Content, Image and Business

In response to a question posted below I have decided to enter a new post that touches on the various relationships between content, marketing and money in the film business.

Content is by far the most important thing in roll-out releases (unlike tentpole, franchise or genre releases) because content determines how wide the release will go, or how quickly it will die.  The marketing strategy, therefore, is not “clever,” but very simple.  The film must sell itself.  Jill Gwen of Searchlight (mentioned above) said that audiences, encouraged by good reviews, have been very responsive to the first openings of “(500) Days of Summer,” so there is now a high demand for the picture by other exhibitors (exceeding expectations).  This leads me to believe two things: a) people like the film (content), and b) it will go wider and make more money.  I grant you that what “a lot of people like” is not always my cup of tea, so I’m not promising to like “Summer.”  I am only suggesting that it will gain traction, become popular and make money.

The relationship between content and marketing is everything.  As a rule, advertising has to sell the picture for what it is or it will miss its core audience, get bad reviews, and have a very short shelf-life…  but sometimes this is done deliberately.  Sometimes mis-marketing can make more money.  Here’s how: If an expensive movie gets made and it sucks, the studio has two options: let it die before investing even more money in advertising, OR push it hard toward the teen market (quick responders) for a large opening weekend.  After opening weekend it will be killed by bad reviews and word-of-mouth, but by then the studio has already recouped its expenses (or at least offset them substantially).  The losers are whoever bought tickets to VAN HELSING:

VAN HELSING Release

There are two basic kinds of movies: high-concept and low-concept.  These definitions are counter-intuitive.  A high-concept story is easily explained (ALIEN is Jaws in space, JAMES BOND is a suave but kick-ass spy, G-FORCE is an elite squad of talking guinea pigs); a low-concept story is more difficult to explain (SIDEWAYS is about two friends that travel the California wine country and one can’t get his book published but he falls in love and the other one is getting married soon but cheats on his fiance… but friendship is the most important thing).  You get the idea.

A low-concept film is much harder to market, and therefore it won’t be a blockbuster on opening weekend, and therefore it can’t be an expensive movie.  So low-concept films are inherently riskier.  BUT if and when a low-concept film gets popular (via platform release) it can take many, many times it’s total budget in revenue (and make up for the inevitable losses of its many fallen– low-concept– brothers): JUNO cost less than $8 million and made $227 million in worldwide boxoffice.  And boxoffice represents, in general, 1/3 of total revenue (the remainder comes from Pay-per-view, Cable, TV, DVD, airlines and ships, etc).  Check it out.

JUNO Release

And compare the first three weeks of Juno to those of “Summer.”

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER Release

Please hire me Fox Searchlight.

All charts stolen directly from the Pro version of the Internet Movie Database (IMDb).