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About Marquee Stars

Business Content for the Content Business

What is the worth of a spec script?  Or a movie star?  A director?

This website and its Marquee Appraisal Guide empower filmmakers, film professionals and content suppliers with greater creative freedom by answering the above questions on a statistical appraised value basis.  We come from the ranks of filmmakers and distributors.  We know that a motion picture’s package of artistic elements (its contractual combination of story, producer, writer, director and stars) provides the key to investment decisions for the content business - whether in financing a project, acquiring a completed film or committing funds for distribution.

Using actual financial performance data, Marquee Stars tracks the variables that compose a motion picture package, including story-related market trends as well as on-camera and off-camera talent.  Of course, no power yet known to Hollywood can rescue the earnings potential of a movie that does not play well enough to attract and hold an audience.  But for films with commercial appeal, certain package elements increase revenues and minimize risk.

Some elements increase revenues substantially more than others.

Financial analysts argue with persuasive statistics that past performance provides the best indicator of future performance.  And their numbers can generate an appraised value for any financial asset or persona.  The concept of a statistical appraised value requires an unbiased, current valuation based on recent and historic matter-of-fact financial factors.  Lenders regularly use appraised values to determine the amount and terms of business loans against an asset.

Along these same lines, this website provides - and supports with factual data - filmmaker-friendly appraised marketplace values for motion picture packages and their individual elements that may be used to corroborate capital decisions for budgeting, packaging, greenlighting, casting, acquisitions, sales and distribution.  Such information becomes ever more crucial in volatile economic times when Big Hollywood grows increasingly selective, when mini-major distributors consider mergers, and when standalone independents reinvent DIY (do-it-yourself) distribution.

Yes, we know the absurd frustration of being told that only the attachment of one specific marquee actor can greenlight a project or secure a negative pickup deal … especially when said actor’s dance card has been booked for the next three years.  Traditionally, financial data in the film industry have tended to limit marquee choices - usually to about 5-10 names in any budget category.  That’s why Marquee Stars has been organized both to document and to highlight overlooked yet workable talent alternatives as well as to identify unconventional yet realistic ways to mount a financially responsible motion picture package.

We constantly dig, mining proactive information and exploring new ways to present a common foundation for capital decision-making.  Production and distribution are more efficient when both filmmakers and content professionals can agree on what constitutes a viable package of artistic elements.  Thus, not only does our Marquee Appraisal Guide update weekly, it also employs a global reach with a depth that includes present-value appraisals for thousands of actors, directors, producers and screenwriters.

In particular, our reports include talent from foreign language cinema.  Thanks to the proliferation of film schools, production subsidy programs and multiplex theaters, quality filmmaking now can be routinely found outside of the United States, Western Europe and Japan, in Australia/New Zealand, Canada/Quebec, China/Hong Kong, India, Russia/CIS, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey and Latin America.

Our purpose is to expand the universe of responsible creative choices available to decision-makers, so our priorities for Marquee Stars include:

• Focus more on getting it right than getting it first
• Highlight the unnoticed, the unexpected and the underappreciated
• Reflect on the crafts, arts and sciences related to storytelling, filmmaking, acquisitions and distribution
• Provide a frame of reference about the relative value of a motion picture’s package of artistic elements
• Provide a warehouse of information useful to the content industry, especially as pertains to independent and overseas content providers
• Make important data easier to understand through charts and analysis

Bottom line - Marquee Stars ^SM enables you to generate your own value analysis:  With our Marquee Appraisal Guide, you can compare the latest marketplace appraisals for different marquee personas in accordance with the prominence of their pictures and their prominence within those pictures.  Then, with our quick-and-dirty online Package Appraisal Calculator, you can contrast the combined appraisal values of different on-camera and off-camera talent combinations.  If you desire a neutral third-party evaluation of a particular package of story and/or artist elements, you may contact us to commission a Marquee Stars statistical diagnostic report.  Finally, with our posted coverage, you can learn about emerging or underestimated marquee stars as well as keep up with box office trends and behind-the-scenes techniques.