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Just how risky is the movie industry? Is screenwriter William Goldman's claim that \"nobody knows anything\" really true? Can a star and a big opening change a movie's risks and return? Do studio executives really earn their huge paychecks? These and many other questions are answered in Hollywood Economics . The book uses powerful analytical models to uncover the wild uncertainty that shapes the industry. The centerpiece of the analysis is the unpredictable and often chaotic dynamic behaviour of motion picture audiences. This unique and important book will be of interest to students and researchers involved in the economics of movies, industrial economics and business studies. The book will also be a real eye-opener for film writers, movie executives, finance and risk management professionals as well as more general movie fans. Arthur De Vany is Professor Emeritus of Economics at the University of California, Irvine and President of Arts Analytica, a consulting company specializing in energy, motion pictures and risk-return analysis. 'If you want an applied exposition of the \"wild\" type of uncertainty, this is the book. I know of no better text to understand kurtosis, the contribution of the very small to the very large, and the dynamics of rare events. The value of this book lies way beyond the film industry. In addition it is is written with great clarity and does not use anything beyond intuitive mathematics.' — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, PhD, Empirica LLC, Bestselling author of Fooled by Randomness 'A heretical and wise perspective on the economics and consumer patterns of Hollywood. Provocative and eye opening for its depth and intelligent analysis.' — Thom Mount, Producer and former Universal Studios President 'This book provides dramatic evidence that, in comparison with the film industry, normally uncertain things are virtually sure things. Not even popular stars or large first-week audiences are valid predictors of a film's future success. The volume demonstrates what sophisticated analysis can and cannot reveal about an industry in which \"no one knows anything\". It will be extremely valuable to anyone with an intellectual, financial or other interest in the market for popular films and for anyone concerned with analysis of subjects characterized by extreme uncertainty. Nonspecialists should not be daunted by the demanding technical analysis for there is plenty that will readily be understandable and fascinating to any intelligent reader.' — William J. Baumol, Professor of Economics, New York University and Senior Research Economist at Princeton University, USA 'Professor De Vany has written a seminal work on the risks of film investment, a topic with which Hollywood may be painfully familiar, but which has rarely, if ever, been the subject of such thorough analysis. Through his statistical studies and analyses, Professor De Vany questions many of the assumptions made by Hollywood dealmakers, investors and studio executives.' — Sam Pryor, Partner, Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan, Adjunct Professor, Entertainment Law, USC Law School Part I: Box-office champions, chaotic dynamics and herding 1. The market for motion pictures: Rank, revenue and survival 2. Bose-Einstein dynamics and adaptive contracting in the motion picture industry 3. Quality evaluations and the breakdown of statistical herding in the dynamics of box-office revenue Part II: \"Wild\" uncertainty, tough decisions and false beliefs 4. Uncertainty in the movie industry: Can star power reduce the terror of the box office? 5. Does Hollywood make too many R-rated movies?: Risk, stochastic dominance and the illusion of expectation 6. Big budgets, big openings and legs: Analysis of the blockbuster strategy Part III: Judges, lawyers and the movies 7. Motion picture antitrust: The Paramount cases revisited 8. Was the antitrust action that broke up the movie studios good for the movies?: Evidence from the stock market 9. Stochastic market structure: Concentration measures and motion picture antitrust Part IV: A business of extremes 10. Motion picture profit, the stable Paretian hypothesis and the curse of the superstar 11. Contracting with stars when \"nobody knows anything\" 12. How extreme uncertainty shapes the movie business Epilogue: Can you manage a business when \"nobody knows anything\"?

Actors' screen images have too often stolen the focus of attention from their behind the scenes working conditions. In Negotiating Hollywood, Danae Clark begins to fill this gap in film history by providing a rich historical account of actors' labor struggles in 1930s Hollywood. Taking the formation of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933 as its investigative centerpiece, Negotiating Hollywood examines the ways in which actors' contracts, studio labor policies and public relations efforts, films, fan magazines, and other documents were all involved in actors' struggles to assert their labor power and define their own images. Clark supplies information not only on stars, but on screen extras, whose role in the Hollywood film industry has remained hitherto undocumented.

The economics of the movie industry has been curiously neglected by scholars, especially given the material circumstances in which film has been produced, distributed and exhibited in capitalist economies and its central importance in the lives of the huge numbers attracted to it as a commodity. This book provides an economic framework for understanding developments in film history. Film is a peculiar commodity with a unique set of characteristics. The topic hence is interesting and covered with aplomb by the contributors to the volume. The book includes sections on: long-term trends in the film industry the transformation of film from a primitive commodity to a heavily branded product the operation of the studio system the end of the studio system in post-war America the role and payment of stars Hollywood’s approach to risk during the 1990s. Experts from the UK and North America have come together in these pages and the result is a readable, insightful and enlightening book that will gain many fans amongst those with an interest in the economics of film, economic historians, film historians and aficionados of the movie industry generally. 1. The Characteristics of Film as a Commodity 2. America's Master: The European Film Industry in the United States, 1907 to 1920 3. Stars and Stories: How Films Became Branded Products 4. Revenue Sharing and the Coming of Sound 5. The Block Booking of Films Re-examined 6. Warner Bros. in the Inter-War Years: Strategic Responses to the Risk Environment of Film Making 7. Product Differentiation at the Movies: Hollywood 1946 to 1965 8. Movie Stars and the Distribution of Financially Successful Films in the Motion Picture Industry 9. Movie Contracts: Is ‘Net’ ‘Gross’? 10. Hollywood and the Risk Environment of Movie Production in the 1990's 11. Understanding Hollywood's Organization and Continuing Success 'An impressive collection of impeccable scholarship, An Economic History of Film ’ is bound to become indispensable reading for every scholar of film who agrees that in order to fully understand the cultural impact of film, one has to study the economics of the business as well.' Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

In 1914, the Ford Motor Company opened its Motion Picture Laboratory, an in-house operation that produced motion pictures to educate its workforce and promote its products. Just six years later, Ford films had found their way into schools and newsreels, travelogues, and even feature films in theaters across the country. It is estimated that by 1961, the company's movies had captured an audience of sixty-four million people. This study of Ford's corporate film program traces its growth and rise in prominence in corporate America. Drawing on nearly three hundred hours of material produced between 1914 and 1954, Timothy Johnson chronicles the history of Ford's filmmaking campaign and analyzes selected films, visual and narrative techniques, and genres. He shows how what began as a narrow educational initiative grew into a global marketing strategy that presented a vision not just of Ford or corporate culture but of American life more broadly. In these films, Johnson uncovers a powerful rhetoric that Ford used to influence American labor, corporate style, production practices, road building, suburbanization, and consumer culture. The company's early and continued success led other corporations to adopt similar programs. Persuasive and thoroughly researched, Rhetoric, Inc. documents the role that imagery and messaging played in the formation of the modern American corporation and provides a glimpse into the cultural turn to the economy as a source of entertainment, value, and meaning.

In J. Edgar Hoover Goes to the Movies, John Sbardellati examines Hollywood's key role as a cultural, political, and ideological battleground of the early Cold War, providing a new consideration of Hollywood's history and the post-World War II Red Scare.