Why Twilight is My Favorite Franchise

It just plain works.

Respective Budgets:

1. Twilight – $37mil
2. New Moon – $50mil
3. Eclipse $68mil

Box Office Grosses:

1. Twilight – $392.5mil wordwide (that’s a 10-bagger)
2. New Moon – $709.7mil worldwide (14x ROI)
3. Eclipse – $30mil midnight opening (…and we are just getting started)

More of a Letter than a Blog

Please excuse my neglect of writing posts over the past couple months. My mother in law recently passed of lung cancer and much of my time has been spent with more important things than blogging.

During my absence, I have taken much time to read, think and strategize.  With a market that is ever-changing, it is important to stay ahead of the curve.  That said, I have made the decision to postpone Sceneclips’ launch.  While I still anticipate us launching in 2010, we are taking a step back to cut some fat from Sceneclips’ platform and narrow its focus.  In the long-run this will make for a more sustainable business and beneficial service.  Going forward I will continue to share my thoughts on the business at a slower frequency until my schedule loosens up.

I would like to sincerely thank all who have signed up on Sceneclips’ launch list, follow our RSS feed and share our content. When we launch, it will not disappoint.

Best,

john

2009 Movie Studio Revenues & Box Office Share

The Big Six ranked: total box office revenues and market share

1. Warner Bros:  $2.13 billion ~ 20%
2. Paramount Pictures:  $1.46 billion ~ 13.8%
3. 20th Century-Fox:  $1.45 billion ~ 13.7%
4. Columbia Pictures (Sony):  $1.44 billion ~ 13.6%
5. Walt Disney Pictures:  $1.21 billion ~ 11.4%
6. Universal Studios:  $900 million ~ 8.5%

The Film Industry That Was 2009

Before we get too far into 2010, let’s take a look back at the film industry’s figures in 2009.

Total Film Industry Spending

• US consumers spent a total of $28.38 billion on feature movies in 2009 – slightly less than 2008′s $28.47 billion

2009 Box Office Numbers

• The domestic box office (including Canada) rang in a record high $10.6 billion
• The 2009 US box office generated $9.87 billion in revenues, up 8% over 2008
• Box office admissions for the year were up 4%

2009 Home Video Numbers

• Total physical media sales (DVD & Blu-ray) for movies declined 13% to $8.73 billion in 2009
• Blu-ray comprised $1.1 billion (12.6%) of movie disc sales
• Online rentals and purchases rang in $361 million in spending for 2009 (this figure is included in the $8.73 billion)
• On demand rentals  though cable and satellite services totaled $1.27 billion (also included in the $8.73 billion)
• The number of homes with Blu-ray players grew to 8 million, up over 260% from last year

Key Takeaways

• Cinema surpassed physical media (DVD & Blu-ray) sales of for the first time since 2002.
• Although rental transactions rose 5.5% during 2009, movie rental spending rose less than 1% to $8.15 billion.

The latter is obviously due to the proliferation of Redbox and Netflix.  It will be an interesting battle throughout 2009 between the studios and these companies.  Just this past Monday, Walmart put a cap on new release purchases, limiting customers to 5 DVD/Blu-ray’s at a time.  In a statement, Walmart says the rules are meant to be “consumer friendly, ensuring that more customers have access to new releases”.   But if you read between the lines what they are really saying is, “the studios keep pokin us with that damn stick… and it’s gettin pretty sharp”.  Adams Media Research estimates that Redbox gets about 40% of its new release DVD’s from big-box retailers like Walmart.  With Netflix recently agreeing to Warner Bros. 28-day new release window, it appears that Redbox in particular is being boxed in (what a cheap, cheap pun ).

Related Links:

• Movie rental kiosks – are they a long-term solution? (audio interview with NCR Corp.)
• Online video statistics revised and updated for 2009 and beyond
• Digging deeper into movie theater attendence

Avatar Numbers… So Far

Avatar is on track to take the crown from Titanic’s $1.842 billion box office record.  Perhaps most impressive is that Avatar has been in theater’s for less than six weeks, while Titanic was in theaters for 41 weeks.

BMO analyst Jeffrey Logsdom provided the following estimates for Avatar’s profitability:

• Avatar’s production budget was $300 million
• Global marketing and distribution costs are $175 million
• Avatar will gross $650 million at the US box office
• Avatar will gross $1.95 billion worldwide during its theatrical run
• After movie theaters get their take, Fox will get $942 million
• Home video sales will be worth another $420 million in revenue
• Game licensing and development will bring in an additional $70 million
• Fox Studio’s total revenues will exceed $1.56 billion
• James Cameron will get $320 million ~ 20% of studio revenues
• Fox Studios and its investors will generate a net profit of $700 million

 

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