Welcome to Paramount, Ms. Berman

Gail Berman will sit down at a new desk Monday morning, having left Fox Entertainment for Paramount. This marks one of the more significant exchanges in the great game of musical chairs playing out in the Hollywood Executive Suites this spring. But she won't be alone. Par has also just inked a consulting deal with former Warner Bros Co-President Bob Daly. This was a good idea for Par, in the midst of an on-going remodeling, spearheaded by Chairman Brad Grey. Daly has green-lit more than 400 film projects, according to a Variety article today. Grey, Berman, and Co-President Tom Freston have backgrounds weighted heavily towards Television, so a film veteran is exactly what they needed on their team.
While waiting for Berman's transition from Fox, Grey has been managing the day to day operations of the studio, overseeing several high profile deals over the past few months. This is a change of strategy for Par, which has usually favored the cautious and stable approach. But when executives started leaving, and instability was thrust upon them, Grey decided to make the most of it and make the move towards riskier projects with name-brand stars and a younger target audience. (Mission: Impossible 3, Transformers, and a Brad Pitt drama top the still slim slate for 2006.)
So welcome to Paramount, Ms. Berman. We wish you the best. And if you're looking for a new assistant, drop me a line. Cream & sugar with your coffee?

Site Changes

A few important changes to the 'blog that I'd like to make my readers aware of. Both of you.
1.) Comments: Now anyone can leave a comment, without any registration required. You can even make it anonymous.
2.) Ads: Google ads now appear on the right side bar and at the bottom of the page. Scroll down and check them out now. Click one. Then just hit your 'back' button, and here you are again. See, that was easy. I bet you could do that every day. And it would be fun!

Weekend Predictions

This may or may not become a regular Thursday Night feature here. Be sure to leave a comment if you want to see more of this. Here are my predictions for the top three spots at the box office this weekend, in order:

1.) Kicking & Screaming
2.) Monster-in-Law
3.) Unleashed

I think after the success of "Elf," Will Ferrell's new comedy will be a hit with family audiences. We will evaluate my theory on Monday. Feel free to post your own predictions in the comments section.

Nietzsche on Screenwriting

Don't miss this great new post at The Artful Writer. It's good for writers and development executives alike.

Untapped Marketing Opportunities

Working at an advertising agency has led me to think more about marketing these days. So here's a quick overview of some arenas in which I expect to see more of a marketing presence over the next few years. Some of these are being used now, but I still feel they are under appreciated. With TIVO constantly taking value away form Television advertising, everyone in the industry is conscious of the need for new venues.

1.) Podcasts
This is being done, but only on the most popular programs. The problem is that podcasts are highly targeted (good for marketers) and therefore have small audiences (bad for marketers). What we need is a central agency that can sell spots to a single advertiser on multiple programs in one block, and split up the profits among the podcasters. I think this is exactly the kind of thing that podcast pioneer Adam Curry is working on right now at PodShow.com .

2.) Video Games
When Halo 2 took in $125 million in sales on it's first day, everyone who was still in denial had to realize that the gaming industry has grown up. A few successful series like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Grand Theft Auto have tapped into marketing dollars with virtual billboards and product placement, but most games are still ad free. Besides in-game content, there is another space to be filled: loading screens. Why not play a movie trailer or remind the gamer to grab another Mountain Dew before the next level loads up? Of course, this option could disappear as gaming consoles get faster. But marketing dollars often seem to have a strange limiting effect on technology reaching it's full potential...

3.) HD & Satellite Radio
Of course we all know that the traditional audio ads are running here. But we must not forget that these are digital mediums, and a digital line is always capable of carrying more than audio. I think we will eventually see marketers streaming text messages and even images to small LCD screens on our digital radios. At some point, you will click a button while you're stuck in traffic, and the radio will send you and e-mail with the phone number for that window installer with the great sale you just heard about.

4.) Short Films
Coca-Cola is doing some great work in this field. I would love to see more companies get into sponsoring (i.e., funding) more short films at film festivals, for online distribution, and as big screen content in the theater before the feature starts.

5.) DVD-by-Mail Services.
Here's the one you've been waiting for, kids. I can't believe no one is doing this. Someone should be paying for Netflix postage costs, in exchange for inserting a card of their own to advertise their wonderful new product. Movie studios could even include a second DVD, labeled "Do not return, Yours to Keep" with trailers for upcoming releases. And it's not just Netflix. Walmart, Blockbuster, and others have started their own DVD-by-mail services. It's here to stay. So quick, take this idea, before I come up with a way to make some money from it.

Maybe the B.O. doesn't stink?

Check out this Variety article for another way of looking at this year's box office (and probably the correct way): Stop the Madness. A subscription account may be required to view this, so for those of you without, here's the bottom-line:
Since we all know "The Passion" was a unique event that brought in a lot of people who don't normally go to movies, it's effect skews any judgments about overall box office well-being. If you take it out of the picture, 2004 was behind 2003, and this year is way ahead. However, there were also far more pictures released last year. So even if you include "The Passion," we are ahead this year on a per picture average, at about $48 million, compared to last year's $45 million at this time. In terms of individual pictures, we've had far more successes, doubling the number of pictures to top $100 million in the first part of the year. We've also had far fewer flops, since 29 pictures last year opened under $10 million. That's more than half of them, kids. Maybe this year doesn't hurt so bad after all.
Still, don't discount yesterday's post yet. Variety still described last weekend's performance, starring "Kingdom of Heaven," as a major disappointment.

Fox joins the PSP party

One more name on the list of studios promising to support the new UMD video format for Sony's Playstation Portable (PSP). 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment came on board yesterday, with a slate of releases including "I, Robot," "Dodgeball," "Predator," and the independent comedy surprise success, "Napoleon Dynamite." This make Fox the latest to follow in the footsteps of Sony Pictures (of course), Universal, Buena Vista, and Lion's Gate.
As for me, I don't expect the UMD movie format to survive the next 12 months. With prices at or above DVD's, visual quality about the same - only smaller, and no other player besides the PSP, I don't think consumers will be interested for the long term. There are too many alternatives and too few incentives to use the new format. I'm guessing most households that own a PSP also own a laptop computer capable of playing DVD's on the go. The other main competition is from the PSP itself, which is capable of playing movie files from a memory stick. Tech savvy users can use freeware from the Net to convert their DVD's to a video file that can be stored on reusable memory stick that costs about the same as 3 or 4 UMD movie disks. Who wants to buy their DVD collection all over again? My friends are already cutting back their DVD purchases in anticipation of High Definition formats expected to come late this year.
Here's the fundamental problem: the copyright lawyers for the entertainment industries want it to be abundantly clear that we don't purchase content- we license it. That's why we aren't supposed to make copies of our digital media to give to our friends. They need to obtain the license to view that media by purchasing a disc also. If that's the case, then once the consumer has purchased that license, they should never have to purchase it again. Once I've purchased the right to watch "Van Helsing," it shouldn't matter if I want to watch it on my TV or my PSP or my Pocket PC or my Divx player. And it shouldn't matter if my digital media was originally stored on a DVD or a Kryptonian Meteor Rock. I should be able to move it around, as long as I keep it to myself and don't release it to the public. You can't have it both ways, guys.

Weekend Box Office Results

Normally, these will come on Monday, but obviously I'm a day behind this week. Not surprisingly, "Kingdom of Heaven" took the number one spot. What I must admit was a bit of a surprise was that it's $20 million dollars was not quite up to the level of "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" the week before ($21.1 million). While a big H2G2 fan myself, I would've guessed that "Kingdom" would have the broader appeal. These earnings for "Kingdom" were reportedly within Fox's expectations, given the general slump of the box office this year. Still, I thought it would do better.
So what kept audiences from rushing out to see this one? Everyone must recognize the not-so-subtle allusions of this film to the current Western/Muslim conflict. Is this just another symptom of the American public's growing apathy about the war in Iraq? Or perhaps the overt religious themes kept away some movie-goers? (Although, I might argue that "Hitchhiker's" had just as much religious content, albeit more discreetly.) Maybe it's simply a case of moviegoers having spent their monthly box office budget last weekend. (In 2004, the last weekend of April was also stronger than the first of May.) Yes, the discrepancy is so small that it hardly warrants notice, at least on the big budget epic scale, but the result is still backward from what I, and many others expected.
I work in the office that purchased the advertising space and media time for "Hitchhikers." Here the consensus seems to be that our film did better than expected. But I still wonder if "Heaven" was lacking something. Perhaps the answer is 42. Your comments are welcome.