It was up, up and away at the boxoffice in 2007. Boxoffice swelled at home and abroad — but so did the costs of making and marketing movies, which grew at an even faster rate.
Domestic boxoffice returns from the U.S. and Canada hit a record $9.6 billion last year, a 5.4% increase over 2006, according to the final figures released Wednesday by the MPAA in its annual state-of-the-business report, which for the first time it compiled in partnership with Nielsen EDI. The figure represents grosses for all commercial releases in North America, not just those of the MPAA companies.
The story was much the same around the world as international boxoffice for all commercial moviegoing hit $17.1 billion, up nearly 5% from 2006. That brought the worldwide boxoffice total for 2007 to a record $26.7 billion. The MPAA companies’ portion of that total international tally of $17.1 billion in grosses was nearly $9.5 billion.
“All in all, 2007 proved a healthy year at the boxoffice,” MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said. “We had a very good year domestically,” while the international returns were “also bullish.”
But though more money was flowing into Hollywood, more money also was flowing out.
The studios’ investment in the average movie’s negative cost rose to $70.8 million from $65.8 million in 2006. And since the MPAA doesn’t include the outside investment money that the studios now routinely solicit to co-finance many of their films in that calculation, the average production cost of a movie actually is substantially higher than that.
At the same time, the average marketing costs on a film rose from $34.5 million in 2006 to $35.9 million in 2007. As a result, the total average negative and marketing figure also hit a record: a forbidding $106.6 million.
The outlays on the part of the studios’ specialty divisions were even more dramatic. While the divisions that turn out potential Oscar winners — such as Disney’s Miramax, Paramount’s Vantage, Universal’s Focus and Fox’s Searchlight — may concentrate on producing, acquiring and releasing “smaller” movies, in their case, small is a relative term.
The subsidiaries’ average negative investment in 2007 rose to $49.2 million, while average marketing costs soared to $25.7 million. The total negative and marketing cost of the average specialty film soared to $74.8 million, up more than 54% over the comparable 2006 figure of $48.5 million.
Tags: , $9.63 bil boxoffice for '07 breaks record, great summer, movie gossip, movie news, summer movies, top grossing movies
