Month: June 2009

Who’s left in web video?

…there’s still not much money in Web video advertising — certainly not enough to earn a profit on videos that cost anywhere from $5,000 to $25,000 each to produce….

Our article focuses on the remarkable number of quickly abandoned Web video efforts in Hollywood over the past few years. A few remain, however.

They all have slightly different strategies and models, but most of them share one of two defining characteristics that separate them from the space’s many failures: Web video serves a larger strategy and thus doesn’t need to earn a profit, or it’s being produced at virtually no cost.

https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2009/06/after-many-hollywoodbacked-flops-whos-left-in-web-video.html

Bad News Bears Maul Summer Movie Biz

2009’s year-to-date was half a billion dollars ahead of last year’s. But this past weekend was the 3rd in a row to fall short of 2008: ticket buyers spent only $138.3 million for the opening of The Taking Of Pelham 123 as well as more Hangover and Up. But that’s down a whopping 23.1% from last year when The Incredible Hulk opened.

https://www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com/bad-news-bears-maul-summer-movie-biz/

‘Terminator’ On Top Overseas

“Terminator: Salvation” isn’t really sticking with Stateside critics or ticketbuyers, but it’s a different story overseas.

The Christian Bale-starrer landed in the top international spot again this weekend, taking in $46.1 million in 80 territories, according to studio estimates.

Once again it seems there’s an audience for every movie somewhere in the world.

https://www.thewrap.com/article/terminator-stays-top-overseas_3651

Director Duncan Jones on Low-Budget Moon

…A lot of science-fiction films these days are a string of special-effects set pieces. I miss those science fiction films which focused on people and storytelling, explaining how a human being survives and maintains their humanity in an alien environment or how their humanity is eroding away. Films like Outland, Silent Running and Alien did that. They were all about human beings and how they survived such scenarios. I wanted Moon to do that. The TV show Battlestar Galactica concentrated on people, but I don’t think that many recent feature films have done it….

https://www.studiodaily.com/main/technique/casestudies/10992.html

Terminator Salvation’s failure highlights a new sci-fi crisis

The decline of the Terminator franchise suggests that a hunger for something in cinemagoers is going unmet – ideas.



Some of the cheaply made sci-fi B movies of the 1950s may still hold lessons for the over-endowed movie-makers of today. One might be that science fiction needs more than whizz-bangery to succeed.

Anyone know a movie like that? 🙂

https://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2009/jun/08/science-fiction-terminator-salvation-cyborgs

After a Blazing Start, the 2009 Hollywood Box Office Shows Signs of Cooling

Weirdly, the real strength in this year’s box-office has come from mid-level films, which is precisely where the conventional wisdom has said studios should not tread. Movies like “Taken” or “Paul Blart: Mall Cop,” on middling budgets with middling stars, over-performed.

Is the end of huge budget movies near as George Lucas predicts?

https://carpetbagger.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/after-a-blazing-start-to-the-year-the-hollywood-box-office-shows-signs-of-cooling/