Week 6 - Response to Content: Cinema vs Torrents

Agree

After indirectly causing the death of CD-sales (Easley, 2005), piracy and peer-to-peer file sharing have started to seriously get on Hollywood and the film industry's nerves as well. Movies are no longer only available at the cinemas, on the TV-screens or on VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray. The Internet communities have created a way for us at home to download almost every movie within a week of its release at the theatres for no cost at all. The only price we have to pay is that the quality of the video and audio usually is abysmal. (But it's free so who cares, right??)

So is Hollywood affected by this the same way as the music industry was? The answer is yes and no.

Great attitude, Bart.

For the big Hollywood blockbusters (The Dark Knight, Harry Potter, Avatar, etc...) the Internet have more of a positive effect because since they are already highly anticipated movies the additional leaked information such as set pictures/videos and heavy discussion about the plot and so on, the hype for these movies gets even bigger than they were beforehand. Therefore people still want to see those movies on the premiere or during the first week of its release on the big screen. The yearly increase in ticket sales up until 2009 proves that there is still a lot of money to be made (link1) but the recent figures have shown that there is a slight decrease in 2011 which could possibly cause even more drama in the piracy debate. But so far the cinema operators and studio chiefs agreed on at least one cause: The movies haven't been very good this year. (Verrier & Fritz, 2011)

The negative aspect of movie piracy deflects on the smaller and less hyped/critically acclaimed movies. Movies with a smaller budget, less hype and negative reviews are easy victims for movie pirates. Instead of paying money to go see a movie people will rather wait until the movie is available online so it can be downloaded for free. Since there are no hype for that particular movie and the reviews have been average at best there are no reason for people to go see it when they can get it for free and in good quality a couple of months later.
This is a very negative effect that piracy has on the movie industry but it also forces the companies to throw away crappy movie ideas and focus more on the quality of the movie. If the quality is good people will pay to see it.

Look at "The King's Speech" for example. With a budget of 12 million dollar it made over 414 million dollars in theatres worldwide. It also won an academy award for best direction and best picture. (link2)

An opposite example of this is Walt Disney's "Mars Needs Moms" which made 39 million dollars worldwide on a budget of 150 million. A movie which yours truly (who is a huge Disney fan) haven't even heard of before this day. (link3)

                                                              It could use some hype...

Now maybe I should start looking for it online...




Reference list:


Robert F. Easley, Journal of Business Ethics, 2005, pg. 163-168, Springer.
Richard Verrier & Ben Fritz, Los Angeles Times, March 30th, 2011 (link) 


Websites in order of first-last:
http://www.the-numbers.com/market/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King's_Speech
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/movie-report-card-10-biggest-205951#1