Gross Behaviour - by Leonard Klady

Report to the Commiserable
Part Too + 1

SONY

Sony Pictures pictures grossed roughly $1.2 billion during the calendar year to rank second overall with a 13% market share.

Since the summer, Sony and Warner Bros. have been jostling for second spot in market share and the silly little millimeter difference boiled down to better than expected response for Something's Gotta Give versus less than anticipated potency for WB's The Last Samurai. The studios share much in common, particularly in their respective zeal in milking tentpole titles and courting marquee talent. Sony's $100 million plus grossing films included sequels to Bad Boys and Charlie's Angels, comedies with Adam Sandler and Eddie Murphy and a big screen version inspired by the TV chestnut S.W.A.T. However, apart from the late year release of Big Fish, it was a slate singularly lacking in quality or inspiration and the immediate future that includes Spider-Man 2 isn't likely to veer from the current course.

Sony also handled the brunt of the international release of Terminator 3 that Warner Bros. distributed domestically, but has generally scaled back on divvying up rights with other studios and independent producers. The company has been much more active in financing, investing or distributing movies from Asia and from Spanish-speaking countries.

What's unquestionably unique about the company is that almost half its slate comes from a single source: Joe Roth's Revolution Studios. Sony Entertainment chairman Howard Stringer has left no room for doubt in the past that he wanted Roth to take over from John Calley in running film operations, and the compromise of banking Revolution created de facto co-heads working on separate slates. However, Roth's independence from the infrastructure cushioned him from a 2003 slate that would have at the very least found Sony's Amy Pascal put through the wringer. Apart from Daddy Day Care, the prior year's Maid in Manhattan and the genre quickie Darkness Falls, Roth's green lights were awash in red ink and included Tears of the Sun, The Missing, Hollywood Homicide and Gigli. Roth made a very public mea culpa in the L.A. Times and rumors persist that he will dismantle his operation within two years but, of course, that could all change if his 2004 releases are winners.

Sony has become a volume operation with sometimes-contrary agendas and the absence of a firm hand on the wheel. For the present it appears to be functioning to the positive but what if Roth and Pascal both had off years?

SONY PICTURES CLASSICS

Though essentially an acquisitor, Sony Pictures Classics runs its operation as if it were a freestanding operation. Michael Barker and Tom Bernard have partnered professionally for close to two decades with stints at UA and Orion Classics and a string of prestige hits that is non pareil. Their career highlight was Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon but generally they can ascribe career longevity to shrewd business deals, modest profits and good taste. They generally have excellent talent relationships because they steer away from over-blown performance promises and many international filmmakers that have been lured away by the proverbial carrot on the stick return to their more reasonable terra firma.

Last year they got good mileage out of Winged Migration and have cautiously been expanding current movies that include the animated The Triplets of Belleville and the non-fiction The Fog of War. Though the operation seems rather anachronistic placed beside Miramax or Fox Searchlight, Barker and Bernard are persistent and that's generated good returns for unlikely fare such as The Man Without a Past and Respiro that smooth over such recent disappointments as Levity, The Cuckoo and Love Liza. Still their 2003 slate grossed a disappointing $30 million and 0.3% market share.

TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX

Big Fox movies finished 2003 in sixth spot with an 8.4% market share on box office revenues of $775 million.

From one perspective, last year's slate appears to be chock-a-block with disappointment and failure while a closer appraisal actually reveals a pretty good string of successes. Regardless, the view from the outside is downbeat and perception is almost always the trump card in this area. Somehow the $200 million plus domestic and $400 million worldwide gross of X2: X-Men United never got its proper due and a similar fate befell Daredevil.

However, what the studio does most effectively is produce comparatively low budget genre fare that generates the sort of mid-range business that translates into sizeable profits. Last year's under the radar winners included Just Married and Phone Booth that each racked up more than $100 million at the box office (with video and cable still in play) on budgets of less than $30 million. It's a shrewd business strategy with decidedly low wattage publicity returns. Fortunately, the Yule release of Cheaper by the Dozen will provide a bit of a morale boost.

Perception also dogged Fox's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen that, thanks to more buoyant overseas response ranked among the top 20 global grossers of the year. The failure of Down with Love was, on reflection, almost predictable but the commercial flab of Stuck on You is harder to access - there simply appeared to be little enthusiasm for the picture and one senses a strain developing in the company's relationship with the Farrelly Brothers. And, though it might only be a temporary glitch, the profiles of both Regency and producer Arnold Kopelson were reduced at a time when Fox truly needs some higher profile talent relationships.

The seeming anomaly of the year was Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. Though both Universal and Miramax have pieces of the picture, the vast majority of financing and risk falls upon Fox. It's inarguably a high pedigree production but also not the sort of major production that smacks of commercial hooks. One would like to think that the studio felt it was a risk worth taking and won't rue that decision. But in a slate dominated by seemingly safe choices, that nettlesome voice that keeps saying I told you so echoes on the horizon.

FOX SEARCHLIGHT

With box office revenues of more than $120 million, Searchlight wound up with a 1.3% domestic market share.

The poster child for studio specialized divisions, Fox Searchlight had the sort of conspicuous success of in-house and acquired titles that bodes well for its future vitality. It had an eclectic roster of releases though overall one gets the sense of a slate that's accessible to the average adult filmgoer and that 2003's Bend It Like Beckham follows in the footsteps of The Full Monty and Waking Ned Devine. The same could not be said of the even more popular 28 Days Later, an upscale horror yarn filmed quickly and inexpensively digitally that's grossed in excess of $80 million theatrically. The division also got good mileage out of another digital feature, the Sundance acquired Thirteen, but could not make either The Good Thief or The Dancer Upstairs work commercially.

At this juncture it's wrestling hard to provide In America with the sort of awards recognition it failed to spark for Antwone Fisher. Searchlight has consistently had some of the most creative marketing campaigns for its movies and has been fighting an uphill war against volume spenders that take a more obvious approach to product. Again, it would be a shame if sheer brute force became the dominant means of bringing movies to public attention.

UNIVERSAL

Commercially an upbeat year at Universal with a box office gross of $1.07 billion and an 11.6% market share that ranked the company fourth overall.

It's difficult to get a sense of the gestalt over at Universal and that was exemplified by a five month dry spell in which the company's market share dipped to a low of 1%. Then, a complete about turn. The studio's next five releases each grossed more than $100 million and, as the saying goes, it went from zero to hero.

In the most crass terms, its biggest success was American Wedding (aka American Pie 3) with worldwide box office of more than $225 million and no profit participants. It forged a brief relationship with Spyglass that rendered Bruce Almighty and Seabiscuit and a surprisingly successful sequel with 2 Fast 2 Furious. However, perhaps the greatest kudos in 2003 belong to its marketing and publicity departments that managed to sell a couple of films that would have otherwise been inscribed in the book of colossal flops. Certainly advance word on The Hulk and The Cat in the Hat verged on the dire and both went on to $100 million domestic tallies.

In general, talent and talent relationships have been significant for the studio's annual fortunes and despite a low wattage year for Imagine Entertainment, its other key supplier, Working Title, was in fine form. Both WT's Johnny English and Love Actually grossed in excess of $100 million internationally with the latter doing an unexpectedly strong $60 million in North America.

There appears to be a shifting away from Universal's penchant for niche genre fare toward more obvious high concept and event movies at a time when most others are taking the opposite route. How that will translate commercially and on a corporate level is impossible to predict but it will be interesting to watch unfold.

WARNER BROS.

A peg up in third spot, Warner Bros.' domestic slate generated $1.18 billion for a 12.8% market share.

Though the next Harry Potter had its released postponed to 2004, the studio had two Matrixes, the return of The Terminator and a colossal fizzle with a feature Looney Toon to cement its position as a franchise outlet. Its less high profile Dark Castle series scored its biggest box office numbers with Gothika and Clint Eastwood provided good commercial returns and some much needed prestige with Mystic River.

Despite its berth in the Billionaire Club, 2003 results were the most erratic among the majors. Castle Rock provided a success d'estime with A Mighty Wind and Franchise continued to pump out such ill-conceived offerings as a remake of The In-Laws and director Rob Reiner's failed chemistry experiment Alex & Emma. Matchstick Men was a disappointment, Gods and Generals was viewed as a sop to Ted Turner and the adaptation of Stephen King's Dreamcatcher was a colossal bust.

Its holiday offering The Last Samurai, though far from a failure, isn't attracting the sort of buzz or audience the studio had envisioned and cost overruns on Kangaroo Jack turned a potential smash into a modest hit. Overall, it was the sort of year one wants to tuck away and press on to a greener future.

Two of its best investments will largely go unnoticed - the German Good Bye Lenin! That won the European Film Award and close to $70 million in overseas box office and the French comedy Chouchou which tallied about $26 million in theaters. The former might have been a key title for the nascent Warner Independent Pictures but was snapped up by Sony Classics and whether the new division capitalizes on company synergies will have to wait.

Though it's been five years since the Daly-Semel team was dissolved at Warner Bros., there's little sense that the Alan Horn-Barry Meyers era has developed its own distinctive style or approach to running the studio. The most note worthy attention the duo received - with Myers receiving the majority of attention - was in its fierce endorsement of the so-called screener ban that did more to divide the community than any single factor since possibly the HUAC Blacklist of the 1950s.

En suite: The rest, Wannabees, Special Format, Ethnic and regional.

Part II: Lions Gate, Miramax, New Line, Paramount
Part I: Focus, MGM, DreamWorks and Buena Vista

Report to the Commiserable Part Too + 1

Report to the Commiserable
Part Too + 1