BIG FIVE Fox selling to Disney have 40pc of 11bn US market

Another megamerger is cleared in June 2018 and boosts the hopes of NBCU owner to trump Disney's bid for Fox...
AT&T $85.4bn takeover of Time Warner approved by judge in blow to Trump

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/jun/12/att-time-warner-takeover-approved-trump?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

The story continues! Comcast are launching a new bid, all cash as Murdoch rejected it on the basis of complications with shares (and possible monopoly issues). Disney's inexorable rise not confirmed yet... Comcast prepares to top Disney’s $52bn bid for 21st Century Fox

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/may/23/comcast-prepares-to-top-disney-52bn-bid-for-21st-century-fox?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

Further update - the Comcast (NBCU owner, with Universal having a 9% share of the US market v a combined Fox/Disney 45% on latest figures) counterbid had been rejected by Lachlan Murdoch, but I'd suspect shareholders are likely to demand Disney improves it's bid, and try to spark a bidding war. The Murdochs can see a chance for continuing power through the 'merger' as they would become the single biggest Disney shareholders, so it could be quite a battle.
And Comcast is proceeding with its counterbid for Sky, which Murdoch(s!) has already bid for (the remaining 61% of shares).
Comcast are offering CASH NOT SHARES, so the Murdochs would be incredibly wealthy but stripped of most of their media empire...

An update from my earlier blog... The Disney deal had been announced, subject to FCC (US government media regulator) agreeing, so it is now the big 5 with Disney's new dominance almost certain to spark off another merger to compete.

The business or economics term for this is consolidation. Media academics don't view this process as benign, neutral, not an issue. Chomsky and Herrman's propoganda model includes 'concentration of ownership' in its 'five filters', ways in which radical or counter-hegemonic content are removed from mainstream mass media.

This Disney giant isn't going to be producing politically driven fare like This is England (or even '71 ... or how's about She's a Chinese?!).

Economist Anita Elberse's book Blockbusters is looking more and more like the industry bible.

Rupert Murdoch set to sell off 21st Century Fox assets to Disney

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/dec/13/rupert-murdoch-set-to-sell-off-21st-century-fox-assets-to-disney?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

I'd read last week about rumours of ole Rupe (Murdoch, the 'Dirty Digger' and inspiration for the Bind villain in Tomorrow Never Dies) selling up his Fox film and TV studios to Disney.

Now I see fresh reports are exciting stock markets over Comcast getting involved - the owner of NBC-Universal.

Is an already narrow range of dominant companies about to shrink further?

Comcast reportedly targeting 21st Century Fox for acquisition https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/nov/16/comcast-reportedly-courting-21st-century-fox?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger

Remarkable - just a day or so later I stumbled on news of Warner being involved in a mega-merger, the focus this time on TV, with AT&T bringing it's dominant DirecTV satellite provider to the home of HBO, CNN and more. If eventually allowed after legal appeal, I wonder if Warners will follow Disney in removing their content from the likes of Netflix in favour of their own subscription channel (which they could offer in a bundle to existing subscribers)?

AUDIENCE ANALYSIS Star Trek fails to live long and prosper?

This post focuses on the LA Times' box office coverage, which provides very specific audience breakdown and analysis.

The headline above is from Gant's column on the UK box office, matching a more common downbeat view on the film's fortunes and prospects (its still on wide release), noting:

Star Trek Beyond may have suffered from director JJ Abrams’ exit into rival franchise Star Wars (he remains as producer). Or fans might have been more excited by Benedict Cumberbatch as the main villain last time around, with Beyond baddie Idris Elba less proven at the box office. And Paramount may have struggled to persuade broader audiences to see a third Star Trek film.

Critics and audiences have been highly positive, but the film has failed to crossover to a wide US or UK audience (RT)

BoxOfficeMojo provide a comparison of all 13 movies in the franchise; the current release needs a major boost from China and elsewhere to ensure the franchise will continue to ... live long and prosper

The various box office columns (global, US, UK) in the Guardian make for great reading and will teach you a lot about how the industry works, and provide very specific examples that might help you in exam and/or coursework efforts. Variety and many others also provide in-depth, highly informed analysis and commentary - you can keep an eye on these by adding RSS feeds to your own blogs.

This example is from the LA Times, which you'd expect to be highly versed in industry practice as Hollywood is in its turf. The fragment I picked out below comments on:

VR virtual reality cinema coming

IN THIS POST: short overview of some major technogical changes from digitization, then a focus (TBC and rolling updates) on VR


The film industry, at times reluctantly, has embraced a series of new technologies over recent decades, and the disruptive forces of digitization always seem poised to transform what at heart is quite a conservative industry, locked into franchises, the star system (changing?) and dominated by a mere 'big six' companies despite all the changes.

As with cassette tapes, you may have been born after the VHS tape disappeared from the high street

DVD meant they could:

1. re-monetize back catalogue [long tail...]; just as the music industry got millions to replace their tapes/vinyl with (sonically inferior!) CDs so too did the movie industry make billions from VHS tapes being replaced
2. the monetizing went further with editionalising: usually starting with a vanilla (movie only, perhaps a trailer added) edition, and leading over time to any combination of special, collector's, ultimate (etc) edition, not to mention director's cut, with commentaries and other extras to push sales, plus footage cut for cinema release

Geek.com headline, 2014.

Netflix and Amazon rival big six?

I'll return to this to gather points made across many posts on this theme:
The traditional big six (7 if you count Lionsgate) vertically integrated US conglomerates that dominate global cinema have cause to be seriously worried about Netflix and Amazon (with Apple, HBO and many more bubbling away in the wings too).

The online giants are at once customer/distributor for the big six, including VoD and rental alongside DVD and Blu-Ray sales, and rival, with their film production budget growing, and the release strategies they follow undermining the concept of the release window.
Netflix’s Reed Hastings: ‘We’ve got a long way to go to get to ubiquity’.

Gant Rule, British exceptions and the China factor

UK box office of $60m rivalled the US ('domestic') take

Cinema is at once BOTH a highly globalised industry utterly dominated by the big six US conglomerates AND a highly localised industry in which local stars, settings, even IP/cultural reference points, sell.

The Gant Rule is a useful means of explaining the US dominance, even as this is swiftly undermined by the surging scale and value of the Chinese market, pushing the typical US box office share of a typical global hit to well below the traditional 50%+ (closer now to 40% and falling). This has seen Hollywood squeeze in Chinese stars and settings, shoot alternative endings and extra scenes for different markets, buy up or partner with Chinese firms (with the complication of strict Chinese laws on exporting money), and generally be more sensitive about portraying Chinese as villains or simply the traditional crass stereotype of inscrutable, unemotional, indistinguishable masses (not that this has entirely disappeared).

Headline from  The Wrap

Universal spent millions altering the plot of World War Z (reshoots) so that the epidemic didn't start in China in a doomed attempt to get into the Chinese market. Censors there frown upon horror ('The country has strict laws outlawing any movies that deal with magic, horror or superstition.'). China limits the number of non-Chinese productions allowed in cinemas to just 34 a year - though this may rise in 2017 following negotiations with the WTO (World Trade Organisation). It is not making it easy for Hollywood to extend its global dominance:

...in other cases studios don’t alter their movies until post-production. Chinese censors cut large chunks out of several movies released last year, including 40 minutes from “Cloud Atlas” and 12 minutes from “Men in Black 3,” excising all scenes in Chinatown.
They also cut parts of the latest James Bond film, “Skyfall,” including a scene that featured the assassination of a nameless Chinese security guard.

Marvel had initially planned “Iron Man 3” as a Chinese co-production, a tactic that has been taken with films like “Looper” and “The Karate Kid,” in part because co-productions are not subject to China’s quota for imported films. Chinese censors must still approve them. [The Wrap]

Just 20 years ago China banned all foreign cinema:

China only opened its market to the Hollywood studios in 1994, when its own film industry had reached its nadir. “It wasn’t out of admiration for Hollywood but to save the Chinese film industry,” Rosen said. “People weren’t going to the movies.”
At the time, China only permitted 10 foreign movies to screen, then increased it to 20 before the current total of 34. Those additional 14 slots are all reserved for IMAX or 3D films. [The Wrap]

There is no questioning the ongoing utter dominance of the UK market by Hollywood - for figures read the annual BFI reports. BUT ... localised content still often retains an edge.

The US star helped market the film globally, but the British setting did not help US box office: boxofficemojo.

Localised here is a very broad concept - as is the legal definition of 'British production' for tax purposes:

The UK box office has consistently punched above its weight with family films adapted from British-authored material, fromCharlie and the Chocolate Factory (£37.8m) and Alice in Wonderland (£42.5m) toThe Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (£44.4m) and, of course, Paddington (£38m).

These are mainly Hollywood productions, but with enough of a lingering element of Britishness to give them a home market boost, and so undermine the Gant rule. The Bridget Jones franchise is a more direct example, although it too is ultimately Hollywood fare (Brit producer WT being an NBC-U subsidiary, Polygram at the time of the original).

Gant's latest box office column highlights The BFG as the latest to benefit from this element of Britishness.

He also noted the latest example of event cinema, an annual classical concert now programmed in an incredible 534 screens, plus a stylized limited re-release earning more than the original run:

Also flying the flag for event cinema was Secret Cinema’s presentation of Dirty Dancing. ...  The run of just six dates delivered a final box office of £1.90m. That’s more than the combined runs of the original 1987 release (£1.62m) and the 20th-anniversary rerelease in 2007 (£224,000).

The BFG towers over UK box office while Star Trek Beyond fails to prosper.

A little bit more on the rising influence of the Chinese market, from an article which looks at directors outraged by remakes of their movies, in this case Red Dawn. The original 1980s flick saw Russians invade a US town, the recent remake swapped Chinese forces for this...until it dawned on the money men that they'd lose out on the Chinese market...so this was belatedly switched to North Korean forces:

Milius was partially vindicated when MGMchanged the invading aggressors to North Koreans for the final cut, though that move was made to appease the lucrative Chinese market more than to cheer up the original film’s director.

How dare you remake my classic! When directors attack

http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2016/sep/16/how-dare-you-remake-my-classic-when-directors-attack?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

DIGITISATION Hinterland £8k budget 15 year-old camera...

Harry Macqueen (centre) and Ben Hecking on stage after their Ilkley Film Festival screening

HINTERLAND (Harry Macqueen, 2015)
DISTRIBUTION: Indie/arthouse/world cinema specialist Soda Pictures (digital); self-distribution deal with Curzon Pictures, linked to director/cinematographer Q+A appearances
PRODUCTION CO: Inheritance Films [Macqueen inherited £10k and decided to make a film with this!]
BUDGET: £8k
SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter;



Thanks to Martin Pilkington, organiser of the Ilkley Film Festival, I got to see Hinterland gratis, and to speak to the debut director (and co-star/writer/producer) Harry Macqueen plus cinematographer (Director of Photography) Ben Hecking afterwards.

The film is archetypal arthouse; an essay on male diffidence with French New Wave part of the aesthetic: montage sequences, dialogue over fairly abstract shots, some non-linear strands. That's simplifying rather - both said their influences were just too numerous to really pin down; "unconscious osmosis" would amount for much of this. Richard Linklater was held up as a particular influence and, indeed, inspiration to all Indie filmmakers (and Macqueen noted how Linklater had similarly gone out and produced his debut feature for a very low budget). Both professed a love for and strong influence from this unheralded 1979 British Indie road movie, re-released on DVD by the BFI (Radio On, Christopher Petit):


(Read more on this film: IMDB; Wiki; ScreenOnline)

Both describe Hinterland as a road movie. It centres on the friendship, with clear undertones of desire for more, of a late-20-something man and woman, childhood friends, the woman a free spirit, the man seemingly a more sedate character.

2013 UK Distribution data

tbc
http://stephenfollows.com/who-dominates-uk-film-distribution/
tbc

UK Cinema 2013 review - BFI key facts

You can find a wide range of BFI reports here (see screenshot below).

I've been reading through their 2013 Statistical Yearbook report - as its a cool 252 pages long, the following are just a few of the many points you can pick up from a skim or a more leisurely read yourself.

2013 BFI Yearbook - Selected Points

Note: Definition of ‘UK film’
For the purposes of this chapter, a UK film is one which is certified as such by the UK Secretary of
State for Culture, Media and Sport under Schedule 1 of the Films Act 1985, via the Cultural Test, under one of the UK’s bilateral co-production agreements or the European Convention on Cinematographic Co-production, or a film which has not applied for certification but which is obviously British on the basis of its content, producers, finance and talent. Most UK films in the analysis (including the major studio-backed films) fall into the first group – films officially certified as British. [p.76; see longer quote at the end]

Only the US and Japan have a larger 'filmed entertainment' market than the UK (valued at £4bn).

Global, not US, market dominates Hollywood (Obst, 2013)

Look out for useful terminology/neologisms below: pre-awareness and tentpoles and tadpoles

$101m global box office, $21m budget (1993)

A few useful nuggests from this article by Phil Hoad, which highlights and critiques some of the points raised by one-time Hollywood hit producer Lynda Orbst in her bio (given an excoriating review by an unimpressed David Thomson, here), but the really important point concerns WHY Hollywood has turned to tentpole CGI/SFX spectaculars, usually within franchises and/or using 'pre-known' brands/books.

Her line of attack, that Hollywood has wrongly turned its back on medium budget concept movies, where the script, not CGI, is king, is a common one - especially from industry veterans...

If it wasn't startling enough when, in 2011, Universal president Ron Meyer commented on the amount of "shitty movies" on his own slate, founding fathers Steven Spielberg and George Lucas stepped up in the same week as Obst's book was published to denounce Hollywood's blockbuster dependency. ... The reckoning – led by baby boomers attacking the recent homogenisation drive in mainstream films – has exposed a generation gap in Hollywood.

Digitisation emerges as one key cause in this shift:

the shrinking of DVD revenue in the mid-noughties halved the studios' profit margins and reduced their appetite for risk

China set to challenge Big 6 hegemony?

Cinema's global narrative has been well established for many decades: notwithstanding the efforts of some national cinemas to protect their local industry/culture, typically through some mix of state funding or quotas (setting a limit on US imports, or a minimum on the proportion of locally-produced movies cinemas must screen), a small handful of US conglomerates has utterly dominated film industries in most nations on earth. This extends beyond production to distribution and exhibition too, though its the production dominance that is most immediately noticeable.

What are the main issues around 'British' Cinema? From Social Realism to Cultural Imperialism via reindeer jumpers...

In looking at 'British' Cinema several issues come to mind:

• the overwhelming dominance of Hollywood and the 'big 6' conglomerates in particular. How many British (or filmmakers from any other nation) companies can compete with the 2008 $185m budget spectacle movie Dark Knight, an example of the 'tentpole strategy' of a small number of mega-budget releases underpinning the big 6's release strategies (which hoovered up $533m in the US alone, getting a brief 2009 re-release to take it over $1bn worldwide? (WT are increasingly coming close to the $100m mark, but this is only possible as a subsidiary of NBC-Universal - e.g., the 2004 smash BJones: The Edge of Reason cost $70m)
  
• the ongoing dominance of the social realist genre - at least partially a reflection of British filmmakers inability to attract funding for UK-set action/fantasy/sci-fi films (Harry Potter and Bond franchises excepted), but also the popularity of such films in Europe, where our few auteurs (Ken Loach, Mike Leigh especially) generally look to for funding. The British social realist tradition, growing out of the 1920s-40s British Documentary Movement, was a key influence on the French New Wave and Italian Neo-Realism movements of the 50s and 60s - both themselves a reflection of pragmatism in the face of limited availability for funding.
• there are occasional exceptions to the rule that US audiences have no interest in social realist films (WT2's Billy Elliot; The Full Monty; Mike Leigh's Secrets and Lies; arguably Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaires), social realist films' whose underdog protagonists triumphing against the odds neatly reflects the 'American Dream' ideology that any and all US citizens can be winners in their extremely uneven society. Interestingly, Shane Meadows' £1.5m 2006 Warp Films drama This Is England was seen as an arthouse movie in the US, where it took just $300,000 in 4 months, averaging a mere ten screens a week! There was a niche ABC1 audience for the film, but it had no prospects of wider commercial success
• if we look at the fortunes of Hammer, there is a degree of irony here: Hammer briefly lead the world in the horror genre, establishing the likes of Christopher Lee as global icons in the process - but found their slightly camp, theatrical and gothic productions were left looking out-moded alongside low budget Indie productions from the US, such as Wes Craven's $90,000 (that's not a typo!) 1972 proto-slasher The Last House on the Left (ironically, banned in the UK until after the 1999 retirement of long-time BBFC head James Ferman). Craven, and his many subsequent imitators, took a leaf out of the social realist handbook, making films on a shoestring with that distinctive documentary feel (shaky camera work, kinetic cinematography [lots of cam movement instead of static set-ups], low-key, naturalistic lighting etc) that gave a heightened sense of realism.
• WT began as a low-budget Indie producer of social realist films: 1985's My Beautiful Laundrette (with its challenging themes of class, race and homosexuality added to its counter-hegemonic critique of Thatcherism wedded to the company's belief in introducing new talent: Daniel Day-Lewis), a TV movie that won a cinema distribution deal after doing well at The Edinburgh International Film Festival, and 1987's Wish You Were Here which made a star out of Emily Lloyd and her 'up yer bum' catchphrase!
• Warp Films is comparable to WT in its early days, an Indie producing generally social realist films on low budgets (like the early WT, it has links with C4/Film4). Warp X is more comparable to WT2, though, aiming to produce genre films "with a twist" (WT2's motto: "Humour, Horror, Heart")
• its clear that following the (hybrid) genre path is the way to make serious money: if the US market is usually disinterested in British social realist dramas, often with an overt focus on social class (most Americans, rich and poor, have the self-perception of being middle-class), wouldn't any sensible business follow the WT path of churning out sickly rom-coms with their A-list American star to help tap into the lucrative US market? Look at the figures (using Guardian or IMDB): the $150m budget (Paramount, big 6!) Star Trek film took $75m from just under 4000 screens in its opening weekend stateside; almost £6m from 499 screens on its UK opening weekend. The US has 5 times the UK population and is wealthier to boot; UK filmmakers who don't attempt to build in cross-over appeal to the US market are limiting their potential profit.
• ...however, is the bottom line all that matters in the film industry? Isn't it one of the much-mooted cultural industries [aka the knowledge economy; cf. Will Hutton] that underpin the UK's post-industrial economic future? Consider the mission statement of the UK Film Council, the quango funded by direct government money as well as Lottery funds, which in turn finances regional arms (eg Screen Yorkshire & EM Media, co-financiers of TisEng): "The UK Film Council is the Government backed lead agency for film in the UK ensuring that the economic, cultural and educational aspects of film are effectively represented at home and abroad." [emphasis added]
• so, lets ask another question: which is the more important film: Indie Warp Film's (co-produced with UKFilmCncl, EM Media, ScrnYorks, Film4, Big Arty Productions and distributor Optimum Releasing) This is England (£1.5m budget, no stars, modest UK box office of £1.3m) or big 6 conglomerate subsidiary WT's $70m rom-com sequel (co-produced with Miramax, Universal, Little Bird, Studio Canal and Atlantic Televsion) Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason (took £35m in UK, and a disappointing $40m in US - BJD took $72m)?
• we could also ask whether either of the BJones films are actually 'British' films, considering the importance of funding from the European Studio-Canal - itself, like WT, now a mere subsidiary of NBC-Universal - and American big 6 member Universal
• which do you think speaks to you most about YOUR identity (there's no correct answer here - I'm asking you to reflect a little on your personal consumption of films)?
• you could argue that TiE's focus on class and race is itself a little cliched by now, although the key argument here would appear to be over the extremely narrow, stereotypical depiction of Britishness seen in both BJones films: white, middle-class, southern English characters, and various shots of Britain as quaint, rural - and even akin to a Quality Street ad when it comes to representing the teeming metropolis that is London. The BJones films rely heavily on their use of an American star, and the use of stereotypical representations of Britain that will be familiar and thus comfortable for an American audience - who would surely feel bewildered and alienated by the council estate mise-en-scene we see throughout TiE, and the broad northern accents its characters employ.
• Indeed, BJD only became a hit in the US after Miramax supremo Harvey Weinstein noted the US test audience, confused at early mentions of Xmas turkey curry, broke into laughter at the visual humour of Colin Firth's reindeer jumper - a scene notably used in both trailers and music videos for the film's marketing. Without this, it may not have got funding for US distribution and marketing. [I'll blog separately about 'Curtisland'...]
• 'Channel 4 is one of several bidders – also believed to include Channel Five owner RTL, Time Warner, BSkyB and NBC Universal – for Virgin Media's seven pay-TV channels, which include Living TV and Virgin1.' - http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/29/virgin-media-channel-4 The big 6's grip on our culture could soon be tightened further it seems
  
• You will hopefully have noted an incongruity in discussing 'British' cinema and representation of Britishness here: we're looking at two films set in England...
• If Hollywood's dominance of our screens, large and small, can be said to constitute cultural imperialism, with even our foremost film production company (WT) prioritising satisfying a potential US audience over its domestic market, and churning out work even within its low-budget, Indie wing (WT2) that focusses on familiar genres (as does Warp X to a lesser degree), what about the internal UK position? As northern English viewers, do you think the British film industry represents yourselves satisfactorily; do you, at the basic level, see sufficient reflections of yourselves on screen? Does the dominance of S.Eng representations bother you?
• The position is even more stark if we look at this from a Celtic perspective: there have been some breakthrough Scottish-set hits (Trainspotting), but not for some time; can you name ANY Welsh-set films (consider how Rhys Ifans' character portrays the Welsh, as a binary opposite of the suave HGrant, in NHill); and for the N.Irish, we only seem to see ourselves represented endlessly as violent, drunken terrorists/psychopaths (even the controversial Hidden Agenda [rem Chomsky's propoganda model: flak as 1 of 5 filters], with the main cast being entirely American, Scottish and English, saw an English policeman emerge as the hero, with Ken Loach deploying some crude stereotypes along the way)
• So... if it makes commercial sense to target a US audience through a S.Eng setting, and a narrow focus on white, middle-class characters (using a US star if funds allow - around half of the $42m budget for Notting Hill went on A-lister Julia Roberts' salary! - contrast this to Donkey Punch's £1m budget being mainly taken up by hiring the boat its set on!), with a narrative framed in a genre familiar to a US aud, and we can consider this cultural imperialism ... then does the same apply within the UK?
• Look at the contrasting fortunes of Son of Rambow (Garth Jennings, 2007), a £4m Indie production that made its money back at the UK box office on 300 screens a week, adding another $1.8m in the US (you can add DVD and TV sales to these figures), and WT2's $5m Mickybo & Me (Terry Loane, 2004), which was released for just one week in N.Ireland on 28 screens, taking just £172,000 and failing to gain funding for a UK-wide or even US distribution. Both have comparable narratives centred on two young boys with obsessions about a specific film, but while the former is set in S.Eng, the latter is set in N.I. and inevitably brings in 'the Troubles', with our two leads eventually engaging in a near-fatal knife fight (because the tribal Irish can't do anything else but fight, as Ken Loach pointed out with Hidden Agenda!)
• So, British cinema is in thrall to two commercial factors: cross-marketing potential to a US audience will greatly increase potential profits, which generally means a S.Eng setting/characters; but even within the UK setting the action anywhere outside the South risks poor returns also, as even the domestic 'British audience' can be reluctant to take on characters with Scottish, Welsh, N.Irish or Northern English accents (and even 'the South' is narrowly conceived: the likes of Bristolian accents aren't part of this concept, with the Midlands also somewhat excluded)
• perhaps then we should applaud the existence of the UK Film Council, its regional arms, and Channel 4 (its production arm with a measly £10m budget is under serious threat though), all of which make films like TiE, which don't compromise for commercial ends, possible
• although if we simply condemn a film like the BJD (chick-)flicks as candyfloss, we step into new arguments about the notion of high culture v popular culture, and the demonisation of any cultural form primarily consumed by females (rom-coms, soaps, celeb mags etc)...

Hopefully food for thought, which you may want to continue by looking at http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2009/mar/22/richard-curtis-the-boat-that-rocked and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKSGdByaUIA