Scott,

Perhaps this will fall more in-line with your topic for tomorrow (Studios), but the most-intriguing take-away I have from this is the pervasive risk-averse mentality. In your opinion, which Studio is the most-willing to take on risk based on this list?

Though they're clearly not without their product adaptations and sequels, I think of WB and recent films like "Gran Torino" and "Inception." Perhaps that's because they're excellent at their branding.

And with the focus shifting toward producing for the international market is there 1) a place for big, traditionally American movies to be made (Top Gun, Rocky 4) or did those just have a time and place and 2) how much lower will the Studios accept the domestic BO return to drop, facing a potential audience backlash, in order to satisfy the global market? Heavy, huh?

If we're asking in 2011 if "Ordinary People" or "Kramer vs. Kramer" could be made nowadays, were they asking in the 80s if "Lawrence of Arabia" or "The Graduate" could have been made then? Really, man, is it all just cyclical or just a downward spiral into movies based on board games?

Chris

Chris, those are all excellent points and questions, ones we'll be discussing throughout the week. I have a post going, I believe, on Wednesday which features a recent GQ article about the 'death' of Hollywood movies, a recent Patrick Goldstein column, and today's post from Steve Zeitchik, all about the current state of the film business.

One thing about Hwood: They have ridden one technological advance or new market arena for what's it worth until the next one has come along to expand its ticket sales considerably over the last 25 years. Up until the early 80s, ticket sales basically averaged 1B per year (domestic), then the market expanded to 1.5B in the last few years. Now those numbers are declining.

You have to understand Hwood was terrified of videocassettes, thinking VCR's would kill theatrical movies. The opposite happened. So when DVDs came along, Hwood embraced them. However DVD sales have plummeted and Blue-Ray has not taken off the way Hwood had been hoping.

Right now 3-D, for all its critics, is what Hwood has leaped into as the new next technology. While the U.S. may have cooled on that somewhat, international markets seem to be eating it up.

So long way of saying that it looks like Hwood perceives international market to be the 'new' hot area in which to generate revenue.

Which leads to this question: What happens if / when international markets turn away from U.S. films? Apparently this is starting to happen in Japan where their domestically produced movies are scoring a larger share of B.O.

Since we haven't invented interplanetary travel, what will Hwood do then?

Loved this analysis, it reminded me of an interview I read (apologies for lack of source), with Garry Marshall, during his "Valentine's Day" release. A reporter asked, "Isn't it true that RomComs are dead?"

Mr. Marshall replied, "RomComs are dead? I should be out of a job!"

Long live Garry Marshall. ;)

Just a theory, but part of the trend in steep plunge in comedies could be due to the success of The Hangover. When I read the what-people-are-looking-for boards, production companies frequently mention The Hangover in their mandate. "Like the Hangover", "Something with a Hangover vibe", etc. pops up again and again. That would automatically make things a lot tougher for comedy specs that were written before TH, as well as ones by writers not working in that vein. So, it's part of the whole don't-bother-trying-to-predict-the-future-and-if-you-try-to-catch-the-wave-once-it-happens-you'll-be-too-late thing we get warned about as new writers. Of course, I think the foreign BO has much more to do with it - humor is so culturally specific - but TH narrowing the mandate could play a role, too

I'm interested in the consistently low sales for horror scripts. A long time ago there was a truism that no horror film had ever lost money. Given how the most amateurish, unpromising, hopelessly derivative piece of nonsense will keep shifting off rental shelves, if it's sold as horror, that still seems reasonably probable. So, given their popularity and relatively low production cost, how come there aren't more horrors sold as specs?

@Annika W: Clearly the ginormous success of The Hangover, the biggest grossing R-rated movie ever, has had an impact on the comedy movie scene in Hollywood, as one would expect its gravitational pull to be felt throughout A&D circles. But as you can see here, even as visual as The Hangover was, it only did 40% of its overall B.O. business internationally as compared to 60% domestic which is pretty much reverse of other movie genres. So my guess is the pullback in comedy spec script purchases is largely tied to Hwood's greater focus on internationally exploitable movie genres like action, thriller, sci-fi, and so on.

@cellulord: And yet there was a glut of horror movies released last October, the list you can see here. I don't have time to check, but I'll bet if you went through the list on IMDB, you'd see that most of them (with the exception of PA2 and Saw 3D) were negative pick-ups, financed outside the studio system, then acquired for distribution. I think that's been pretty much par for the course for Hwood for many years.

Per your major point, you're right: Horror movies do have at least a reputation of loyal audiences and due to generally lower budgets minimal risk. But in fact some of those movies released last October did not do well.

Re horror movies and spec scripts, it would be interesting for some horror fan in the GITS community to do some research to find out how horror movies that had a wide theatrical release were originated. Spec? Pitch? Other source material?

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/why-studios-are-trusting-untested-101550?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thr%2Ffilm+%28The+Hollywood+Reporter+-+Movies%29

This maybe part of the problem.

@Albeckinho: Thanks. I'll post that in the next few days. Several articles out now on the state of the movie business.

Thanks, Scott, that's really encouraging for me, since none of the scripts I've written or am likely to write any time soon are comedy (or drama, which is also noticeably down), and two are sci-fi.

Hi Scott,

Is there any way--other than going back through all last year specs, to know what companies are associated with what genre. Say if you just finished a sci fi or a thriller or a sci fi thriller (hmm . . .), where you could then figure out what companies made sales and made purchases in these genres? Is that out there somewhere? Would be huge.

Or even just a place where all of your updates on spec sales were listed in one lace for the year so that would be easy to comb through. That right there would be simple and extremely helpful.

Thanks for all your work! I almost feel bad asking these questions).

@JMay: I did that for the 2008 overview which you can find here. If I get the time, I'll do 2010.