studio-is-for? dept
As the movie studios like to complain about how the internet is impacting their business, it seems that they're (again) not quite getting how it can help their business as well. Reuters has a nice little story about how a first time director used MySpace to drum up buzz about her film. The basic story, by itself, isn't that interesting. What is interesting is that Walt Disney's Touchstone Pictures was supposed to be promoting the film. However, since they pretty much had decided it was going to be a small time film, they didn't put much effort into it. It was only a couple weeks before the movie came out that Touchstone finally realized something was going on and took over the MySpace page. If part of the "benefit" the big movie studios pitch is their ability to promote your movie widely, it's somewhat damning to find out that the director seemed to do a much better job on her own just using MySpace. It certainly seems to call into question the purpose of going with such a big studio for promotions.
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Hey Mike...
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GDog
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If the theatrer companies weren't so ginormously huge, small fries might have a chance in hell of getting their movies onto a decent number of screens.
That is not the case.
However, given home theatre rivaling real theatres, and internet distribution... Hey, who knows?
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No need for the studios
The Internet gives anyone a distribution channel for anything digital. No need for the theaters (unless you really think you're going to get an academy award) and hence no need for the studios for distribution.
Looks like MySpace, YouTube and Google Video are giving people the marketing arm that was previously unavailable. So, no need for the studios for marketing.
And with studios pushing a lot of the financing down onto the production companies, no need for the studios for financing.
Looks like there's no need for the studios ;-)
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Trifecta of incompetence
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Re:
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Stick-it
"Box Office Mojo forecast that "Stick It" would make $5.7 million, the movie surprised box-office observers by collecting $11 million and a $5,301 per-screen average when it opened last weekend."
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Internet distribution + bandwidth
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I saw a related article on Yahoo! about the decline of actor's salaries. Big time actors aren't bringing in the crowds. Sited was Jim Carrey, Eddie Murphy and Nicole Kidman as actors that carry a hefty price tag (20mil range) whose recent films have been financial flops. Also sited is Jake Gyllenhaal (Jarhead, Brokeback) who at $5 mil a movie is considered a steal.
Old business models die hard. Hollywood is changing, hopefully for the better.
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Well you could always make a deal with youtube or google and use them for the distribution. They get all those users and you get your content distributed. Maybe they will barter users for distribution or maybe will ask for a small percentage of the gross, but in any case going this route will probably end up being cheaper and get you more exposure
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Don't go out before you get your Mojo!
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