• Home
• Appraisal Guide
  • Guidelines
  • How to Read the Appraisal Tables
  • Top Opener Samples
  • Top Closer Samples
  • Country Codes
• Package Calculator
  • Guidelines
• Tools
  • Starpedia
  • Phases of the Business Cycle
  • Production Tiers
  • Movie Ticket Prices Worldwide
  • Theatrical Release Patterns
  • Maturity Ratings
  • Satisfaction Ratings
  • Box Office Performance Benchmarks
  • 2009 Theatrical Films
  • 2008 Theatrical Films
  • 2009 Bellwether Foreign Films
• Archives
• About Us
  • About Marquee Stars
  • Team Tao Joenz
  • Contact Us
  • Our Marquee Appraisal System
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Corroborative Sources
  • Site Map
  • RSS Feed

Frequently Asked Questions

Q:  Does Marquee Stars dish the dirt on celebrities?

A:  Wet nurses for pet possums, private jets for the entourage, overpriced luxurious set trailers, and movie star actresses who sleep their way to the bottom - all make for great attention-grabbers on the gossip page.  But they have little or nothing to do with financial performance.  Moreover, the workplace reputations of celebrity talent are already easily available to legitimate production executives through industry references as well as through their insurance providers.

Marquee Stars respects personal privacy as a basic human right:  We include the paparazzi-beleaguered in the category of human … except to the extent that their actions affect the larger content community.

Certainly, we are more concerned about building up than tearing down, about Indiewood than Hollywood, about who’s great that you didn’t know was great than about who’s the latest skunk in the squash at Tinsel Town Peyton Place.

Marquee Stars travels primarily on facts, factual data and data analysis.

Q:  How large is the Marquee Stars database?

A:  Marquee Stars began publication with over 2,000 bellwether films in its database.  By definition, a bellwether film must have exceeded a theatrical gross of $5.2 million in 2009 constant dollars.  The preponderance of our bellwether films was released within the most recent six years, none beyond ten years.  Based on this data, our first edition Marquee Appraisal Guide contains:

• 8,800 statistical appraisals
• 4,200 actors worldwide
• 950 directors
• 1,100 screenwriters
• 1,000 producers

Q:  What do the Marquee Stars tables mean?

A:  Taken together, the Marquee Stars tables provide a present-value Marquee Appraisal Guide derived from recent revenue performances.  The tables assess each MarqueeStar persona’s marketplace footprint - our term for the relative level of active audience exposure to a persona’s cinematic work product.  We use gross revenues as the dollars-and-cents language for our appraisals since such moneys reflect the natural collective wisdom of millions of film patrons worldwide in precise proportion with their demographic purchasing power.

Our algorithms then adjust gross revenues for inflation, discount them over time, as well as adjust them for the MarqueeStar persona’s prominence relative to his or her role in each film.  The most recent qualifying 1- to 3-picture average, as applicable, determines the appraisal valuation of a persona’s current footprint.

Our full process for determining the MarqueeStar personas, the Marquee Appraisal Guide and the dynamic formulas behind the online Package Appraisal Calculator and our private Statistical Diagnostics Report are proprietary.

Q:  Don’t the major studio-distributors already maintain this sort of information?

A:  Indeed they do.  But their data collection is more designed for use by MBA analysts, as opposed to filmmakers and content professionals in general.  Furthermore, their information tends to favor the Anglo-American domestic market with a special emphasis on maximizing their very capital-intensive distribution expenses.  In the process, their data become self-limiting through an overdependence on immediate-term focus-group panels and exit polling.

None of their information is affordably available to studio outsiders … if available at all.

Alternatively, Marquee Stars remains filmmaker-friendly, more indie and international in our orientation, and always free or reasonably priced.  We seek to maximize responsible creative choices - not just hours before a day-and-date release, but 4 months, 9 months, 18 months and 24 months in advance when weighty capital decisions must be made regarding a project and its talent package.

You might say the studios use a microscope, whereas Marquee Stars provides a telescope.

For the indie and international non-Hollywood content community, Marquee Stars offers a common foundation for capital decision-making.  And for Big Hollywood, Marquee Stars may provide a fresh perspective on in-house data.  Production and distribution are more efficient and more profitable when both filmmakers and content professionals can agree on what constitutes a viable package of artistic elements.  It’s a win-win both ways.

Q:  How often does Marquee Stars update its rankings?

A:  Weekly.  We update our ratings and publish as soon as reliable gross revenue figures become available for Anglo-American domestic and high-profile international films, usually by Tuesday or Wednesday evening.  We update most overseas territories over the weekend, so they’re always one week in arrears.  Particularly with overseas data, extra time is required to collect, process, and finalize the weighted-average gross revenues.  A few territories report at uneven intervals, and their revenue totals are updated asynchronously.

Q:  What is a MarqueeStars persona?

A:  MarqueeStars persona is synonymous with brand.  It refers to the commercial public image or reputation of above-the-line talent regarded as a financial asset (i.e. marquee element) … as opposed to the actual private person.

Q:  Why bother with talent ratings?  Too much emphasis on numbers undermines art.

A:  Filmmaking is a business and a craft as much as - and sometimes more than - an art.  Contrarians love to argue that gross revenues represent nothing more than the effectiveness of a distributor’s extensive expenditures for their print & ad marketing campaigns.  They claim, therefore, that box office figures have little or no bearing on the inherent appeal of the actual movies, their stars or even their quality.

To Marquee Stars, however, such academic carping suggests a hairsplit distinction without a difference.  When a distributor invests in a picture’s promotion, it also defacto invests in the promotion of that picture’s stars.  Promotion is the essential booster rocket that propels and maintains orbit for every movie star.  Previous promotions and noteworthy performances then become part of a star’s persona and are carried with him or her to each subsequent picture.  This carryover affect allows the next picture to be marketed more easily and more effectively and, in some cases, will allow greater tolerance by audiences for both cinematic and story imperfections.  However, should the inherent appeal of the movies, their perceived quality or their stars wane, audience disenchantment will eventually diminish gross revenues.

Hence our reliance on the most recent 3-picture average (statistically, a simple moving average).

In short, we regard the numbers-versus-art debate as analogous to the nature-versus-nurture debate in psychology.  On one hand, statistics provide an immediate snapshot of who and what’s popular.  On the other, only artists can create cinematic stories worth showing.  Longevity in the film trade requires respect for both disciplines.

In particular, the industry’s money professionals always regard the numbers first.  Without the reassurance of measurable marquee revenue performances, veteran private equity and institutional investors remain unwilling to risk as much capital for any given project.  Many refuse to risk any capital at all.  To money people, star power justifies budget range.  Also, the essential middlemen of the industry - distributors, sales agents, exhibitors, broadcasters and retailers - all regard star power as a first criterion for assessing a film’s worth.

Bottom line:  MarqueeStars.com’s numerical data empower filmmakers and distributors, content creators and providers, to form more substantive opinions - as well as to obtain project-specific Marquee Stars statistical diagnostics reports - about the relative market strength of picture content, and not merely to respond to the momentary whims of the market, the media, talent reps or sales agents.

Q:  Are the Marquee Stars reports an accurate appraisal of star power?

A:  Yes.  A MarqueeStar persona’s footprint reveals star power at its most fundamental.  But there’s more:

Every financial asset has both a statistical appraised value and a market value.  The appraised value is an unbiased, current valuation based on recent and historical matter-of-fact financial factors.  Lenders use the appraised value to determine the amount and terms of business loans against an asset.  For real estate, it’s the professional appraiser’s assessment.  For automobiles, it’s the Kelley Blue Book price.  For NYSE stocks, it’s the CPA’s per-share book value.

For marquee personas, we provide our MarqueeStars appraised values:

1)      Opening Weekend Average (OWA) - our leading indicator - tells which persona footprints best “open” a picture.  OWA is our version of the traditional industry “gold standard” measure of star power.  This measure favors the Anglo-American domestic market.  The Top Opener Personas table ranks by OWA.

2)      Average World Gross (AWG) - our lagging indicator - suggests which persona footprints provide the largest final gross revenues.  According to our data analysis processes, AWG is often a more accurate predictive measure of star power; especially internationally.  We know this observation runs counter to conventional wisdom within the industry.  The Top Closer Personas table ranks by AWG.

In contrast to the appraisal value, the market value of a financial asset reflects a conscious confluence of its bottom-line speculative factors: (a) the anticipated volume of revenue, (b) the timing of such revenue, and (c) the risks associated with such revenue.  Market value is not the price an asset should have been sold for, but the price at which it did sell within a certain time frame.  Depending on prevailing conditions, market value may be higher or sometimes lower than the appraised value.

For a screenplay, a packaged project, a completed motion picture or its marquee personas, market value works the same.  For example, a script adapted from a popular novel, an actor attached to an uncharacteristically prominent role in an upcoming high-profile film, a glitzy world press junket prior to a theatrical release, a special project-specific consideration (e.g. singing, dancing, athletic or language skill), a faithful following among studio executives or film buyers or key critics or avid fan groups, a robust economy or a temporary undersupply of desirable films - all are speculative factors that increase market value.  Similarly, a criminal scandal involving a marquee persona, a poor promotional campaign, a lack of distributor muscle, the blatant miscasting of a prominent role, the loss of support among studio executives, too many films in the pipeline for the marquee anchor, a faltering economy or an oversupply of desirable films - each represents a speculative factor that would decrease market value.

Our Marquee Appraisal Guide does not predict actual market performance and our appraisals do not monetize any ephemeral speculation that, doubtless, could cause market values to oscillate.  However, we do provide some obvious clues as to the relative strength of package elements:

• (A), (An), (G), (Gn) - recent major award nominations or wins in category.
• *, **, *** - number of pictures comprising the appraisal; *** provides a more reliable valuation than *.
• (r) - recent film still in greater release; give more weight to the Top Opener Personas (sorted by the Opening Weekend Average - OWA) appraisal.  When the (r) drops away, give more weight to the Top Closer Personas (sorted by the Average World Gross - AWG) appraisal.
• Box Office Quotient (BOQ) - measures strength; the greater the BOQ, the more precise the Opening (OWA) appraisal.
• GO Ratio (gross to opening) - also measures strength; the greater the GO Ratio, the more precise the Closing (AWG) appraisal.
• (animation), (documentary), (moderator) - persona’s prominence comes from outside of live-action narrative feature films.
• Nationality - work-visa home base; actors only.
• Recent Title in Category - You decide:  Was persona’s prominence an anomaly?  Was persona’s role too limiting to carry forward his or her prominence to a range of projects?

Q:  Why does the Marquee Appraisal Guide provide two sets of rankings and valuations: the Opening (OWA) appraisal and the Closing (AWG) appraisal?

A:  Technically, there’s one master list designed for use with the online Package Appraisal Calculator - the alphabetized sort By Persona.  The Top Opener Personas and Top Closers reports have been generated for user convenience.

But remember that, despite their dollars-and-cents format, our Marquee Stars statistical appraisals are not exact.  They are a moving average snapshot of a constantly volatile marketplace.  Also, like political polling, our statistical appraisals require a healthy margin of error.  Two valuation indicators are better than one.  That’s the best approach available.

Secondly, a persona’s Closing (AWG) appraisal tends to dip upon release of a new picture, then slowly gains its new equilibrium as the picture rolls out.  But to the contrary, a persona’s Opening (OWA) appraisal finds its revised equilibrium almost immediately upon release of the new film, and remains relatively constant thereafter.  Hence, the Opening Weekend Average (OWA) provides a sensible view of the weekly new openers sweepstakes.  That’s one reason the opening weekend gross became the traditional indicator of marquee strength for studio executives.

Even more important, strong opening revenues enable a feature to stay in play longer and to earn greater revenues.  Not surprisingly, although each talent agency has its own internal formulas to determine run-of-show quotes for the services of their marquee players, the recent opening weekend gross always will be a top consideration … sometimes ahead of a recent Academy Award nomination.

Nevertheless, in our experience, the Average World Gross (AWG) provides a stronger indication of likely revenue performance owing to its more international formulation - although the time lag makes this number slightly more difficult to use.

Q:  What is the purpose of the Package Appraisal Calculator?

A:  The Package Appraisal Calculator responds to an ongoing problem in the content industry at every phase of development, production and acquisition: how to anticipate the market strength of a capital investment in talent 4-24 months in advance of the commercial debut.  Our package calculator allows you to approximate the relative package strengths for specific combinations of stars, directors, screenwriters and producers.  Simply locate and enter their respective appraisal values from the Marquee Appraisal Guide in the indicated spaces.

However, if you need a more precise evaluation that includes marketplace, story and artistic elements, you may contact us to commission a Marquee Stars statistical diagnostic.

(To understand how these tools work, see Our Marquee Appraisal System)

Q:  What’s the difference between BOQ and GO Ratio?

A:  Those who regularly invest in the stock market know always to validate a stock’s price move with its trading volume.  If trading volume is high, the price move may be the start of a new trend; if trading volume is low, the price move is likely inconsequential.

For our Marquee Appraisal Guide, the BOQ and GO Ratio serve the same function as trading volume on Wall Street:  They validate the strength of Opening (OWA) and Closing (AWG) appraisal values.

Technically, the BOQ (Box Office Quotient) indicates the revenue impact of promotional moneys spent on a persona’s pictures.  It has an inverse relationship with the ongoing per-screen average.  As a rule, the larger the BOQ, the stronger the Opening (OWA) appraisal.  Mathematically:

BOQ = average cumulative gross / average opening weekend per screen average

The GO (gross to opening) Ratio, however, indicates the volume of ongoing business, or “legs,” for that persona’s pictures.  The larger the GO Ratio, the stronger the Closing (AWG) appraisal.  Mathematically:

GO ratio = average cumulative gross / average opening weekend gross

Q:  What do the 1 to 3 asterisks (*) placed beside each MarqueeStars persona mean?

A:  The asterisks define how many films have been included in that persona’s statistical appraisal within the specified category.  As a rule, 3 asterisks (***) will be more reliable than 1.  A marquee actor with 3 asterisks usually will provide a strengthening coattails effect for the other marquee actors.  However, an actor with 1 asterisk (*) typically has no coattails and may require the coattails power of other marquee actors, or equivalent marketing elements (e.g. high concept), to duplicate the same footprint appraisal for future films.

Q:  Why have smaller films been excluded from the Marquee Stars database?

A:  Like the Dow Jones averages on Wall Street, we are focused on the film industry bellwethers:  films younger than 10 years with cumulative box office revenues better than a 2009-constant-dollar value of $5.2 million (€3.75m, £3.58m, ¥479.84m, Cn¥35.48m, Rs250.24m, Kr₩6.87b, руб 152.90m).

As our capabilities expand, so will our database.  Eventually we may include films with smaller gross revenues.

Q:  What about personas whose last film did not qualify for inclusion in the Marquee Stars database?

A:  On occasion, a professional motion picture falls flat - usually for reasons beyond any one person’s control … periodically even a picture with a prestige cast and a quality producer, screenwriter and director.  If a motion picture did not earn sufficient revenues to qualify for inclusion in the Marquee Stars calculations, neither did it have sufficient impact with audiences to affect a persona’s statistical appraisal for the films that did qualify for inclusion.

Q:  How does Marquee Stars determine theatrical gross revenues to calculate the 3-picture averages?

A:  We use a weighted-average approach to film revenues.

The motion picture industry has always had a rag-tag relationship with revenue data.  Only those companies directly involved with the production, licensing, distribution, exhibition or retailing of a given motion picture possess precise revenue numbers.  Their numbers, however, reflect fractions of the marketplace restricted to their respective roles in the overall process.  Each company compiles just a small piece of the ongoing big picture.  Moreover those companies are not completely forthright with each other when sharing information.  Then, too, revenues from across national borders present the added problem of constantly shifting exchange rates.

Hence nobody can provide an accounting of factual film revenue data.  There are merely more reliable and less reliable data sources.

In the United States and Canada, to comply with anti-trust regulations, Hollywood’s major studio distributors, exhibition chains and video retailers voluntarily report gross film revenues to a handful of arms-length data collection organizations and companies such as the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America), Nielsen EDI (in Hollywood Reporter), Rentrak (in Variety), Exhibitor Relations (on IMDb Pro) and Home Media Retailing (Home Media Magazine).

Conversely, overseas film revenue data collection remains something of a Wild West:  Some territories report results from major cities only.  Some territories collect admissions data, but not revenues.  Other territories have just begun to collect revenue data, and different sources offer outrageously different results.  And still other territories have no central data source whatsoever.

A few companies, organizations and web publications - such as Nielsen EDI, Rentrak, Baseline StudioSystems, IFTA (Independent Film & Television Alliance), Screen International, ShowBIZData, BoxOfficeMojo, The-Numbers and WorldwideBoxoffice - valiantly attempt to make sense of the overseas muddle albeit with uneven success.  And, once again, there’s that exchange rate confusion:  Which rate … from which currency … on what day … and at what time?

Marquee Stars draws revenue data from every responsible, publicly available source for approximately fifty territories worldwide.  Consequently our operational revenue figures are technically weighted averages because Marquee Stars assigns more significance - or statistical “weight” - to primary data-gathering sources than to filtered secondary or third-party sources.  For territories that provide partial revenue or admissions data only, Marquee Stars projects revenue totals using respectively a statistical simulation model or average local ticket prices, then includes those totals in the weighted average calculations.

However, territories with insufficient corroborative sources are excluded from the weighted averages altogether.  Marquee Stars relies on multiple data sources.

The film revenue data featured on MarqueeStars.com lack the to-the-penny precision of the fractional figures from a primary source data-gathering company, but nonetheless, in their comprehensive quality, remain perfectly appropriate for rating purposes.  Furthermore, for internal projections, Marquee Stars embraces a weekly dollar-averaging solution for the volatile exchange rate issue.  Overseas currency valuations for the weekly box office are based on the middle spot rates between interbank bid and asked quotes from each Friday’s foreign-exchange listings as cited by Reuters.

Q:  Do the Marquee Stars tables include revenues from re-issue theatrical runs?

A:  Seldom.  A film’s first-run theatrical release worldwide typically provides the best measure of a MarqueeStar persona’s footprint.  Small territorial re-releases to avoid black screens during a slow period suggest very little about overall star power.  In select cases, however, such as a theatrical re-release owing to a major award nomination, we include those revenues since they reflect the star-building impact of the awards promotion.

Q:  Where do you get your financial data?

A:  See our webliolography of favorite Corroborative Sources.

Q:  Does Marquee Stars ever post the worldwide weekly theatrical grosses?

A:  Marquee Stars publishes a year-end summary of the top-performing bellwether films.  Precise weekly theatrical grosses are available by subscription through the major data-gathering  companies, such as Nielsen EDI, Rentrak and Exhibitor Relations, as well as through a plethora of local trade publications.

Q:  Are other film revenues included in the Marquee Stars ^SM talent ratings?

A:  Currently our data include only movie ticket gross sales worldwide.  The theatrical box office remains the core market-making engine for all subsequent content earnings.  Video, Internet, television, ancillary and merchandising revenues are not as consistently available.  In particular, precise data on video revenue remain elusive.  Even primary source data-gathering companies face difficulty in compiling accurate information from video stores, large chain-store retailers such as Wal-Mart and Internet e-tailers like Netflix.  Nevertheless, we are beta-testing a separate set of talent ratings based on Anglo-American domestic video sales and rentals.  The video revenues for our beta-testing database have been simulated utilizing publicly available data and sporadic studio-supplied figures as well as private sampling research of industry sources conducted by Marquee Stars.

Marquee Stars will not make our Anglo-American Video reports available until we have sufficient confidence in their viability as a fair market indicator.

Q:  What is Anglo-America?

A:  Anglo-America consists of the United States and Canada together, and it may or may not include Quebec.  Commonplace industry references to domestic, US domestic and North American domestic markets are misnomers because Canada is included whereas Mexico is not.  The term Anglo-American domestic defines the market more correctly and has been adopted by Marquee Stars.

Q:  How are the footprint appraisals calculated for each MarqueeStar persona?

A:  The complete process is proprietary.  In general, however, we segregate all qualifying films into A-List for mainstream films, and B-List for specialty and genre films.  Performers are similarly divided into A-List for their mainstream film appearances and B-List for their specialty and genre appearances; then they are further subdivided into Anchors, Support and Featured.  The Marquee Appraisal Guide’s 1- to 3-picture averages are calculated based solely on films contained within each category.  The same persona may appear in more than one category.

Next, in most instances, the most prominent or “1^st position” persona for each film is assigned a statistical appraisal value usually equal to that picture’s gross revenue earnings.  An algorithm (programmed statistical protocol) then discounts the appraisal values of each subsequent persona in accordance with their prominence in the film.

In truth, several factors beyond the marquee personas themselves are responsible for a film’s gross revenue earnings.  Such factors include distributor strength, prints & ads campaign, maturity classification & censorship, genre, story ingredients, target audience, audience satisfaction, critical reviews, accessible fan base, the season of release, head-to-head competition and the general health of the world economy.  Many of these factors would be addressed in a commissioned Marquee Stars project diagnostic report.  However, for ease of use, they have been set aside in our more roughly chiseled Marquee Appraisal Guide.

Q:  What’s the difference between a mainstream and a specialty film?

A:  Except for major tentpole releases, every picture enters the Marquee Stars database as a specialty film, and is subcategorized as either sophisticated for red carpet audiences or niche for genre audiences.  A film then crosses over to mainstream once its worldwide theatrical gross exceeds a 2009-constant-dollar value of $39.0 million (€28.16m, £26.90m, ¥3.60b, Cn¥266.10m, Rs1.88b, Kr₩51.52b, руб 1.15b).

Q:  Outside of the 1^st position persona, how does Marquee Stars determine marquee prominence for purposes of discounting appraisal values?

A:  We apply common sense together with common industry practices - including but not limited to regarding billing blocks, promotional campaigns, dramatic roles, critical support, Golden Globe or Academy Award consideration, related Internet traffic and periodic focus-group analysis.  As a double-check, amongst our associates, we screen the overwhelming majority of films added to our database.

At the same time, we remain sensitive to the fact that marquee prominence may shift over the course of a film’s release.  For example, as veteran filmmakers ourselves, we know that the billing block may be more reflective of dealmaker leverage than audience perception.  Also, the pop culture impact of a standout screen performance on critics, on fans, or on award nominations can always skyrocket the prominence of a fresh face.

The primary criterion for determining a marquee anchor is that, promotionally, the persona’s name, image and/or the buzz surrounding his or her performance must help “pull the train” as opposed to being “pulled by the train.”  Above all, we severely scrutinize our A-List Anchors.  A new name may appear briefly in this category in response to a powerful world premiere but, over the long haul, the A-List Anchors report retains only marquee personas who enjoy substantial critical support and/or who remain a household name with at least one broad segment of moviegoers.  Short-timer A-List Anchors subsequently may move to the A-List Support category.

Meanwhile support players must lend credibility to a film, usually by materially reinforcing its story themes and marketing.  Metaphorically, support players help “drive the train” as opposed to, say, “going along for the ride.”  Featured players, of course, may or may not “go along for the ride” but, nevertheless, should capture the audience’s attention.  Physically striking unknowns seem to upstage charactery unknowns in this category, while celebrity cameos and children usually upstage all other featured players.

Q:  Why bother with short-timers on the anchor reports?

A:  First, to draw immediate industry attention to noteworthy new star talent and, second, because the longer-term impact of a high-profile performance on film audiences is not always immediately certain.  Accordingly, absent a major award nomination or a groundswell of fan mania, 1-asterisk personas normally spend less time on the anchor reports.

Q:  What about voiceover actors or unknown leads in a high concept blockbuster?

A:  The Marquee Appraisal Guide ^SM presently includes only live-action performances in its statistical database.  Voiceover narrators and animation voices are excluded.

Unfamiliar leads in high concept films (e.g. Harry Potter, Firehouse Dog, Narnia, Superman, etc.) are evaluated on a case by case basis.  If their prominence has been powered more by the strength of the high concept subject or by the coattails of the ensemble cast than by a lasting groundswell of critical and popular esteem for their personas, then an algorithm will appropriately discount their appraisal values.

Q:  Are the Marquee Stars appraisals adjusted for inflation?

A:  Yes.  For purposes of ranking MarqueeStar personas, gross revenues are converted to present-value dollars, adjusted monthly according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, then discounted over time in accordance with the shelf-life of marquee value.

For tracking individual pictures, gross revenues are maintained using actual numbers, without adjusting for inflation.

Q:  What’s the difference between constant dollars and present-value dollars?

A:  The purchasing power of every currency changes over time owing to uneven inflationary and deflationary pressures.  Constant dollars compare the dollar values from one year (or time period) by converting them into the average dollar values of a selected control year.  Present-value dollars set the current year dollar values as the control year.

Formulaically, present-value dollars are calculated as:

2^nd Year Present Value Dollar = Present Year Dollar Value x (CPI-W for Present Year/CPI-W for 2^nd Year)

(Note:  In the field of finance, present value refers to today’s value of future payments evaluated at an approximate discount rate.  Present value and present-value dollars are related concepts.)

Q:  Why do many actors have multiple nationality designations?

A:  Our nationality designations refer less to country of origin than to base of operations or work-visa residency.  Many international celebrity actors divide their work year between several countries.  Also, many upcoming actors build their careers by spending a few years pursuing stage and screen work in the entertainment center of one country, then moving on for a few years to the entertainment centers of still other countries.

Q:  Why do the Marquee Stars appraisals include only 1^st and 2^nd position producers?

A:  Despite more than a century of feature film production, producer credits remain a madcap mess.  Credits on one film may mean something different on another.  Producers Guild of America (PGA) recommends no more than three principal “produced by” credits and three executive producer credits per film (except in a rare and extraordinary circumstance).  Unfortunately, the PGA lacks sufficient clout to enforce their protocols throughout the industry.  Confusion reigns.

For the purposes of our rankings, Marquee Stars recognizes only the 1^st and 2^nd position producer billings.  For the overwhelming majority of productions, the 1^st and 2^nd position producers are the actual executives who set the budgetary and esthetic priorities, who hire and fire key personnel, who approve marquee and marketing choices, who provide creative oversight and who control the production’s purse strings.  Hands-on experience (as independents) has taught us that additional “produced by” credits are usually more reflective of dealmaker baggage than full executive authority.  Hence executive producers, co-executive producers, 3^rd position and beyond 3^rd position producers, co-producers, associate producers, assistant producers and line producers have been excluded.

Q:  What about screenwriters?

A:  We include only the top three screenwriters.  “Based on” authors and story scenarists are not ranked.  For credits governed under the auspices of the Writers Guild of America (WGA), we presume neutrality for the “&” credit, but preeminence for the final “and” credit.

Q:  How about directors?

A:  Marquee Stars ^SM ranks one principal director and, as applicable, one co-director per picture.  However, for statistical reasons, we reject the guild-approved “Alan Smithee” pseudonym.  We assess that credit on a film by film basis, attributing some to the factual director of the film and discarding others altogether.

Q:  What about credit arbitrations?

A:  Marquee Stars ^SM recognizes credit arbitrations by the appropriate guilds, especially as pertains to major award nominations.

Q:  How does Marquee Stars determine to which genre a picture belongs?

A:  We use an elaborate, strictly-defined checklist of protocols that classify each film by genre, subgenre, supergenre and market segment.  (See our Starpedia for basic definitions.)

Q:    How does Marquee Stars determine the appropriate title for listing a film?

A:  We prefer to list films by their most prominent theatrical title.

If a foreign language film has been produced in a language written in a Roman alphabet (French, Polish, Swedish, etc.), we list its principal release title in its original language.  If that film subsequently receives a high-profile release in the Anglo-American market, our listings are changed to reflect the Anglo-American release title.  For example, France’s Academy Award-winning Edith Piaf biopic La Môme would reflect its original title throughout most of its European run, but would change to La vie en rose upon its breakout release in the United States.

On the other hand, if a foreign language film does not use a Roman alphabet (Chinese, Hindustani, Russian, etc.), our listing reflects either its official English language international title or, minimally, an appropriate English translation of its principal release title.  The Russian slang title Стиляги (Stilyagi), for example, is listed as Hipsters.

Also, consistent with space-saving practices of the Hollywood trade publications, our listings shorten lengthy titles.  So The Curious Case of Benjamin Button would be listed simply as Benjamin Button.

Q:  Can I link to Marquee Stars?

A:  Yes.  You are welcome to link to us without permission.  Feel free to link to any page you like.

Q:  May I quote from your website?

A:  You may quote a few individual facts and figures, but please reference us or link back to us.  Check our Terms and Conditions or Contact Us.  Please do not remove entire images, graphs or photographs for public display without our permission.  To do so may violate the terms of copyright for our own usage on Marquee Stars.

Q:  How can I support Marquee Stars?

A:  Visit our site regularly.  Use our free reports and package appraisal calculator.  Patronize our project-specific statistical diagnostics reports.  We are independently owned and operated, supported entirely by advertisers and consultation clients.

Also, you may always Contact Us with new reliable sources for film revenues data, particularly for overseas and non-theatrical revenues.

Finally, spreading the word about our site is always a great help.  Tell your friends and colleagues.  Put a link on your website.  Mention us in online discussion boards.  We are primarily a word-of-mouth site for film professionals:  financiers, lenders, filmmakers, casting personnel, acquisitions folks, sales agents, distributors and retailers.