Hollywood wants to entertain you. But if there's one thing they've made very clear through their anti-piracy campaigns, it's that they want you to pay for it. How dare they?
It may seem like a long time ago, but just two years back the movie industry found itself at a bit of loss when it wrapped the year a cool 6% shy of its sales totals from 2004. A 6% drop may not seem like that much, but when you consider that this is an industry making around $9 billion each year, 6% comes out to over $500 million.
When you're a horde of money hungry corporate studios, that's not a good sign. Toss in a banner year for gas prices, the rising popularity of DVDs and a host of other economic situations that only Ross Perot pie-charts could explain and you had Hollywood seriously concerned about their first financial backslide in over a decade.
How did Hollywood combat this little scare? Their tactics were many, but two come to mind in particular.
First, like any good corporation, they immediately pointed the finger elsewhere. Bloody pirates! Though the actual statistics were a bit sketchy, there seemed to be proof that piracy was on the rise. So, Hollywood ramped up their anti-piracy campaigns in the hopes that you would shell out to see Superman Returns in the theater instead of downloading it.
Secondly, they flooded the market with even more material. If your average movie isn't making enough money, just make more average movies and the total will rise, right? In 2004 Hollywood cranked out about 550 movies. In 2005, their loser year, they did the same. In 2006 they pumped out over 600, something of a record.
Hollywood's efforts paid off and 2006 took a step forward to out perform 2005, though it still fell short of 2004. And how is 2007 shaping up? Pretty darn good.
Already way ahead of where 2006 was at the end of October, 2007 is turning into the home stretch with the usual spate of holiday film fluff and end-of-the-year fantasy fests yet to roll out. Hollywood always saves a few blockbusters for end of the year blow outs, taking advantage of those precious holidays by banking that you'll be spending at least a part of them in a theater.
But what really helped Hollywood keep up this year were the sequels and threequels. Sure, it was a general down turn in the quality of our summer blockbusters, but if there's one thing we've proved to Hollywood it's that we'll cough up the cash to see our favorite characters no matter how ridiculous the movie turns out to be. And Hollywood has taken advantage of that to make 2007 their best year ever.
***Note: Statistics for this little overview were compared and cobbled together from various sources including Box Office Mojo, The Numbers and Show Biz Data
