From: reiher@ficus.cs.ucla.edu (Peter Reiher)
Subject: Re: Are distributors stupid?
Organization: UCLA Computer Science Department
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 18:57:56 GMT

In article <!3l3n-h@rpi.edu> spinaa@rpi.edu (Matt Garretson) writes:
>Sorry about the offensive subject line... I just wanted to ask a question
>about something that bothers me. I don't mean to imply that anyone (except
>me) is stupid.
>
>  It's an unfortunate fact that most good/small/non-mainstream/foreign/etc
>films don't get very wide releases in the US. It seems that producers/dis-
>tributors/whoever-makes-these-decisions claim that such films don't make
>any money. But when you look at box-office reports that are broken down by
>earnings per location, these films often outrank the current blockbusters.
>Sure, A FEW GOOD BATMEN HOME ALONE WARS 7 brings in more money than the
>art films, but then again, it's playing in every dang theater. But it's
>only earning $2-5K per location, whereas some good small films rake in
>upwards of $10k per location. The catch is, these small films are showing
>in only 1 out of 100 theaters, thus allowing the bigwigs to confirm their
>own suspicions that such films aren't profitable.
>
>   So what I want to know is why many good films aren't more widely 
>distributed. Does it really cost that much to churn out and release a 
>bunch more prints of a film? I would guess that, up to a point, the 
>increase in profits would offset the added expenses. 

The common wisdom is that there is a limited, but fairly dedicated,
audience for independent, non-mainstream, or foreign films.  They will
go somewhat out of their way to see one of these films, but there aren't
that many of them.  Thus, the single theater that is showing a film
like "Reservoir Dogs" is, according to this view, making nearly as much
total money as showing "Reservoir Dogs" at 20 screens, or 100.  There is
at least some evidence for this point of view.  Mainstream quality films
are sometimes opened at just one or two theaters in a big city like LA
or NY, then spread wider in the following weeks.  They typically make
$10,000 a theater, while in the limited run, but they immediately drop
to a third or fourth of that when they move into more theaters.
Presumably, for less commercial films than these, the drop would be even
greater, as the limited audience is spread thinner.

More evidence - for most of these films, the high grosses last only a few
weeks, then drop off sharply.  If a whole lot more people really wanted
to see this film, would not the grosses at the single theater be sustained
longer?  In a few cases, like "Howards End", the grosses did indeed stand
up over a long period of time, suggesting that a wider opening would have
been profitable.  (In the case of this film, it was intentionally handled
this way as part of the marketing strategy - it allowed them to open it
at a relatively uncrowded time of the year, build an audience with little
advertising costs, and still have the film in the theaters come Oscar
nomination time.)

Prints aren't cheap.  I'm not sure, off the top of my head, how much
a decent print costs, but I seem to recollect that a good 35mm color
print could run $10,000.  For a foreign film without much reputation,
that's a big gamble, since its total gross might only be on the order
of $100,000 to $200,000, going by history.  (And the best expected result
is that it makes $4-$5 million, but only one or two such films a year will
do so.)  Many of the companies that release independent films operate on 
a shoestring, and laying out an extra $5000-$10000 for another print is not 
a matter of pocket change.  Note also that films like this are, to an extent 
not true of big Hollywood films, at the mercy of the critics.  If your 
little independent film gets panned by most of the major critics, the 
dedicated art house audience might well not go to see it, and you might 
make next to nothing on it.  This happens to several independent and foreign 
films every year, and gambling wrong two or three times in a row can cause 
some small distributors to go out of business.  Raise the ante by raising 
the number of prints, and one flop could wipe them out.

I personally believe that the distributors are not far wrong, on this.
It's possible that releasing ten times as many prints and spending ten
times as much on advertising might make some foreign or independent films
into big hits, but there are a lot of them that simply don't appeal to the
average person who goes to films in the U.S.  

-- 
		Peter Reiher
		reiher@wells.cs.ucla.edu