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Top Actresses

Watts, Connelly, McAdams Top the Best Buy List; Streep, Aniston, Hathaway Balance Price with Prominence

Forbes.com’s Celebrity Valuations recently released its compilation of the Top-10 women stars whose last three pictures in over-500 screen releases earned the largest revenues (including box office, DVD and television licensing less budget costs) in proportion with their compensation packages.  For example, Naomi Watts’ metric of 44 means $44 were returned for every $1 paid for her services as a performer.  Of course, since actual numbers for actor compensation and picture revenues are difficult to verify, the Forbes valuations are based on estimates.

In the chart below, the Forbes valuations are compared with their Marquee Star appraisals.   Marquee Stars ranks performers in accordance with box office prominence as expressed in millions of present-value dollars.  Top Openers provide the average opening weekend gross, and Top Closers the average final gross.

Not surprisingly, the bottom half of the Forbes Top-10 tend to appear in the top half of the Marquee Stars appraisals owing to larger salaries paid to actresses in higher profile films.  Meryl Streep, Jennifer Aniston and Anne Hathaway offer the best balance between cost-return and box office prominence.

Will New Studio Chief Change Hollywood?

With 60-70% of major studio profits now coming from the cable-TV sector, the ascent of Rich Ross to chairman of Walt Disney Studios reinforces a clear business model for the near future at Disney that has already generated new international marquee stars Shia LeBeouf, Miley Cyrus and Zac Efron.  Other studios may soon emulate.  As President of Disney Channels Worldwide, Ross demonstrated how to build cable franchises that attract the difficult under-25 audience, such as Hannah Montana, That’s so Raven, Wizards of Waverly Place and High School Musical, and to propel them toward box office and merchandising bonanzas.  He also expanded that division to 94 channels with feeds into 163 countries and 32 languages.

Other major studios heavily invested in the cable sector include General Electric/Vivendi (Universal, NBC, A&E, MSNBC), National Amusements/Viacom (Paramount, CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon), News Corporation (20th Century, Fox Network, Fox News, Fox Sports, British Sky Channel, Family Channel) and Time-Warner (Warner Pictures, WB Network, HBO, CNN, Cartoonland).

But will a cable-centric business strategy enable major studios to keep pace with emerging technology?  Over the coming decade, digital distribution will replace DVD with online video-on-demand as well as merge free broadcast television with the Internet.  A disaggregation of the cable-television networks could then play havoc with all current business-as-usual.

Wolves in the Number Cruncher’s Hen House

Commentary by Team Tao Jonez

Posted: October 5, 2009

Bigger Picture Research recently featured Lifting the lid on studionomics - an insightful discussion by Dr. Jim Barratt about the famous Goldman rule that “nobody knows anything.”  The article points out that the screenwriter laureate’s axiom was intended to underscore Hollywood’s inability to reliably predict the success or failure of any specific film.  A former Head of Research & Statistics at the respected UK Film Council and now author of Bad Taste about Peter Jackson’s debut feature (Wallflower Press, December 2008), Dr. Barratt further affirms: “Goldman’s observation is unarguably true, and the reasons are plain enough.  For one thing, film resides at the intersection of art and commerce, where our understanding of common-or-garden market economics is unsettled by the ineffable vagaries of creativity on the supply side, and audience whim on the demand side.”

As is usual at Bigger Picture Research, apt expression reflects cogent comprehension.

We at Marquee Stars completely concur with Dr. Barratt.  We side with Goldman for the numbers debate.  Our Package Calculator, for example, has never performed better than 70% predictive of actual film performance outcomes and only within a very narrow range of assumptions and maximal margins of error.  (The calculator is actually intended for the limited function of comparing the relative box office strengths of different package combinations.)

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Star Power Ratio Analysis

2 October 2009

The below ratio statistics identify the inner workings of star power, often revealing undervalued performers and new rising stars.  The BO (Box Office) Quotient provides a proximal indication of the average revenues impact of promotional moneys spent on a marquee star’s pictures.  The GO (Gross-to-Opening) Ratio measures the average volume of ongoing business, or “legs,” for a star’s pictures.  Art market stars tend to build higher GO Ratios owing to the nature of platform release patterns.  Still, these ratios provide an alternative look at marquee strength by deemphasizing the marketing impact of high concept.

Moviegoers 2010

Internet Upends Traditional Assumptions

BEVERLY HILLS - A new research study, called Moviegoers: 2010, presented by the marketing firm Stradella Road on September 29th challenges current assumptions about generational media consumption and, potentially, could transform the way movies are marketed.  The underlying field research was conducted by Nielsen’s National Research Group (NRG) and focused on frequent filmgoers (people who attend 6 or more films per year) in the US.

Frequent filmgoers account for over 85% of tickets purchased each year.

The study affirms that:

1. All age groups have embraced digital media,
2. Each generation consumes both traditional mass media and new digital media differently,
3. Each generation must be approached differently, and,
4. The relevant generational groupings for film marketers are different from the standard age quandrants of teens, under 25, over 25 and family.

This study could not be more timely.  Hollywood marketers spend most of their time trying to reach the under 25s - particularly troublesome because that audience most easily finds other things to do than see a movie.  Under 25s now spend an average of 19.8 hours per week online, followed by 14.3 hours in front of a television.  According to the MPAA, over the past decade moviegoing has dropped 21% among the under 25s, as well as 24% among the 25-29 year-olds.

However, by redefining the age quadrants consistent with group behavior as 13-17 years (teens), 18-30 years (young adults), 30-39 years (older adults), and over 40 years (mature), marketers should be able to target their promotions to the media channels where each quadrant separately spends most of its time.  Family as a grouping will be automatically included with this demographic approach.  Characteristic group behaviors follow:

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