You make a movie. It's intelligent, challenging, visually stunning. The critics rave. Audience response is good but not great. You make more money than it cost to produce the film and that's always good. You win a bunch of awards from critics and film festivals. When the Oscar nominations roll out you get one and then a bunch more. When Oscar night rolls around you win Best Motion Picture, then a bunch more. What normally happens now is that movie theaters all over America decide to put your movie back on their screens. More people come out to see the Oscar winning film and you get the "Oscar bump". It's a bunch more money for the theaters and the producers. It's a nice little reward at the end of the day for a movie.
But in the new media world "The Hurt Locker" the brilliant Oscar winning film about the war in Iraq, the movie that earned Kathryn Bigelow not only the Best Director award but a place in history as the first female to win that particular award probably won't get that bump. Theaters don't want to take up space on their screens because they don't think the audience is there. Not because the R rated movie is too intense, not because they disagree with the Academy on the selection. They don't think folks will shell out to see it on the big screen because the audience can watch it at home. You see the DVD went on sale in mid January. Some experts say the movie might rack up millions more in revenues if it were on about a thousand screens nationwide following the big win. As of the week of March 5th is was showing on less than 300 screens nationwide.
So what exactly happened here? It looks like millions of dollars were left on the table by pretty much everyone because no one knew quite what to do. "The Hurt Locker" comes from a small film company Summit Entertainment (the same folks who brought you the Twilight movies). Smaller companies sometimes feel compelled to jump the gun to try and make as much money as possible. So despite the critical raves for the movie they pushed DVD sales a mere 6 months after it was released. DVD sales were pretty good. They ranked 13th in sales on Amazon prior to the Oscars and jumped to third after. But some figures go as high as 40 million dollars for additional ticket sales if they put it back in the theaters.
It's a new world for the movie industry. A world where dollars are certainly much harder to come by. Making decisions that leave even a fraction of that kind of money on the table is just bad business all round. Too bad the marketing wasn't as intelligent as the movie was.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY. You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010
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