Workshop: Parent companies, profits and critical literature
1. Parent companies – who owns what?
To find out which companies were involved in the production of your film go to the
IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/ ; look under the Company Credits section.
You may find a number of companies: one of these will likely be a one off holding company set up to handle the finances of your film, others may be independent production studios, or halfway houses for the larger films studios/investors, or semiindependent companies; usually amongst the different companies involved there will be a major studio.
Spend some time trying to find out about the different companies. Wikipedia has a useful page which will help you find out more information and, importantly, work out whether your company/studio is part of a larger 'parent' organisation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hollywood_movie_studios
Remember information on Wikipedia may be unreliable so you should try to seek corroboration from another reliable source. You can also use Google to find out company information. If you have been able to identify a major studio then dig a bit deeper and work out what their relationship is with larger conglomerates and corporations, or parent companies. The 'who owns what' section of the Columbia
Journalism Review web pages – http://www.cjr.org/resources/ - is a useful resource.
If you discover that one of the following corporations – Time-Warner, Viacom , News
Corporation , Disney , Sony , NBC – 'owns' your film you can download maps of these corporations from QM+.
Hopefully, with a bit of work, you should be able to produce a paragraph about your film that is similar to the following: e.g. United 93 : The film is a co-production, produced and funded by Sidney Kimel Entertainment (American capitalist and philanthropist with wide interests who dabbles in film), Studio Canal (French film/TV studio), Working Title Films (UK film producer), and Universal Pictures (a major US studio, part of the NBC empire and owned by General Electric (80%) and Vivendi
(20%)). Distribution for the film was handled by Universal (US) and UIP (outside US).
Note – UIP is co-owned by Universal and Paramount for handling worldwide distribution. We can see, perhaps unsurprisingly considering its subject matter, that
United 93 was initially something of a non-mainstream project (combining US independent and European funding) but that it did establish some traction on the mainstream, attracting money from a major studio (and corporation) and gaining a major worldwide distribution deal with Universal and UIP.
Try to figure out here how the ownership of your film can help explain why it looks the way it looks; remember we are trying to describe what Maltby calls a 'commercial aesthetic'.
2. Profits – making sense of box office figures
The IMDB does have reasonably reliable box office information (especially in relation to US domestic box office) but IMDB takes its data from Box Office Mojo, so it is

better to go straight to this source: http://boxofficemojo.com/ . Try to interrogate the figures using the following guidelines:
Is your film small-, mid-, or high- budget?
In 2009, for example, the average budget for a major Hollywood production was $110 million, with a $35 million spend (roughly one third of estimated budget) on prints and advertising; a small-budget film, Juno cost $7.5 million; estimates for Avatar vary from $300-$500 million, giving it an astronomical budget; I Am Legend had an estimated budget of $150 million (we can estimate that marketing and print costs were approx $50 million, i.e. one third of the production budget); total investment $200 million. Conclusion – this is a film safely above average in high-budget territory. You should be able to place your own film in relation to this sliding scale.
Was your film commercially successful?
One simple way of gauging this is to ask if your film had a successful opening weekend? Opening weekend box office gross is a key industry marker of success, especially for blockbusters (the higher the better, obviously, and with a successful film usually topping $50m+ in the US, with an extremely successful film covering its whole production budget in the first three days). Opening weekend success is often dependent on saturation release (3000 screens+) and a large marketing spend; these are a key elements of major studio blockbuster film production. As a rough rule of thumb, if the opening weekend is good you can generally presume that your film was commercially successful. E.g. I
Am Legend was given a saturation release on just less than 4,000 screens, with an opening weekend of $77.2 million. In keeping with this the film went on to gross
$255.6 million in the US market and $329 million worldwide, giving a box office total of $585 million; conclusion: it was remarkably successful.
Did your film offer a good return on investment (ROI)?
It is worth bearing in mind that while box-office grosses do give a good sense of audience numbers and popularity they do not always indicate profitability (to work out profitability box office must be off-set against budget, marketing costs, and so on). This can be very difficult figure to calculate.
A very rough way of establishing ROI is to divide the total domestic box office gross by the budget plus one third (the one third is an estimate of the cost of prints and advertising). E.g. For I Am Legend , $585 million is divided by $200 million ($150 million budget + $50 million marketing/print costs), giving a ROI of nearly $3 dollars for every $1 dollar invested. This is a very good return! Interestingly, and in comparison, Juno offered a ROI of $22 for every $1 invested! Precisely who gets their hands on this profit is an altogether more complex question and to arrive at a properly accurate ROI figure it would be necessary to factor in the 'deal' made between producer, distributor and exhibitor (as well as any creatives – director, stars, etc.
– taking % cuts, or 'points'); these figures are notoriously hard to get hold off and are beyond the scope of this module for the moment. If you want to have a go at this please see read the entry on 'box office' from the Oxford Dictionary of Film Studies
(separate handout & pdf on QM+).
If your film has been given a further release, has it been successful?
Box office doesn't tell us everything: box office gross does not include long-term accrued residuals from other formats; as a very rough rule of thumb, a film is likely to make the same again in sell through (rentals, DVD sales, television rights) as it did in box office take. Indeed, often it can make much more than this. That said, some films do much better in sell through markets and can be profitable even with poor box office

on theatrical release. The Numbers website - http://www.the-numbers.com/ - includes some data on DVD sales.
The figures below for Spider-Man ($1.5 billion profit after deductions) and Spider-
Man 2 ($1.06 billion profit after deductions) indicate the considerable sums invested in order to make money at the box office and also the considerable returns from DVD and other ancillary markets.
Production budget
P&A budget (US)
P&A budget (worldwide)
Box office gross (US)
Box office gross (worldwide)
US TV rights
US DVD
US VHS
Spider-Man Spider-Man 2
139
50
100
403.7
200
57
110
373.5
821.7
60
Related tie-ins (toy sales licensing revenue split with Marvel)
109
Related tie-ins (marketing deal with Burger King)
338.8
89.2
783.5
50
50
162
11
From Drake, Phil (2008), 'Distribution and Marketing in Contemporary Hollywood', in
Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (eds.), The Contemporary Hollywood Film Industry
(Oxford: Blackwell), 63-83, p.77.
Lastly, and in your own time, Forbes magazine attempts to gauge the commercial potential of key stars/performers, and if your film has a well known player involved this information is definitely worth a browse: http://star-currency.forbes.com/celebritylist/
3. Critical literature search
I recommend two starting points for any film-related critical literature search:
QM Metalib : from the QM library web page - http://www.library.qmul.ac.uk/ - follow the link called 'e-journals and databases' and then (by hook or by crook) log in to 'My
Metalib'. You can search Metalib without being logged in but there is more functionality if you go through the log in procedure. Click on the link called 'subject search' and select 'Film Studies'. This has narrowed your search to all the eresources that relate to film studies as a discipline. Please deselect the Film Index
International database. This is a useful resource produced by the BFI that attempts to collate all material published in relation to individual films. However, our subscription to it only allows a small number of users at a time so we can't access it in this particular session; please log in at a later stage and search this database (it can be accessed directly when you visit the BFI mediatheque).
You can now conduct a search for your film and any related topics or keywords. If you have a film title with more than one word use the following method to ensure you are only searching for this, e.g. "Zero Dark Thirty".

You might also find it useful to use the Boolean search terms, AND and OR, to narrow your search. Fro example, to narrow a search you can use the “film title” AND
“keyword”, e.g. “Zero Dark Thirty” AND torture. For a synonym you can use OR, e.g.
“Zero Dark Thirty” AND torture OR “extraordinary rendition”. Note – the terms must be capitalised to function as limiters.
Browse your results and play around with them using the filtering links on the right
(these are useful especially if you have a lot of data that is not relevant). For example, you can view results by journal, so it makes sense to focus on film journals.
As you browse the references look for articles that have multiple pages (these are more likely to be worth chasing down than single page reviews). Click the save button (a shopping cart symbol!) for any record you think might be useful. If you now click My Metalib you should see a list of all the results you have saved. Now comes the tricky bit: clicking on the title might take you straight to the resource (Eureka)!
However, if the reference has an 'S' button next to it (this stands for QMSFX) it means it is not immediately available by electronic means and you will need to press the S button to see where the resource might be held (hard copy at QM library,
Senate House, or another London library). QMSFX may also make some suggestions regarding similar or related articles.
Note – most film journals listed will be held by the BFI national library which is based on the Southbank site and is free to use. Details of the BFI's holdings can be found at the following url: http://olib.bfi.hostedbyfdi.net/cgi-bin/bfi.bat
I recommend that you compile a list of the most useful looking references and then head down to the BFI for the day to collect as many as these as possible.
Finally, you might wish to search for reviews in British and US newspapers using
Nexis UK. Go back to the Library e-resources page – http://www.library.qmul.ac.uk/eresources - select subject: general, subcategory: newspapers. Then use the Nexis database. This database allows you to search every newspaper published worldwide. I recommend you look at just a handful of British and US broadsheets
(unless you are particularly interested in popular reviews/responses to your films).
Intelligent commentary is often found in The Guardian, The Observer, The New York
Times, The Washington Post, The LA Times and so on. Almost everything should be immediately available in electronic form so it is worth collating this to look at later
(indeed, one of our workshops after reading week will be a reception study).
Google Scholar : another search engine that is worth a try is Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.co.uk/ Before you start set Scholar Preferences (to the right of the search box) to select articles only in languages you can read and if possible hook the search engine up to the QM library catalogue (this should already by done if searching from on-campus). Then using the Advanced Search function trawl for material related to your film. If connected to QM library catalogue the QMSFX function (as noted above in relation to Metalib) should be showing to the right of your search results, and any readily available e-resources should be indicated. The followings tips are useful for refining searches in both Google and Google Scholar : http://www.dumblittleman.com/2007/06/20-tips-for-more-efficient-google.html

box office 1. Lit. a place in a movie theatre where tickets are sold and bought. 2. A term to describe the amount of money that a film takes on theatrical release. Box office figures are often used in the popular and trade press and by film studies scholars as indicators of a movie’s profitability/success. However, the relationship between box office figures and film finance more generally is a complex one. Each film will have its own specific ‘deal’ but in general the process works in the following way: a film producer will make a deal with a *distribution company to market their film and organize its *exhibition (usually for a run of two to six weeks). The exhibitor deducts a ‘ nut’
from the weekly box office gross receipts (i.e. the total amount received from selling tickets) to pay towards the cinema’s weekly overheads as well as a percentage (usually on a sliding scale of around 30-40% of box office gross in the first week, rising to 60%-70% in later weeks). The sliding scale benefits distributors because box office gross tends to be ‘front-loaded’, that is attained in the first two weeks of release. The distributor collects a flat-rate distribution fee for releasing the film and the rental receipts , that is, the gross box office receipts minus the nut and the sliding percentage taken by the exhibitor. Overseas box office can account for
50% to 66% of overall box office gross; the mechanism for calculating profit share overseas is the same as in the domestic market but distribution is often handled by different distributors depending on territory and they will each negotiate a slightly different deal with the producer. (Note – when looking at aggregated box office figures it should be remembered that the domestic market includes *Canada.)
In 1950 James Stewart’s agent, Lew Wasserman, negotiated that Stewart receive a share of the box office gross from the Universal *western, Winchester ’73
(Anthony Mann, 1950) and this kind of deal has become common ( see
STARS
). Bigname actors (and occasionally directors) are able to negotiate profit participation in the form of points – i.e. a certain percentage of the film’s rental receipts – and this is deducted at this stage .
From the rental receipts the distributor deducts their marketing costs and any overheads, as well as their percentage share (often as much as 50%). Once the distributor has taken their cut and expenses and points have been paid, the film is said to ‘break even’ with any remaining revenue returned to the producer as net profit .
One rule of thumb has it that to break-even box office gross must be 2.5 times production costs; another states that a film has to gross roughly twice its production and P&A costs. Other players (writers, rights holders, and so on) may have negotiated points in a film’s net profits and they will be paid at this point, though in reality many films don’t actually generate any net profits from theatrical release and so these participants lose out.
From the net profit producers will have to deduct their own production costs; these include above the line costs – fees to participants (writer, director, actors, and producer) as well as script development and copyright charges, and below the line costs – technical expenses (equipment lease, film stock, printing) and technical labor.
A film produced and distributed by a major studio will have profit streams from production and distribution, though these are held separate for accounting purposes, with the latter more profitable.
To consider only theatrical release as a measure of a film’s success or otherwise is to ignore other revenue streams. One recent study has theatrical release generating only 15% of total revenues, with 85% coming from ancillary markets such as *DVD rental and sales (net profit on a DVD, for example, is approx. $11 per disc when sold at full price), pay-per-view, Pay-TV, broadcast TV, and other licenses (for computer games, merchandise, theme parks, and so on) ( see
FRANCHISE
). Theatrical

box office receipts are used to set the sell-through value of a film as it enters these ancillary markets. For example, if a film received $5m at the box office, the base license fee for broadcast television rights might be 50% of that, or $2.5m. Specialised distributors are involved in these ancillary markets but, generally speaking, the film’s producers take a larger share of revenue.
To gain an accurate sense of an individual film’s return on investment (ROI) all the above must be taken into account. As such, box office charts based on gross box office which purport to show the most commercially successful films of all time should be treated with circumspection, not least because they are rarely adjusted for inflation but also because they don’t acknowledge the complex processes described above.
Weblink – A website containing box office information and, where available, details of production budgets: http://www.the-numbers.com/
Further reading: (Drake 2008; Izod 1988; Wasko 2003)
1405133872: Drake, Phil (2008), 'Distribution and Marketing in Contemporary
Hollywood', in Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (eds.), The Contemporary
Hollywood Film Industry (Oxford: Blackwell), 63-83.
0333461231: Izod, John (1988), Hollywood and the Box Office 1895-1985 (London:
Macmillan)
0761968148: Wasko, Janet (2003), How Hollywood Works (London: Sage
Publications) marketing (prints and advertising, P&A) The use of publicity to establish product recognition and to stimulate demand for a particular film. During the studio era posters, trailers, fan magazines, star appeal and appearances, and the brand identity associated with particular studios ( see STUDIO STYLE ), were used to draw filmgoers to the cinema ( see also PRESS BOOK ). However, after the *Paramount Decrees and the shift to the *package-unit system, marketing became an even more prominent feature of *Hollywood film production; the release of Jaws (Steven Spielberg, 1975), for example, was preceded by a large advertising campaign, and the phenomenal commercial success of the film, established this approach, sometimes referred to as front-loading , as the primary strategy for distributing and releasing large budget commercial films (see N EW H OLLYWOOD , HICH CONCEPT , RELEASE STRATEGY ).
The marketing strategy for a film will be established early on; indeed, many films will be conceptualized from the outset as a brand with producers seeking out pre-sold properties such as successful bestselling novels or big-name stars, in order to ensure that the movie will already be recognizable to consumers ( see DEAL , THE ).
During *pre-production market research companies such as National Research Group,
MarketCast and Online Testing Exchange, are commissioned to test the ‘concept’ of the film with different potential audiences and to conduct positioning studies that analyse the script for marketing opportunities ( see
PRODUCT PLACEMENT
). Once a film is completed, or available in a *final cut, market researchers will run focus groups and test screenings, with further *editing (or sometimes even shooting) often undertaken as a result. It is not unusual for $1m to be spent on market research per film.
In parallel with test screenings, an independent marketing agency working from dailies or a rough-cut will produce a number of trailers for the film, each tailored to screen in theatres alongside films of different certificates. Trailers will also be produced for different platforms (internet, phones etc.), and in long (a standard length

is two minutes) and short versions (90 second teasers , for example) ( see also VOICE
OVER ). At this stage, the art work for posters will also be commissioned and this will be incorporated into poster designs that include tag-lines (pithy one-liners that capture the spirit of the film), positive copy from reviewers, and the names of wellknown stars (and occasionally directors). Trailers and posters are also tested using focus groups and tweaked where necessary.
A range of other marketing strategies are also pursued, including the release of on-set reports and production stills, the building of dedicated websites (usually offering additional content such as screensavers), the production and release of
‘making of’ short films, the screening of the film at *film festivals, careful market positing in pursuit of awards ( see A
CADEMY
A
WARDS
), sneak previews for the public to build word of mouth, and trade-sneak previews for exhibitors, press screenings, complete with press kits, that attempt to solicit positive reviews ( see
FILM CRITICISM
), and a host of ‘exclusives’ – chat shows appearances, premiere appearances, press junkets, with heavily regulated interviews, and so on. The creation of internet hype, through the leaking (official and otherwise) of news about the film that is then picked up on influential websites such as ‘Ain’t it Cool News’ is now also an important element of film marketing.
All this is extremely costly and marketing costs account for around one-third of the total cost of a major studio-released film, equal to around half of the ‘negative cost’ (i.e. the cost of production). The creative costs of marketing are usually estimated at five percent of the total marketing spend, so a $100m film will have a marketing budget of around $30m, of which £1.5m will be spent on creating marketing materials and the rest spent on advertising space. As these figures indicate, but far the single largest expense is the buying of media space such as billboards and television advertising spots; a 30 second commercial at peak time on US network television, for example, might cost $600,000.
Once the marketing process is underway tracking studies are conducted
(usually by telephone interview) on a weekly basis prior to release and these attempt to gauge the awareness of an audience of a film. Once the film is released careful attention will be paid to *box office gross and exit surveys will be used to measure audience reactions to the film. The theatrical release of a film can also be considered a form of marketing for its subsequent release in ancillary markets and/or for the building a *franchise.
Further reading: (Drake 2008; Janet Wasko 1993; Marich 2009; Wyatt 1994)
1405133872: Drake, Phil (2008), 'Distribution and Marketing in Contemporary
Hollywood', in Paul McDonald and Janet Wasko (eds.), The Contemporary
Hollywood Film Industry (Oxford: Blackwell), 63-83.
Janet Wasko, Mark Phillips, Chris Purdie (1993), 'Hollywood Meets Madison
Avenue', Media, Culture and Society , 15 (2), 271-93.
0809328844: Marich, Robert (2009), Marketing to Moviegoers: A Handbook of
Strategies and Tactics (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press)
0292790910: Wyatt, Justin (1994), High Concept: Movies and Marketing in
Hollywood (Austin: University of Texas Press)

Glossary of movie business terms
Domestic Box Office
Total money spent on tickets by moviegoers in the United States and Canada.
Home Market
The Home Market refers to revenue derived from people viewing movies at home. It is broken down into three sections: rentals, sales and TV rights. Combined these bring in more than double the domestic box office and can turn a film that was a mid-level hit to a monster hit, or lift a film that struggled at the box office to one that shows a considerable profit. As of 2000, DVD represents more than 80% of rentals and nearly all of the sales.
Internal Multiplier
A film's weekend box office divided by its Friday number. It's basically a measure of the film's word-ofmouth, with 3.0 being the best most films can get these day while 2.3 is generally considered low .
International Box Office
Total box office from all nations outside United States and Canada.
Legs
Legs is a term used to refer to how long a film lasts in theaters.
Multiplier
A film's total box office divided by its opening weekend box office. Another measure of the film's wordof-mouth but with a much wider range of possibilities. Films with below 2.0 are not unheard of, while
6.0 or more is a possibility.
Prints and Advertising (P&A) Budget
Prints are the actual physical film that are shown in theaters and are quite expensive to make and distribute, costing about $2,000 per print. Each theater needs at least one print and possibly more depending on how many screens the film is playing on. The advertising part of the budget is the amount spent on just that, advertising. Most of the money is spent on TV, but radio, newspapers and magazines, the Internet and in theater advertising are also very important. The average film spends $34.4 million on
P&A, while some films have spent more than $100 million.
Production Budget
The amount of money it cost make the movie including pre-production, film and post-production, but excluding distribution costs. The average cost of a wide release is about $65 million, with the most expensive films topping $200 million.
Screens & Screen Count
The actual screen the movie is projected on. Most Theaters have multiple screens, with largest having two dozen screens or more. Screen Count is simply the number of screens a film is playing on, but this is rarely used domestically, but internationally it is used to measure how wide a release is. I Am Legend , for example, was released on just under 4000 screens.
Worldwide box office
Domestic Box Office plus the International Box Office.