IS THE FILM INDUSTRY BECOMING THE NEW 1%?

Admittedly, Johnny Lydon of the punk band The Sex Pistols is not the world's foremost authority on the motion picture business. However, a refrain that Mr Rotten loved to spew in the late 70's certainly seems to sum up the film industry over the past few years..."the rich get richer, the poor are gettin' poorer".

Yes, Disney is having an absolutely amazing year, both Stateside and overseas, and Warners and Fox are holding their own but a trend has been developing for several years in this business and there's no more prime example than in 2016. Specifically, it's becoming a case of The 1% vs The Other 99.

Let's go back to 2013, shall we? The six major studios (Disney, Warners, Fox, Paramount, Sony and Universal) accounted for 72% of the total domestic box office that year. There were significant contributions from mini-majors such as Lionsgate, The Weinstein Company and Relativity, to name a few. However, 2014 began a trend that continues unabated where the six majors accounted for 77% of total domestic boxoffice. 2015's figure was 80% and 2016 is an astonishing 83.5%. So while the "average" domestic gross for a film in 2016 may be still fairly high it is now more concentrated in a few huge tentpoles while the "median" film's gross has been declining steadily over the past few years.

Why? One major factor has to be social media. In this day and age Joe and Joanne Public know more about movies that are being released than ever before. They know well in advance that Rogue One is going to be huge, that Deadpool will be a major hit, that Moana is every bit as good as the typical Disney holiday fare and that Joanne should schedule a Girls Night Out to see Bad Moms. By the same token they also know before the release that films like Passengers, Independence Day and others are getting skewered by critics on Rotten Tomatoes and word-of-mouth, which used to take days, now literally takes two hours. This propels the tentpoles into a "must see" kind of stratosphere while sounding a death knell for those movies that should be relegated to the bargain bin. Marketing departments used to be able to "buy" a weekend gross. Not anymore. In addition, ticket prices for immersive experience in-theatre technologies such as IMAX, PLF, 4D, 3D, etc drive up the average ticket price, especially for blockbusters, so that $100 million weekend of old now becomes $115-120 million. That's real money.

As mentioned above, in prior years smaller mini-majors have filled in many gaps with commercial fare that accounted for 25-30% of the overall market. It's hard to find one of the non-major studios enjoying a banner year at the boxoffice in 2016. Minis such as A24, Focus, FSL and Roadside are providing serious moviegoers with quality offerings but they aren't finding the groove on down-the-middle commercial fare.

And until they do then the industry will continue its shift towards the rich getting richer and becoming the new 1%. Cue Johnny Rotten.