and obviously I didn’t communicate the joke well.

My bad.

On the other hand, I certainly did see the Humphrey Bogart classic IN A LONELY PLACE.

It’s about an angry screenwriter, who beats up his agent and may even be a murderer.

Check it out. You’ll love it.

–noun 1. the act of entertaining; agreeable occupation for the mind; diversion; amusement: 2. something affording pleasure, diversion, or amusement, esp. a performance of some kind. 3. hospitable provision for the needs and wants of guests. 4. a divertingly adventurous, comic, or picaresque novel. 5. Obsolete. maintenance in service.

Just sayin’ – movies are the “entertainment industry.”

Yes Shmopeless – domestically a movie generally has to make 3 x times its cost to see money at the studio level. ($100M movies need $300M to break even at the box office) However financing tricks being what they are, a studio pre-sells certain international rights to raise the budget and so forth and mitigate some of those costs. It is an arena of arcane formulae (tax incentives, bank notes, etc..).

At the box office, a studio is only making about 30-35% of the box office gross that first week. You’re right in saying that the percentages slowly move to the studios favor but by that time the box office take is negligible (for a studio).

They see the movie as a big marketing campaign for the DVD where the margins are very much in their favor. Great box office = better DVD sales where they actually see money.

@Dixon Steele – I stand by my statement. You say their name you instantly know their body of work. They both can walk into a studio and green light a picture whether as a lead or a producer. You would think that someone who rips off the name of a fictional Holodeck character in Star Trek: TNG would know that.

I’m a picky moviegoer and I had never seen any of Ryan Goslings films that I know of. But I knew who he was. I seriously doubt it was Jennifer Garner that got people into Juno, so a big name doesn’t always matter anyway.

Plus, you kinda blew the shock value with your asterisk, Bill. In any case, I doubt the people who went were wanting to see the doll get fucked, they were going for the laughs…of which there were plenty. And they were probably the type who thought the inflatable doll was funny. It’s true not everyone has that type of humor.

One of my pet peeves is trailers which are misleading. Either all the good stuff is in the trailer with the rest of the movie just blah, or a movie looks like it will be one thing and turns out to be something else. Lars had a great trailer. You knew exactly what you were going to get and if it wasn’t your type of humor, you didn’t have to go. But I think you had to at least see the trailer, and not just hear about the movie with the inflatable doll.

Maybe studios should start trying viral marketing with the trailers and figure out some sort of system to distribute films where there’s the most demand for them. They’ve been great at using tech advances in making the movies, they now need to realize how much money they could save by utilizing the internet in marketing more effectively. All I know is that everyone we showed the trailer to ended up enjoying the movie. Hugely.

Not anymore, Bill. But then, an “entertainment business and marketing” expert like you should know that.

Okay a couple of entertainment industry business and marketing things to get out of the way here:

– Movies are entertainment. They can aspire to art, use artistic technique and craft – but ultimately they are commercial enterprises unless they are self-financed and given away for free. Otherwise they seek to make their money back in some way, shape or form.

Many people equate movies or film with theater, and it has more in common with the circus and sideshows. That’s where people saw the first movies when they were just starting out – the sideshow. The “nickelodeon.” The business/monetary aspect of it is in the name. Speaking of which…

– Ryan Gosling is not a “name.” Tom Cruise is a name. Julia Roberts is a name. Ryan Gosling is always “Ryan Gosling, the star of THE NOTEBOOK.” Please note the difference. That’s not to say he doesn’t have a following – but he is not a “name actor” whose very presence green lights a movie.

–<i/>”And yet when I recommended it to a friend, she said, “Isn’t that the one about the inflatable doll”? No sale.

Alas, that’s what poor LARS was up against.”

Yes, and the very reason why they didn’t expand the release. Nobody wants to go see a movie about a guy who f*cks a piece of plastic unless it’s porn. Even then, they watch it at home on their computer.

And yet when I recommended it to a friend, she said, “Isn’t that the one about the inflatable doll”? No sale.

Alas, that’s what poor LARS was up against.

Anyway, according to boxofficemojo.com, the production budget was $12 million, domestic gross $5,972,884 and foreign $5,320,639 for a total of $11,293,523 worldwide. With cable, DVD and TV, the production costs were almost certainly covered. I just assumed they hadn’t quite covered the marketing costs, as well, little though I imagined them to be. Now that I’ve found out how little a movie can be made for, however, I wouldn’t be surprised to find that those were less than I thought, too.

Nevertheless, I still find it strange that the movie couldn’t have grossed 12 to 15 million domestically. At least.

MGM didn’t finance LARS. Its’ producer, Sidney Kimmel did, and as with the rest of his films, he sold off all the foreign rights, country by country. I’ll bet that LARS covered at least 50-65% of its’ 12 million cost before it even hit the US.

With MGM’s reduced marketing budget and its’ US rentals (the ticket sales returned to MGM by the theaters) at about $6 million, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if LARS recouped, or even made a small profit, when all the subsidiary income is added in: DVDs, Television sales, etc. The Showtime deal alone is worth about $2 million under MGM’s output deal.

Now all we need is SKE’s Bingham Ray to chime in here…