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EntertainmentIndustry.net
The end of the 1990s brought downsizing and restructuring to large corporations in industries across the United States. The studios were no exception.
Maintaining expensive production facilities and supporting top-heavy infrastructures became false economy. Add to their monolithic overhead expense, skyrocketing budgets, the increasing demands of unions and guilds and runaway production causing attrition across international borders, and its no wonder studios have had to drastically overhaul their inefficient model into a vertically integrated economic machine.
One strategy many studios have employed is to release fewer films — and try to maximize the profitability of each film on their scant slate. Homogenizing all risk down to the lowest-common denominators, studios rely on marketing counsel to direct their myopic focus on assets with the allure of astronomic box office grosses.
Blockbusters like these continue to drive this strategy:
| Titanic |
$600 million |
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| Star Wars |
$461 million |
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| Shrek II |
$436.5 million |
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| E.T. |
$435 million |
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| Star Wars Episode I |
$431 million |
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| Spider-Man |
$403 million |
| ($115 million in its opening weekend alone) |
Studios are increasingly willing to pay whatever is necessary to assemble the right “elements” to achieve a “blockbuster.”
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