Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 133
September 7, 2017
When ‘Based on a True Story’ Becomes a Lawsuit
A judge has greenlit a trial for author Gerald Brittle against Warner Bros. for the rights to paranormal specialists Ed and Lorraine Warren’s story, specifically the events featured in his book “The Demonologist” and The Conjuring movie franchise. Claiming the rights to a true event seems like a bold move, but this case is a convoluted one. However, Warner Bros. could have avoided this huge lawsuit.Before writing his book in 1978, Brittle made an agreement with the Warrens that for the rights to their story, there cannot be any “competing work,” which included movies. This provision in their book deal is still in effect today but Brittle was never asked for permission to use the events in his book in The Conjuring. Instead, the producers went directly to Lorraine Warren, who gave her okay.
Warner Bros. explanation for their disregard for Brittle’s book deal is that one person cannot have “a monopoly to tell stories about true-life figures and events.” The Conjuring claims what happens in the film is based on real events of the Warren files, but Brittle begs to differ.
There is no historical evidence of the witch, Satanic child sacrifices, and even possession that is featured in the movie. Those events take place in Brittle’s book, which he says the Warrens fabricated (unbeknownst to Brittle at the time of writing the book). So Brittle argues that the movie is based on his book instead of facts. He even goes into arguing that the production company told screenwriters not to read his book because they didn’t have the rights to it. How Brittle would know that is unclear.
This will be a tough case to decide on, especially since the subject matter is paranormal activities that can’t be truly proven. With that in mind, it might have been smarter on Warner Bros.’ part to cut the “based on historical events” claim, fictionalizing the story altogether. What makes the film interesting was apparently fiction anyway.
Without connecting itself to the Warrens’ case, The Conjuring is a movie filled with horror tropes and stories that have been told before. Horror films have been dealing with demonic possession, haunted families, and exorcisms long before The Conjuring franchise. Those things aren’t unique to the Warrens. Therefore without the Warrens’ name and the claim that the events are based on truth, The Conjuring could have been just as scary and successful as a regular fictional horror film without all this legal trouble.
Real events inspire horror movies all the time, but filmmakers can get away with making movies about them by not claiming any connection to them. Stating that a movie based on possession and ghosts is a true story should be taken with a grain of salt anyway, considering it’s very hard to prove those things are even real.
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September 6, 2017
Story Merchant Books Launch's Andrea Aguillard's "The Meander Tile of Lisa Greco" Romance of Mythic Identity Book 2
Second generation Italian-American Lisa Greco is about to receive the reward she's worked her head off for--but she's not sure it's what she wants anymore.
She's always postponed exploring her creativity, and discovering her Neapolitan origins. So she throws the dice, and goes to Naples where she meets a mysterious Japanese-Italian professor of mathematics and itinerant tenor who's in search of his own roots. This leads her to do something she's never done before. She takes his hand as he leads her into the darkest recesses of the ancient excavations that reveal the key to both their identities.
September 5, 2017
What Types of $10M – $20M Films Break Out?
An investigative report from Film Industry Analyst Stephen Follows and Founder of The Numbers Bruce Nash
In recent articles, we’ve looked at what it takes for films to break out at two ends of the indie budget spectrum. We started out with low-budget films, made for between $500k and $3 million. Last time we looked at higher-budgeted indies, made for $20 million to $50 million. This time around, we 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 roughly three films a year from the period under consideration. For more details of our methods and criteria, see the Notes section at the end of this piece.
This analysis produced a result that’s slightly different from our previous investigations. Rather than having a fairly even split between several different categories, there’s a significant cluster of films that share the same audience.
Model One: Senior Cinephiles
By far the biggest category in the list is a group of films that found an older audience – what we’re calling Senior Cinephiles.
At the risk of upsetting every 36-year-old reading this article, we’re considering anyone over 35 to be “senior.” (Essentially, if you lost count of how many Spider-Men there have been, you fall into this category). In our defense, this is how the demographers segment the market, so it’s the data we have to work from in the first place.
Films in this category have an audience that is roughly 55% over the age of 35, compared to around 22% for the market as a whole. To give you a sense of how much these films differ from the norm, see below for the demographic data for these films as they relate to UK cinema audiences.
Unsurprisingly, high-quality drama, often with a grey-haired lead, dominates the upper reaches of this list. Notably, around half of the films in the list are foreign, including The King’s Speech, The Queen, Philomena, The Artist, The Imitation Game, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Downfall, Pan’s Labyrinth, and Les Intouchables. The other half tend to be US-produced films that vied for (and sometimes won) Oscar glory: Brokeback Mountain, 12 Years a Slave, Sideways, Into the Wild, The Hurt Locker, Black Swan, Spotlight, The Fighter, and Letters from Iwo Jima, for example.
So it’s fair to say that going after an older audience with a high-quality drama is a good bet for success at this budget range. But there are a couple of films that stood out to us for being a little more targeted at the older set, and a little less awards-focused: About Time and Under the Tuscan Sun. Also lurking on this list is sci-fi drama Ex Machina, which had broader appeal, but skewed towards a much older audience than is usual for the genre.
So, as always, good films rise to the top, but we think that this budget range also skews older, regardless of the quality of the film.
Model two: In Your Face Comedy
In our analysis of $20m-$50m films, we found that lowbrow was the order of business for comedies. At this lower budget range, there are vestiges of the lowbrow genre (Jackass and Harold & Kumar feature, for example), but this group has a more concept-driven feel to it. Movies like Legally Blonde, Neighbors, Bad Teacher, Borat, Hot Fuzz, and Think Like a Man all have a central theme or characters that poke fun at society, rather than the more situational comedy we saw at a higher budget.
When looking at the group as a whole, they all share a trait that we feel is best described as “in your face.” The filmmakers take a concept and run with it as far as they can. The concept itself can come from anywhere—Borat and Beverly Hills Chihuahua don’t share much of the same demographic—but it’s all in the execution.
These are all films for which a significant portion of the audience came out thinking, “my friend would love this.”
Model three: Mature Horror
In keeping with the theme of this budget range being fertile ground for older audiences (where, as we have noted “older” means, depressingly, over 35), the horror movies we found this time tended more towards the psychological, and less towards the gore. All of the films build suspense through drama, usually with older protagonists.
Note, however, that there are only six films in the horror genre in this list: about one every three years between 2000 and 2016. There were no horror films in the $20m-$50m budget range, so this is an improvement. But few horror films made for over $10 million really break out, at least in comparison to other genres, and certainly compared to low-budget horror.
Model Four: Music-based films
Sometimes this analysis throws up a surprise. At higher budgets, we found a group of age-reversal family films. At this budget range, there’s a sizable group of films that are based on music and dance, most of them lighter fare such as School of Rock and Step Up, but also last year’s Oscar darling La La Land.
The films’ musical styles tend to cluster around the mainstream. There’s no punk, blues, or classical music to be found, which is frankly a little disappointing. But going for what works with general audiences seems to be what works financially.
We excluded sequels from this research as we felt that their existing audience was a large factor in their success. However, had we not done so then this category would also have included Magic Mike XXL, High School Musical 3: Senior Year and Step Up 2: The Streets.
Analysis
As we’ve looked at different budget ranges, it’s been consistently surprising to us how much films will cluster into groups in each range. Now we’ve completed three of these articles, it’s remarkable how each analysis throws up a very specific category of film that “works” at this budget range, and not at others. There was only one hit (Chicago) in the $20m-$50m budget groups that was first-and-foremost music- or dance-based, but we found six of them budgeted between $10m and $20m. Similarly, age-reversal comedies stood out at the higher budget range, and there are none in the list this time.
Whether that has implications for filmmakers is something worth thinking about. Certainly, if you’re looking to make a musical, keeping the budget under control looks like a key consideration. And, particularly at this budget range, appealing to a more mature audience looks to be important.
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Copyright © 2017 Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash. All rights reserved.
September 3, 2017
How Artificial Intelligence Will Make Digital Humans Hollywood's New Stars
Illustration by: Wren McDonald
Script supervisors, editors, CG artists and actors all had better look out: "It's all over by 2045 — we are no longer running the show."
Following Paul Walker's death in 2013, the Furious 7 filmmakers faced the delicate task of finishing the film using a digitally created version of the actor. To do so, they resorted to performance capture with the help of the actor's brothers, Caleb and Cody, as well as painstaking computer animation from a team at VFX house Weta. That was state-of-the-art in 2014. But imagine if, instead, a computer could have stepped in, watched all of Walker's performances in the previous Furious films, learning the minute details of how he walked, talked and even raised an eyebrow. And then imagine that artificial intelligence took over and itself helped to create a digital performance for Walker's character.
This isn't so far off. Now that the use of computer graphics is commonplace in movies and TV, artificial intelligence may be the most important technology to emerge in Hollywood. Potential AI-driven applications — in which the machine takes over and can learn and think for itself — could function as script supervisors, take a first pass at film editing, even create performances either for digital characters that resemble actual humans or more fantastic CG creatures. While that may sound like something out of Blade Runner or Westworld, the truth is, such technology could have a huge impact in the areas Hollywood cares about a lot: schedules and budgets, by shortening production times and bringing down costs.
Creating believable digital humans — still considered the most difficult VFX feat — could be the ultimate test of the emerging tech due to the "uncanny valley," the phenomenon in which human replicas that are not quite human-seeming essentially creep people out (certainly, not the best way to drive people into theater seats). "Digital humans are increasingly important in films. But if your data is too sparse, it doesn't look right," says Chris Nichols, a director at Chaos Group Labs and key member of the Digital Human League, a research and development group. "We are using AI to fill in the gaps. The whole concept of AI is dependent on data training itself. The more data you have, the better the system works." Such techniques have not yet been used in a mainstream movie. But, theoretically, AI could do the job of creating a digital "Paul Walker" faster and more economically than current methods.
Right now, AI is best at filling in the blanks after a character already has been sketched out, either from an actual performance or by CGI artists. Another application could come into play in a movie like Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, in which footage of current-day Kurt Russell and reference shots of his younger self were combined to "de-age" the character. AI "does sound magical," says Nichols, but "it's not exact data. It's interpreted data — interpreting the missing parts."
Stephen Regelous, a SciTech Academy Award recipient for the development of Massive, an AI-driven software that was first used to create the huge armies in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings series, sees potential for AI in the animation world as well. His Massive system was used for that purpose on a recent animated film, though he declined to reveal his client. "You can shave off tens of millions of dollars from the budget of an animated feature," he says. In a matter of seconds, AI could animate a character, a labor-intensive process for a CG animator. "With Netflix and other streaming services [adding to the volume of production]," adds Regelous, "AI can help produce animation more quickly, and they need ways to improve their efficiency."
AI also could be used to create individual characters in live-action movies. "In Planet of the Apes, it could be an alternative to performance capture, [which was used so that Andy Serkis could play the hero Caesar]," says Regelous. "At some point, you'll be able to create an actor that doesn't know he's not real."
That could pose some thorny issues in the not-too-distant future. "The question of the ethics — whether you should do this or not — is still there," warns Nichols. Motion pictures such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and AI: Artificial Intelligence are cautionary tales about AI-trained computers and robots rebelling, and futurist-entrepreneur Elon Musk already has voiced fears of "a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind." That possibility was suggested recently when Facebook, which already uses AI for editing news feeds and targeted ads, reportedly shut down an experiment in which a pair of AI-driven robots ended up creating their own language that defied human comprehension.
"It's all over by 2045 — we are no longer running the show," predicts Regelous. "They will become so smart, and this won't be about motion pictures. They will be curing cancer and fixing global warming." But Regelous doesn't envision a bleak future. "Anything significantly smarter than us is going to value us. It will think, feel love and value life," he says, adding, "I hope I'm right. Otherwise, we are screwed."
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August 31, 2017
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August 30, 2017
August 29, 2017
What Types of Low-Budget Films Break Out?
An investigative report from Film Industry Analyst Stephen Follows and Founder of The Numbers Bruce Nash
Breakout indie hits may be some of the most romantic stories in the movie business. The plucky lone film-maker battles the odds to make their dream film, putting naysayers in their place when it becomes a box office sensation, bringing them fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams…
But are breakout hits random events that no-one can plan for or do they share some kind of DNA that can teach us how to make successful independent films, and also what genres or techniques to avoid?
To answer these questions, we began with a list of over 3,000 films from The Numbers’ financial database, investigating full financial details, including North American (i.e. “domestic”) and international box office, video sales and rentals, TV and ancillary revenue. We narrowed our focus to study feature films released between 2000 and 2015, budgeted between $500k and $3 million, which generated at least $10 million in Producer’s Net Profit, using a standard distribution model where the distributor charges a 30% fee.
This produced a list of 63 films in total: roughly four films a year over the 15 years under consideration. Almost all of the movies will be familiar to followers of independent film, from small films that became Oscar hopefuls, like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Winter’s Bone to horror movies like Insidious and The Purge that got picked up by the major studios and became box office sensations. With the list in hand, we looked for common themes and found (with a small number of exceptions) that the breakout hits broke down naturally into four types.
Model One: Extreme, Clear-Concept Horror Films
It will come as no surprise to most producers that horror films feature prominently on the list of top low-budget breakout successes.
Most Profitable Films: Insidious, Monsters, The Devil Inside, Paranormal Activity 2, Dead Snow. MPAA Rating: 82% are rated ‘R’, 12% PG-13 and 6% not rated. Running Time: Relatively short, with an average of 94 minutes and no film ran over two hours. Critical Reviews: Average to poor. Highest rated film in this category is Buried, which has a Metascore of just 65 out of 100. The average Metascore across the dataset was just 49 out of 100. Audience Reviews: More supportive than the critics, but still not above average for most films, at an average of 6.2 out of 10 on IMDb. Release Patterns: Two very distinct release patterns – half played in fewer than around 100 theatres while the other half played in over 1,500 theatres. Income Streams: 28% from theatrical, 60% from home video and 11% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 46% of income was from the US & Canada and 54% international.
Model Two: Documentaries with Built-In Audiences and/or Powerful Stories
The second group of films that stood out were documentaries.
Most Profitable Films: Exit Through the Gift Shop, An Inconvenient Truth, Marley, Tyson, Bowling for Columbine. MPAA Rating: A healthy spread across all ratings, with the most common being PG-13. Running Time: Average of 102, although a wide range from 80 minutes up to 144 minutes. Critical Reviews: Very high, with a Metascore average of 79 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Very high, an average IMDb rating of 7.8 out of 10. Release Pattern: Small number of theatres, with most playing in under 250 theatres and the widest release being An Inconvenient Truth in 587 theatres. Income Streams: 17% from theatrical, 71% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 58% international and 42% domestic.
Critical reviews seem vital for this type of film to break out and it’s interesting to note that the documentaries with the lowest scoring critical ratings (The September Issue at 69 and Religulous at 56) each had strong inbuilt audiences (‘Vogue / fashion’ and ‘Bill Maher / religious scepticism’).
In fact, only a handful of the documentaries on the list don’t have an obvious audience: Man on Wire, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, and Searching for Sugar Man are the only ones that needed to find a crowd. The others were either about someone already very famous (Marley, Tyson, Senna, Amy… note the one-name titles!) or played very directly to a receptive audience (Inside Job, Blackfish, An Inconvenient Truth etc).
Model Three: Validating, Feel-Good Religious Films
Speaking of receptive audiences, the third group of films we found were faith-based films.
Most Profitable Films: Fireproof, God’s Not Dead, To Save a Life, War Room, Courageous. MPAA Rating: Two-thirds were rated PG and the remaining third were PG-13. Running Time: Fairly long, all were over 110 minutes and the average was two hours. Critical Reviews: Incredibly poor, with an average Metascore of just 26 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Similar to the horror pool, with an average IMDb rating of 6.3 out of 10. Type of Release: An average of 1,273 theatres with the widest being War Room at 1,945 theatres. Income Streams: 29% from theatrical, 55% from home video and 16% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 90% of income came from North American sources with just 10% coming from outside the US and Canada.
Two things stand out with these films. First, they make virtually all of their money in the United States. Second, they get very bad reviews from mainstream movie reviewers. The strength of these movies isn’t necessarily their quality so much as the message; they deliver to an audience that is interested in what they have to say.
Model Four: Very High Quality Dramas
At the other end of the spectrum, at least in the eyes of professional film reviewers, come very high quality dramas. Almost half of these films were American productions, with the rest coming from a wide variety of countries including Germany, Argentina, Mexico, the UK, France and Poland.
Most Profitable US Dramas: Half Nelson, Waitress, Blue Valentine, Fruitvale Station. Most Profitable Foreign Dramas: The Lives of Others, The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros, Sin Nombre. MPAA Rating: The vast majority are R-rated, with just a third being rated PG-13. Running Time: A wide range, from 81 minutes up to 154 minutes long. Critical Reviews: Extremely high, with an average Metascore of 81 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Similarly high, with an average IMDb rating of 7.5 out of 10. Type of Release: Small release, with all but four playing to fewer than 300 theatres. Income Streams: 25% from theatrical, 63% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 66% of income for US dramas came from the US and Canada, whereas the reverse was true with non-US dramas, with 64% of income coming from international sources.
The lowest rated film in this category received a Metascore of 68 out of 100, which was higher than all of the films within the Horror breakout success category.
A common thread among these films is awards attention. While they might not be big enough to win a lot of main-category Oscars, these are the films that have picked up a bunch of Independent Spirit Awards, Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, and got some screenwriting and/or acting Oscar nominations.
Do the Films Have to be Any Good?
An interesting finding from this research is that the quality of the film is only relevant for certain types of films.
Religious films received extremely low ratings from critics but had mixed ratings from audiences. Horror films showed a range: some were disliked by both audiences and critics (such as The Devil Inside), while others had middling support from both camps (such as Monsters) and then there were films which audiences enjoyed but critics were lukewarm towards (such as Dead Man’s Shoes). Documentaries and Dramas were all popular with audiences and the vast majority also received extremely high ratings from critics.
If we plot this on a graph, we can see just how distinct these three sub-categories are.
What’s Missing?
Many of the films in the list come as no surprise, but what’s interesting is what’s missing from the list. We found…
Virtually no comedies (Waiting… is the only out-and-out comedy on the list, and it was made at the peak of the DVD sales boom) No action movies No thrillers No musicals Virtually nothing directed at kids — Dr. Dolittle 3 was the only family movie that made our list — although we believe some animated franchises such as Barbie are very profitable but their budgets aren’t quite in our range.
Aside from the missing genres, the other notable absence is any major star involvement. Of course, this is largely a function of the budget—it’s hard to get Tom Cruise for a $3 million film—but it’s remarkable that none of these films attracted anybody who would even be called a B-list star at the time the film was made.
Lessons for Filmmakers and Producers from this Research
So we think there are a few lessons for independent film-makers who are hoping to make breakout hits:
Some “niche” audiences are large enough to make for a very profitable market, if you can reach them. The “faith-based” film audience stands out, but there are also receptive audiences for certain types of documentaries. Having a very clear idea of your audience is the first step to making a financially successful film.
If you’re aiming for a more general audience, quality matters. A lot. Honing your screenplay to what you think is perfection and then having it ripped apart at a workshop may be hard work, but it’s almost certainly what it takes to get a dramatic film to ultimately work with audiences, and to make back its investment.
Look for good actors, not big stars, and do the same with all of the technical crew on a film. Fun fact: Affonso Goncalves, who edited list member Beasts of the Southern Wild also edited fellow list member Winter’s Bone and 2016 Oscar nominee Carol. Finding a good editor, cinematographer, production designer and other key members of the crew is more important for a low-budget film than blowing a big chunk of your budget on a famous (or, just as likely, previously-famous) actor or actress.
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Copyright © 2016 Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash. All rights reserved.
Breakout indie hits may be some of the most romantic stories in the movie business. The plucky lone film-maker battles the odds to make their dream film, putting naysayers in their place when it becomes a box office sensation, bringing them fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams…
But are breakout hits random events that no-one can plan for or do they share some kind of DNA that can teach us how to make successful independent films, and also what genres or techniques to avoid?
To answer these questions, we began with a list of over 3,000 films from The Numbers’ financial database, investigating full financial details, including North American (i.e. “domestic”) and international box office, video sales and rentals, TV and ancillary revenue. We narrowed our focus to study feature films released between 2000 and 2015, budgeted between $500k and $3 million, which generated at least $10 million in Producer’s Net Profit, using a standard distribution model where the distributor charges a 30% fee.
This produced a list of 63 films in total: roughly four films a year over the 15 years under consideration. Almost all of the movies will be familiar to followers of independent film, from small films that became Oscar hopefuls, like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Winter’s Bone to horror movies like Insidious and The Purge that got picked up by the major studios and became box office sensations. With the list in hand, we looked for common themes and found (with a small number of exceptions) that the breakout hits broke down naturally into four types.
Model One: Extreme, Clear-Concept Horror Films
It will come as no surprise to most producers that horror films feature prominently on the list of top low-budget breakout successes.
Most Profitable Films: Insidious, Monsters, The Devil Inside, Paranormal Activity 2, Dead Snow. MPAA Rating: 82% are rated ‘R’, 12% PG-13 and 6% not rated. Running Time: Relatively short, with an average of 94 minutes and no film ran over two hours. Critical Reviews: Average to poor. Highest rated film in this category is Buried, which has a Metascore of just 65 out of 100. The average Metascore across the dataset was just 49 out of 100. Audience Reviews: More supportive than the critics, but still not above average for most films, at an average of 6.2 out of 10 on IMDb. Release Patterns: Two very distinct release patterns – half played in fewer than around 100 theatres while the other half played in over 1,500 theatres. Income Streams: 28% from theatrical, 60% from home video and 11% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 46% of income was from the US & Canada and 54% international.
Model Two: Documentaries with Built-In Audiences and/or Powerful Stories
The second group of films that stood out were documentaries.
Most Profitable Films: Exit Through the Gift Shop, An Inconvenient Truth, Marley, Tyson, Bowling for Columbine. MPAA Rating: A healthy spread across all ratings, with the most common being PG-13. Running Time: Average of 102, although a wide range from 80 minutes up to 144 minutes. Critical Reviews: Very high, with a Metascore average of 79 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Very high, an average IMDb rating of 7.8 out of 10. Release Pattern: Small number of theatres, with most playing in under 250 theatres and the widest release being An Inconvenient Truth in 587 theatres. Income Streams: 17% from theatrical, 71% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 58% international and 42% domestic.
Critical reviews seem vital for this type of film to break out and it’s interesting to note that the documentaries with the lowest scoring critical ratings (The September Issue at 69 and Religulous at 56) each had strong inbuilt audiences (‘Vogue / fashion’ and ‘Bill Maher / religious scepticism’).
In fact, only a handful of the documentaries on the list don’t have an obvious audience: Man on Wire, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, and Searching for Sugar Man are the only ones that needed to find a crowd. The others were either about someone already very famous (Marley, Tyson, Senna, Amy… note the one-name titles!) or played very directly to a receptive audience (Inside Job, Blackfish, An Inconvenient Truth etc).
Model Three: Validating, Feel-Good Religious Films
Speaking of receptive audiences, the third group of films we found were faith-based films.
Most Profitable Films: Fireproof, God’s Not Dead, To Save a Life, War Room, Courageous. MPAA Rating: Two-thirds were rated PG and the remaining third were PG-13. Running Time: Fairly long, all were over 110 minutes and the average was two hours. Critical Reviews: Incredibly poor, with an average Metascore of just 26 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Similar to the horror pool, with an average IMDb rating of 6.3 out of 10. Type of Release: An average of 1,273 theatres with the widest being War Room at 1,945 theatres. Income Streams: 29% from theatrical, 55% from home video and 16% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 90% of income came from North American sources with just 10% coming from outside the US and Canada.
Two things stand out with these films. First, they make virtually all of their money in the United States. Second, they get very bad reviews from mainstream movie reviewers. The strength of these movies isn’t necessarily their quality so much as the message; they deliver to an audience that is interested in what they have to say.
Model Four: Very High Quality Dramas
At the other end of the spectrum, at least in the eyes of professional film reviewers, come very high quality dramas. Almost half of these films were American productions, with the rest coming from a wide variety of countries including Germany, Argentina, Mexico, the UK, France and Poland.
Most Profitable US Dramas: Half Nelson, Waitress, Blue Valentine, Fruitvale Station. Most Profitable Foreign Dramas: The Lives of Others, The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros, Sin Nombre. MPAA Rating: The vast majority are R-rated, with just a third being rated PG-13. Running Time: A wide range, from 81 minutes up to 154 minutes long. Critical Reviews: Extremely high, with an average Metascore of 81 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Similarly high, with an average IMDb rating of 7.5 out of 10. Type of Release: Small release, with all but four playing to fewer than 300 theatres. Income Streams: 25% from theatrical, 63% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 66% of income for US dramas came from the US and Canada, whereas the reverse was true with non-US dramas, with 64% of income coming from international sources.
The lowest rated film in this category received a Metascore of 68 out of 100, which was higher than all of the films within the Horror breakout success category.
A common thread among these films is awards attention. While they might not be big enough to win a lot of main-category Oscars, these are the films that have picked up a bunch of Independent Spirit Awards, Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, and got some screenwriting and/or acting Oscar nominations.
Do the Films Have to be Any Good?
An interesting finding from this research is that the quality of the film is only relevant for certain types of films.
Religious films received extremely low ratings from critics but had mixed ratings from audiences. Horror films showed a range: some were disliked by both audiences and critics (such as The Devil Inside), while others had middling support from both camps (such as Monsters) and then there were films which audiences enjoyed but critics were lukewarm towards (such as Dead Man’s Shoes). Documentaries and Dramas were all popular with audiences and the vast majority also received extremely high ratings from critics.
If we plot this on a graph, we can see just how distinct these three sub-categories are.
What’s Missing?
Many of the films in the list come as no surprise, but what’s interesting is what’s missing from the list. We found…
Virtually no comedies (Waiting… is the only out-and-out comedy on the list, and it was made at the peak of the DVD sales boom) No action movies No thrillers No musicals Virtually nothing directed at kids — Dr. Dolittle 3 was the only family movie that made our list — although we believe some animated franchises such as Barbie are very profitable but their budgets aren’t quite in our range.
Aside from the missing genres, the other notable absence is any major star involvement. Of course, this is largely a function of the budget—it’s hard to get Tom Cruise for a $3 million film—but it’s remarkable that none of these films attracted anybody who would even be called a B-list star at the time the film was made.
Lessons for Filmmakers and Producers from this Research
So we think there are a few lessons for independent film-makers who are hoping to make breakout hits:
Some “niche” audiences are large enough to make for a very profitable market, if you can reach them. The “faith-based” film audience stands out, but there are also receptive audiences for certain types of documentaries. Having a very clear idea of your audience is the first step to making a financially successful film.
If you’re aiming for a more general audience, quality matters. A lot. Honing your screenplay to what you think is perfection and then having it ripped apart at a workshop may be hard work, but it’s almost certainly what it takes to get a dramatic film to ultimately work with audiences, and to make back its investment.
Look for good actors, not big stars, and do the same with all of the technical crew on a film. Fun fact: Affonso Goncalves, who edited list member Beasts of the Southern Wild also edited fellow list member Winter’s Bone and 2016 Oscar nominee Carol. Finding a good editor, cinematographer, production designer and other key members of the crew is more important for a low-budget film than blowing a big chunk of your budget on a famous (or, just as likely, previously-famous) actor or actress.
Read more
Copyright © 2016 Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash. All rights reserved.
August 25, 2017
What Types of Low-Budget Films Break Out?
An investigative report from Film Industry Analyst Stephen Follows and Founder of The Numbers Bruce Nash
Breakout indie hits may be some of the most romantic stories in the movie business. The plucky lone film-maker battles the odds to make their dream film, putting naysayers in their place when it becomes a box office sensation, bringing them fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams…
But are breakout hits random events that no-one can plan for or do they share some kind of DNA that can teach us how to make successful independent films, and also what genres or techniques to avoid?
To answer these questions, we began with a list of over 3,000 films from The Numbers’ financial database, investigating full financial details, including North American (i.e. “domestic”) and international box office, video sales and rentals, TV and ancillary revenue. We narrowed our focus to study feature films released between 2000 and 2015, budgeted between $500k and $3 million, which generated at least $10 million in Producer’s Net Profit, using a standard distribution model where the distributor charges a 30% fee.
This produced a list of 63 films in total: roughly four films a year over the 15 years under consideration. Almost all of the movies will be familiar to followers of independent film, from small films that became Oscar hopefuls, like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Winter’s Bone to horror movies like Insidious and The Purge that got picked up by the major studios and became box office sensations. With the list in hand, we looked for common themes and found (with a small number of exceptions) that the breakout hits broke down naturally into four types.
Model One: Extreme, Clear-Concept Horror Films
It will come as no surprise to most producers that horror films feature prominently on the list of top low-budget breakout successes.
Most Profitable Films: Insidious, Monsters, The Devil Inside, Paranormal Activity 2, Dead Snow. MPAA Rating: 82% are rated ‘R’, 12% PG-13 and 6% not rated. Running Time: Relatively short, with an average of 94 minutes and no film ran over two hours. Critical Reviews: Average to poor. Highest rated film in this category is Buried, which has a Metascore of just 65 out of 100. The average Metascore across the dataset was just 49 out of 100. Audience Reviews: More supportive than the critics, but still not above average for most films, at an average of 6.2 out of 10 on IMDb. Release Patterns: Two very distinct release patterns – half played in fewer than around 100 theatres while the other half played in over 1,500 theatres. Income Streams: 28% from theatrical, 60% from home video and 11% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 46% of income was from the US & Canada and 54% international.
Model Two: Documentaries with Built-In Audiences and/or Powerful Stories
The second group of films that stood out were documentaries.
Most Profitable Films: Exit Through the Gift Shop, An Inconvenient Truth, Marley, Tyson, Bowling for Columbine. MPAA Rating: A healthy spread across all ratings, with the most common being PG-13. Running Time: Average of 102, although a wide range from 80 minutes up to 144 minutes. Critical Reviews: Very high, with a Metascore average of 79 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Very high, an average IMDb rating of 7.8 out of 10. Release Pattern: Small number of theatres, with most playing in under 250 theatres and the widest release being An Inconvenient Truth in 587 theatres. Income Streams: 17% from theatrical, 71% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 58% international and 42% domestic.
Critical reviews seem vital for this type of film to break out and it’s interesting to note that the documentaries with the lowest scoring critical ratings (The September Issue at 69 and Religulous at 56) each had strong inbuilt audiences (‘Vogue / fashion’ and ‘Bill Maher / religious scepticism’).
In fact, only a handful of the documentaries on the list don’t have an obvious audience: Man on Wire, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, and Searching for Sugar Man are the only ones that needed to find a crowd. The others were either about someone already very famous (Marley, Tyson, Senna, Amy… note the one-name titles!) or played very directly to a receptive audience (Inside Job, Blackfish, An Inconvenient Truth etc).
Model Three: Validating, Feel-Good Religious Films
Speaking of receptive audiences, the third group of films we found were faith-based films.
Most Profitable Films: Fireproof, God’s Not Dead, To Save a Life, War Room, Courageous. MPAA Rating: Two-thirds were rated PG and the remaining third were PG-13. Running Time: Fairly long, all were over 110 minutes and the average was two hours. Critical Reviews: Incredibly poor, with an average Metascore of just 26 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Similar to the horror pool, with an average IMDb rating of 6.3 out of 10. Type of Release: An average of 1,273 theatres with the widest being War Room at 1,945 theatres. Income Streams: 29% from theatrical, 55% from home video and 16% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 90% of income came from North American sources with just 10% coming from outside the US and Canada.
Two things stand out with these films. First, they make virtually all of their money in the United States. Second, they get very bad reviews from mainstream movie reviewers. The strength of these movies isn’t necessarily their quality so much as the message; they deliver to an audience that is interested in what they have to say.
Model Four: Very High Quality Dramas
At the other end of the spectrum, at least in the eyes of professional film reviewers, come very high quality dramas. Almost half of these films were American productions, with the rest coming from a wide variety of countries including Germany, Argentina, Mexico, the UK, France and Poland.
Most Profitable US Dramas: Half Nelson, Waitress, Blue Valentine, Fruitvale Station. Most Profitable Foreign Dramas: The Lives of Others, The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros, Sin Nombre. MPAA Rating: The vast majority are R-rated, with just a third being rated PG-13. Running Time: A wide range, from 81 minutes up to 154 minutes long. Critical Reviews: Extremely high, with an average Metascore of 81 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Similarly high, with an average IMDb rating of 7.5 out of 10. Type of Release: Small release, with all but four playing to fewer than 300 theatres. Income Streams: 25% from theatrical, 63% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 66% of income for US dramas came from the US and Canada, whereas the reverse was true with non-US dramas, with 64% of income coming from international sources.
The lowest rated film in this category received a Metascore of 68 out of 100, which was higher than all of the films within the Horror breakout success category.
A common thread among these films is awards attention. While they might not be big enough to win a lot of main-category Oscars, these are the films that have picked up a bunch of Independent Spirit Awards, Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, and got some screenwriting and/or acting Oscar nominations.
Do the Films Have to be Any Good?
An interesting finding from this research is that the quality of the film is only relevant for certain types of films.
Religious films received extremely low ratings from critics but had mixed ratings from audiences. Horror films showed a range: some were disliked by both audiences and critics (such as The Devil Inside), while others had middling support from both camps (such as Monsters) and then there were films which audiences enjoyed but critics were lukewarm towards (such as Dead Man’s Shoes). Documentaries and Dramas were all popular with audiences and the vast majority also received extremely high ratings from critics.
If we plot this on a graph, we can see just how distinct these three sub-categories are.
What’s Missing?
Many of the films in the list come as no surprise, but what’s interesting is what’s missing from the list. We found…
Virtually no comedies (Waiting… is the only out-and-out comedy on the list, and it was made at the peak of the DVD sales boom) No action movies No thrillers No musicals Virtually nothing directed at kids — Dr. Dolittle 3 was the only family movie that made our list — although we believe some animated franchises such as Barbie are very profitable but their budgets aren’t quite in our range.
Aside from the missing genres, the other notable absence is any major star involvement. Of course, this is largely a function of the budget—it’s hard to get Tom Cruise for a $3 million film—but it’s remarkable that none of these films attracted anybody who would even be called a B-list star at the time the film was made.
Lessons for Filmmakers and Producers from this Research
So we think there are a few lessons for independent film-makers who are hoping to make breakout hits:
Some “niche” audiences are large enough to make for a very profitable market, if you can reach them. The “faith-based” film audience stands out, but there are also receptive audiences for certain types of documentaries. Having a very clear idea of your audience is the first step to making a financially successful film.
If you’re aiming for a more general audience, quality matters. A lot. Honing your screenplay to what you think is perfection and then having it ripped apart at a workshop may be hard work, but it’s almost certainly what it takes to get a dramatic film to ultimately work with audiences, and to make back its investment.
Look for good actors, not big stars, and do the same with all of the technical crew on a film. Fun fact: Affonso Goncalves, who edited list member Beasts of the Southern Wild also edited fellow list member Winter’s Bone and 2016 Oscar nominee Carol. Finding a good editor, cinematographer, production designer and other key members of the crew is more important for a low-budget film than blowing a big chunk of your budget on a famous (or, just as likely, previously-famous) actor or actress.
Read more
Copyright © 2016 Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash. All rights reserved.
Breakout indie hits may be some of the most romantic stories in the movie business. The plucky lone film-maker battles the odds to make their dream film, putting naysayers in their place when it becomes a box office sensation, bringing them fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams…
But are breakout hits random events that no-one can plan for or do they share some kind of DNA that can teach us how to make successful independent films, and also what genres or techniques to avoid?
To answer these questions, we began with a list of over 3,000 films from The Numbers’ financial database, investigating full financial details, including North American (i.e. “domestic”) and international box office, video sales and rentals, TV and ancillary revenue. We narrowed our focus to study feature films released between 2000 and 2015, budgeted between $500k and $3 million, which generated at least $10 million in Producer’s Net Profit, using a standard distribution model where the distributor charges a 30% fee.
This produced a list of 63 films in total: roughly four films a year over the 15 years under consideration. Almost all of the movies will be familiar to followers of independent film, from small films that became Oscar hopefuls, like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Winter’s Bone to horror movies like Insidious and The Purge that got picked up by the major studios and became box office sensations. With the list in hand, we looked for common themes and found (with a small number of exceptions) that the breakout hits broke down naturally into four types.
Model One: Extreme, Clear-Concept Horror Films
It will come as no surprise to most producers that horror films feature prominently on the list of top low-budget breakout successes.
Most Profitable Films: Insidious, Monsters, The Devil Inside, Paranormal Activity 2, Dead Snow. MPAA Rating: 82% are rated ‘R’, 12% PG-13 and 6% not rated. Running Time: Relatively short, with an average of 94 minutes and no film ran over two hours. Critical Reviews: Average to poor. Highest rated film in this category is Buried, which has a Metascore of just 65 out of 100. The average Metascore across the dataset was just 49 out of 100. Audience Reviews: More supportive than the critics, but still not above average for most films, at an average of 6.2 out of 10 on IMDb. Release Patterns: Two very distinct release patterns – half played in fewer than around 100 theatres while the other half played in over 1,500 theatres. Income Streams: 28% from theatrical, 60% from home video and 11% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 46% of income was from the US & Canada and 54% international.
Model Two: Documentaries with Built-In Audiences and/or Powerful Stories
The second group of films that stood out were documentaries.
Most Profitable Films: Exit Through the Gift Shop, An Inconvenient Truth, Marley, Tyson, Bowling for Columbine. MPAA Rating: A healthy spread across all ratings, with the most common being PG-13. Running Time: Average of 102, although a wide range from 80 minutes up to 144 minutes. Critical Reviews: Very high, with a Metascore average of 79 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Very high, an average IMDb rating of 7.8 out of 10. Release Pattern: Small number of theatres, with most playing in under 250 theatres and the widest release being An Inconvenient Truth in 587 theatres. Income Streams: 17% from theatrical, 71% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 58% international and 42% domestic.
Critical reviews seem vital for this type of film to break out and it’s interesting to note that the documentaries with the lowest scoring critical ratings (The September Issue at 69 and Religulous at 56) each had strong inbuilt audiences (‘Vogue / fashion’ and ‘Bill Maher / religious scepticism’).
In fact, only a handful of the documentaries on the list don’t have an obvious audience: Man on Wire, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, and Searching for Sugar Man are the only ones that needed to find a crowd. The others were either about someone already very famous (Marley, Tyson, Senna, Amy… note the one-name titles!) or played very directly to a receptive audience (Inside Job, Blackfish, An Inconvenient Truth etc).
Model Three: Validating, Feel-Good Religious Films
Speaking of receptive audiences, the third group of films we found were faith-based films.
Most Profitable Films: Fireproof, God’s Not Dead, To Save a Life, War Room, Courageous. MPAA Rating: Two-thirds were rated PG and the remaining third were PG-13. Running Time: Fairly long, all were over 110 minutes and the average was two hours. Critical Reviews: Incredibly poor, with an average Metascore of just 26 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Similar to the horror pool, with an average IMDb rating of 6.3 out of 10. Type of Release: An average of 1,273 theatres with the widest being War Room at 1,945 theatres. Income Streams: 29% from theatrical, 55% from home video and 16% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 90% of income came from North American sources with just 10% coming from outside the US and Canada.
Two things stand out with these films. First, they make virtually all of their money in the United States. Second, they get very bad reviews from mainstream movie reviewers. The strength of these movies isn’t necessarily their quality so much as the message; they deliver to an audience that is interested in what they have to say.
Model Four: Very High Quality Dramas
At the other end of the spectrum, at least in the eyes of professional film reviewers, come very high quality dramas. Almost half of these films were American productions, with the rest coming from a wide variety of countries including Germany, Argentina, Mexico, the UK, France and Poland.
Most Profitable US Dramas: Half Nelson, Waitress, Blue Valentine, Fruitvale Station. Most Profitable Foreign Dramas: The Lives of Others, The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros, Sin Nombre. MPAA Rating: The vast majority are R-rated, with just a third being rated PG-13. Running Time: A wide range, from 81 minutes up to 154 minutes long. Critical Reviews: Extremely high, with an average Metascore of 81 out of 100. Audience Reviews: Similarly high, with an average IMDb rating of 7.5 out of 10. Type of Release: Small release, with all but four playing to fewer than 300 theatres. Income Streams: 25% from theatrical, 63% from home video and 12% from TV and other ancillary income. Income Location: 66% of income for US dramas came from the US and Canada, whereas the reverse was true with non-US dramas, with 64% of income coming from international sources.
The lowest rated film in this category received a Metascore of 68 out of 100, which was higher than all of the films within the Horror breakout success category.
A common thread among these films is awards attention. While they might not be big enough to win a lot of main-category Oscars, these are the films that have picked up a bunch of Independent Spirit Awards, Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, and got some screenwriting and/or acting Oscar nominations.
Do the Films Have to be Any Good?
An interesting finding from this research is that the quality of the film is only relevant for certain types of films.
Religious films received extremely low ratings from critics but had mixed ratings from audiences. Horror films showed a range: some were disliked by both audiences and critics (such as The Devil Inside), while others had middling support from both camps (such as Monsters) and then there were films which audiences enjoyed but critics were lukewarm towards (such as Dead Man’s Shoes). Documentaries and Dramas were all popular with audiences and the vast majority also received extremely high ratings from critics.
If we plot this on a graph, we can see just how distinct these three sub-categories are.
What’s Missing?
Many of the films in the list come as no surprise, but what’s interesting is what’s missing from the list. We found…
Virtually no comedies (Waiting… is the only out-and-out comedy on the list, and it was made at the peak of the DVD sales boom) No action movies No thrillers No musicals Virtually nothing directed at kids — Dr. Dolittle 3 was the only family movie that made our list — although we believe some animated franchises such as Barbie are very profitable but their budgets aren’t quite in our range.
Aside from the missing genres, the other notable absence is any major star involvement. Of course, this is largely a function of the budget—it’s hard to get Tom Cruise for a $3 million film—but it’s remarkable that none of these films attracted anybody who would even be called a B-list star at the time the film was made.
Lessons for Filmmakers and Producers from this Research
So we think there are a few lessons for independent film-makers who are hoping to make breakout hits:
Some “niche” audiences are large enough to make for a very profitable market, if you can reach them. The “faith-based” film audience stands out, but there are also receptive audiences for certain types of documentaries. Having a very clear idea of your audience is the first step to making a financially successful film.
If you’re aiming for a more general audience, quality matters. A lot. Honing your screenplay to what you think is perfection and then having it ripped apart at a workshop may be hard work, but it’s almost certainly what it takes to get a dramatic film to ultimately work with audiences, and to make back its investment.
Look for good actors, not big stars, and do the same with all of the technical crew on a film. Fun fact: Affonso Goncalves, who edited list member Beasts of the Southern Wild also edited fellow list member Winter’s Bone and 2016 Oscar nominee Carol. Finding a good editor, cinematographer, production designer and other key members of the crew is more important for a low-budget film than blowing a big chunk of your budget on a famous (or, just as likely, previously-famous) actor or actress.
Read more
Copyright © 2016 Stephen Follows and Bruce Nash. All rights reserved.
August 23, 2017
Feature film about the Battle of New Orleans back on track
"The Battle of New Orleans," a long-stalled historical epic recounting events leading up to and during the historic 1815 clash, is again moving forward. "Kidnap" producer Joey Tufaro and his locally based Gold Star Films have been bought on board to co-produce the film with project founders Fred and Ken Atchity. Their hope is to bring the film before cameras in 2018 and release it into theaters by the end of 2019.
The Atchity brothers first announced their plans for the film -- which they envisioned in the vein of 2000's "The Patriot" and 1995's "Braveheart" -- in January 2015, the battle's bicentennial year. Their ambitious outlook called for filming to begin in 2015 with a release date as early as 2016. Both dates came and went, however, with little movement on the project.
Now, though, with Tufaro and his Gold Star Films partner Todd Trosclair on board -- both fresh off the success of the release in July of "Kidnap," an action-thriller starring Halle Berry -- the project has been given new life. According to Tufaro, negotiations are underway to attract big-name actors to the project, and possibly a high-profile actor-director, although he said it's too early in the process to reveal the names being sought.
"The Battle of New Orleans" will be filmed in the New Orleans area and will be based on author Ron Drez's nonfiction book "The War of 1812: Conflict and Deception," which recounts the against-all-odds story behind the battle. "What most people don't realize about the Battle of New Orleans is how pivotal it actually was in deciding the fate of our young nation," Tufaro said.
Fought as part of the War of 1812 -- which has been characterized as the American Revolution 2.0 -- the Battle of New Orleans saw Gen. Andrew Jackson commanding a ragtag force cobbled together of several factions, from American Indians and Cajun farmers to free men of color and the pirate Jean Lafitte's band of privateers, in an effort to defend the city against the British. The two sides met just downriver from the French Quarter on Jan. 8, 1815, at Chalmette Battlefield. By the time the dust had settled, the British had suffered an estimated 2,600 casualties, compared to about a dozen for the American side, making for a decisive American victory.
While the battle was famously fought after the Treaty of Ghent had been signed to end the war, word of the treaty hadn't yet gotten to the battlefield. Consequently, generations of schoolchildren were taught the battle was unnecessary. But there are those -- including Drez -- who speculate that, had the British won the war and taken New Orleans, the treaty might have been immediately nullified by the British, who would have then taken control of the city -- and thus the Mississippi River.
"Together, (Jackson's forces) defeated the British armada, which enabled The Treaty of Ghent to be ratified by Congress, thus ensuring the continuing independence of the United States of America," Tufaro said.
The resumption of progress on the Atchity brothers' "Battle of New Orleans" project is particularly timely. First, since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has repeatedly cited Jackson as one of his political idols. A portrait of Jackson hangs in Trump's Oval Office, and the president visited Jackson's tomb in Nashville, Tenn., in March.
It also, however, comes at a time in which Jackson's legacy -- including his championing of the brutal Indian Removal Act as president -- has drawn renewed scrutiny. Amid recent calls for removal of Confederate monuments around the country, some have called for Jackson's iconic statue in New Orleans to be removed and his name scrubbed from the public square dedicated in his honor. (For the record, Jackson was never a part of the Confederacy; he died 15 years before the Civil War began.)
Tafaro, however, shrugged off any potential for controversy, pointing out that -- irrespective of Jackson's legacy in other areas -- the battle marked a pivotal point not just in New Orleans' history but in American history.
"Andrew Jackson, like most well-known historical figures, had a polarizing personality and many of his policies would be controversial given today's political climate," Tufaro said Monday (Aug. 21). "Our film concentrates on the tremendous sacrifices he and his men made to shape our country's landscape for generations of Americans to come."
"The Battle of New Orleans" won't be the first film to focus on Jackson, Lafitte and the Battle of New Orleans. In 1938, Cecil B. DeMille directed "The Buccaneer," starring Fredric March as Lafitte and Hugh Sothern as Jackson. Two decades later, actor Anthony Quinn directed a 1958 remake, with Charlton Heston playing Jackson and Yul Brynner as Lafitte.
The script for a competing "Battle of New Orleans" project, penned by Daniel Kunka, has also been circulating in Hollywood in recent years, even landing in 2015 on the Black List, an annual ranking of the most liked unproduced screenplays in Hollywood.
Read more
