Script-to-Screen: Bombing at the Box Office

Screen Hub
Wednesday 24 February, 2010

A veritable who's who of the Auckland film and TV industry crammed the Classic last night to hear the NZFC's Graeme Mason, Sony's Andrew Cornwell and independent distributor Michael Eldred talk about the performance of local films.

Vanessa Alexander kept the boys on track, focusing the discussion around direct and pertinent questions, easing into the more contentious areas by asking Andrew Cornwell to provide an beginners' guide explanation of distribution.

Separating distribution and exhibition, Andrew said, “Think of them as a wholesaler and a retailer. The exhibitor (the cinema) is the retailer. The distributor bears the distribution costs of prints and advertising (P&A), the exhibitor carries the capital costs – the cinema, staff wages and so on.”

Breaking down the numbers, Ms Alexander asked for an example. “If a film takes a million at the box office, where does that money go?”

“A ninth goes to the government,” Andrew said, “because we report figures including GST.”

Roughly speaking, of the more-or-less $890,000 balance, 60% stays with the exhibitor. 40% goes back to the distributor, so around $356,000. Out of that, the distributor takes a fee of 10-20% (the exact amount in inverse proportion to the film's anticipated performance – so a larger amount on a film that is expected to do smaller box office). Most NZ films fall into that 'lower expectation' category, so the distributor takes up to $71,000, leaving $285,000.

From that, the P&A costs are subtracted. With a print costing around $2,000, that can amount to up to $100,000 for a wide release. Advertising costs eat up most of the rest, although they vary in how they are spent. Children's/family films require TV advertising, as that's the most effective way to reach that potential audience; local dramas – which traditionally do better business than local genre films in NZ – attract an older audience (predominantly women 35+).

Print campaigns, especially magazine, have demonstrated some success with that demographic, as Second Hand Wedding proved.

“So what about the filmmaker?” Ms Alexander asked. “What does the filmmaker see?”

After the bitter laughter died down … Nothing. Usually. The money – if any – returning to a filmmaker (and the NZFC if it's funded the production) comes from video release or overseas slaes, Graeme Mason said.

The picture is none too rosy, then, in a general sense. With around 300 films released into the local market each year, or six new titles a week on average, all films without very deep pockets to promote them need to work hard to cut through the noise.

What about small releases and using word of mouth to build audiences and lead to wider release? “Word of mouth doesn't work any more,” Graeme said. Later, in response to a question, he clarified that statement, saying maybe half a dozen films in a decade succeed in that way, Paranormal Activity being the most recent example. It opened in a small number of college towns in the US and as chatter built, more prints and screens were added.

Word-of-mouth is, however, a risky game. With people now tweeting their responses to a film while it screens, the modern equivalent of word-of-mouth can go for or against. Wolfman 'reviews' were being tweeted within 3 minutes of its first screening opening.

Turning the discussion more closely to NZ films and NZ box office, Ms Alexander said that having looked at data for the most successful films internationally over the last two years, only two were arguably dramas: Gran Torino directed by and starring Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood and Slumdog Millionaire, admittedly an adaptation but not from a book that had any real momentum behind it.

The rest, perhaps predictably, were franchises, adaptations, spin-offs, all – if you like – not original works. Nobody referred to the recent US report which said that the most successful fifty films 2004-2009 all cost over US$100 million (except for five, each of which cost over US$50 million), but the point was picked up.

How does NZ compete with films which have P&A budgets many times larger than the entire production budgets for NZ features? Does NZ make the right sort of films to provide a return at the box office?

At this point, the answers started to diversify, because the NZFC's remit is – in part at least - a cultural one, to tell NZ stories on screen, whereas Andrew and Michael's remit is, put bluntly, to make money.

But even local films that are successful (compared to other local films) at the box office don't necessarily make money for their creators. Last year's big local success story Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls was made for less than $1 million, took close to $2 million theatrically, but producer Arani Cuthbert hasn't seen much of a return. Nonetheless, the film is the highest-grossing NZ documentary ever.

“Isn't it great to be from a country where yodelling lesbians is a no-brainer?” asked Ms Alexander, drawing a wry smile from director Leanne Pooley.

Graeme Mason said that the NZFC funded a large amount of drama compared to other genres, and that therefore the bulk of audience attracted to those films fell into the 35+ age range. Most genre films have a different market entirely, predominantly 16-24 year olds, male skewed (other than rom-coms). However, although horror films do well internationally, especially on DVD, they do poor box office here ($400,00 maximum), but lots of people want to write and make them.

Genre films that would reach the younger audience – which is a more more regular cinema-going audience (despite also being a much more download-savvy audience too) – also demand a lot of hard yards nailing the form.

Both distributors felt similarly about the potential of genre material, but also added another caveat – that for a NZ genre film to succeed, it needed something different, that je ne sais quoi to set it apart from the international fare and give a distributor confidence that it would – at least – earn back its P&A spend.

Andrew Cornwell said that, as GM at Sony, he didn't need (and indeed wasn't encouraged) to seek out local fare for distribution. However, he felt – both with his NZFC board member hat on and as a supporter of the film industry at large – that it was important to try to promote local films both for the sake of the industry and the public.

Then came the meat, the question everyone wanted the answer to: why do local films bomb?

“There are lots of reasons,” Graeme said. “Last year was a crowded marketplace; some films didn't turn out the way people would have hoped.”

Referring to Vintner's Luck, he said nobody went into production intending to make a bad film. “Sometimes, a film doesn't turn out as hoped. Nobody anticipated that result.”

Andrew Cornwell was more direct, saying that in his opinion, Vintner's Luck was never going to take $1 million here. “It was always a story about a guy who's going to die after making the perfect wine.”

“We all make mistakes,” Graeme said, admitting to having been offered Shine three times and having turned it down each time, once when it only needed $300,000 to close its financing. “I looked at it and thought 'Who's going to want to watch that?'”

Andrew said he'd originally thought District 9 would do less than $600,000 here. That was, of course, the sort of mistake you wanted to be making – as often as possible, really.

Mr Mason also said that, in the studio system, only one in ten films 'succeeds' at the box office. Studios lose US$600-700 million annually on theatrical releases. Why do they do it? Because it sets up video and TV sales. Although the bottom has rather dropped out of the DVD market, more films make money from video release and TV sales. The latter is not an option in NZ, where TV sales are often made in advance to access NZ On Air funding and the prices paid are therefore not related to box office performance as they are elsewhere.

John Barnett later disputed the one in ten figure, saying he believed it was closer one in five. Either way there is, perhaps, a need to manage expectations around the likely performance of NZ films as, at the current rate of releases, there would be a 'success' only once every two or three years.

During the Q&A, Mr Mason was pushed on the issue of accountability, and particularly the wider dissemination of information coming out of inquests into funded films that perform poorly. “I'm not going to say to someone, You suck,” he replied. “I'm not going to crucify a director.”

So, what lessons for writers could be drawn from all this?

All the panel members concurred on the answers to this one. A film needs to be something someone will want to get up, go out and pay $15 to see. Often, Graeme said, the NZFC saw scripts – mostly from younger writers – that were miserable dramas about “miserable people wanting to commit suicide in the South Island”. They weren't stories even the writers would choose to see.

The idea needs to be saleable to an audience. “If you don't know who's going to go see it, write the book first,” said Graeme. “You can do that on your own at home and it's not costing anybody else money. Film is expensive.”

Andrew and Michael concurred. Few “miserable” dramas succeed, even those that are well-promoted. “They've got to get five star reviews and festival awards,” said Graeme. “And even then ...”

“Precious is not a good Friday night out,” Michael Eldred said.

Bright Star has taken $4.4 million internationally. The US distributor spent US$3 million on P&A. (Remember, the distributor sees only 40% of box office.) “I bet they're not happy,” Ms Alexander commented.

Andrew Cornwell talked about “the Blenheim effect”, which had nothing to do with wanting to commit suicide and everything to do with making a different sort of killing. Again citing Second Hand Wedding as an example, he said, “A film that plays well in the provinces will do good business.”

'Don't do Hollywood on the cheap' was also advice offered. Don't think a couple of expensive effects shots will boost a film – more likely they'll stand out like the proverbial dog's bollocks and remind people the rest of the film doesn't match that level of expenditure. Paranormal Activity did strong business because it didn't try to emulate higher-budget films, it embraced and made creative use of the limitations its maker worked within.

One questioner asked, “If some of the most successful films are genre films, why don't we make them?”

“We would fund them,” Graeme said. “But we will look harder, we're already looking harder, at who you're aiming [your script] at.”

Another comment - Posted: 24/02/2010 2:28:55 PM

Assoc Prof, Screen & Media Studies,Univ Waikato - Posted: 24/02/2010 2:17:22 PM

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