Posted on 05/21/2007 12:36:16 PM PDT by abb
I read that from George, he’s full of crap. And the fact that this month Hollywood is releasing movies that will probably haul in a billion dollars in domestic and multiple billion in total box office shows it (Spiderman 3 has hauled in $282 million domestically and $748 million in total, Shrek 3 has $122 million domestically but hasn’t really started the foreign release cycle yet, and Pirates 3 is this weekend). Sure there’s plenty of money to be made on non-blockbuster, there always has been and I find it funny that George, who cut his teeth on “minor” releases, seems to have forgotten that they exist. But there is still clearly a market for blockbusters, the summer movie season (traditional blockbuster country) has only just begun and already there’s 6 movies with over $100 million in domestic grosses and 2 with over $200 million. While it’s arguably feasable that at some point in the future the model of theatrical releases will end nothing that’s happening now would indicate that it’s going to happen any time soon. The bread and butter for Hollywood has always been the smaller releases, the Weinsteins built their empire on movies with $6 million budgets and $30 million domestic grosses, but the gravy section is perfectly healthy.
As for Bob Garfield he too is jumping to extreme conclussions that aren’t supported by actual events. While the 30 second spot might be on the way out, it’s not going to kill the ad agencies and it’s not going to kill Cannes (unfortunately). In TV advertising, land of the 30 second spot, things have been trending towards the segment sponsorship for a long time. The sports world was the first to figure this out (”and now the {insert brand here} game update with scores from around the league”) but other shows are jumping on this too, turn on Trading Spaces sometime and notice how they always buy supplies at Home Depot and always clean with Swiffer. Of course then there’s the ever popular product placement, something Hollywood has been making money with for decades, when Eureka comes back in July notice how somebody always has to make a phonecall from their super fancy Cisco phone complete with the well displayed Cisco logo.
And as for Cannes, well nothing ever stops the entertainment industry from gathering periodically to congradulate themselves and remind each other how important they all are. Doesn’t matter how movies are being released, they’ll always find a reason to stroke each other’s egos.
There already is that system, yellowpages.com. Put in the type of business and your zipcode then sort the results by distance. And companies can pay to be a “featured business” and be at the top of the display in all sorts.
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