hoc opus

As reported today in the Hollywood Reporter and Bloomberg, Rupert Murdoch wants to increase film production (and acquisition, I guess) from the 14 films to be released this year and the 11 films released in the fiscal year ended June 30th "to as many as 25 `major' movies a year and as many as 10 from its Fox Searchlight unit" [emphasis added].

While Rupert sees that Fox is "on a great streak," doubling production, basically releasing a new film every two weeks (or more) and further filling up the theatrical pipeline is a difficult task. It will certainly force Fox to become very aggressive at squeezing competition out of their release way.

The stats for major studio releases according to THR are that:

Last year, no studio topped the 20 films-per-year mark. Warners, Sony Pictures and the Walt Disney Co.'s Buena Vista Distribution each released 19 films. Fox issued 15, followed by Paramount Pictures and Universal Pictures with 14 each and New Line with 13. MGM and DreamWorks trailed behind with eight and seven, respectively.

Importantly, the number of releases in the domestic market have been decreasing in recent years as distributors seek to protect the films already deployed in theaters.

To accomplish the production increase, Fox will look more to its financing and producing partners including New Regency, Icon Productions, and Scott Free Productions.

The question really is, how much is too much? How many are too many? At what point is the marketplace oversaturated? Will this drive the theatrical lifecycle of a film to one weekend? Can producing more big movies bring in more dollars or do we simply get movies like Sky Captain that can't deliver on their promise?

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