The Movie Making Game

In 1997, over at 20th Century Fox Studios things were probably a little tense. Fox had $200 million dollars riding on the success or failure of its movie Titanic and, everybody already knew ending. Of course Titanic wound up being the most profitable movie ever made based on absolute profit in terms of worldwide gross. Fox, one could guess, is still doing cartwheels over that one.

The situation may have been similar at New Line Cinema in 2001 when $105 million dollars was staked on Town and Country. You don't remember Town and Country? Warren Beatty? Diane Keaton? Goldie Hawn? R-rated romantic comedy? Town and Country must have seemed like a nightmare for New Line. They wound up having to shake off a $99 million dollar loss.

These are two examples of the chances studios take on movies. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat.

Behind these examples of risk are thousands of other movie-making risks and there's a web site that actually keeps tab of these things. The-numbers.com is an aggregator of movie box office statistics. The-numbers.com has all the box office numbers anyone could ever imagine needing on every movie from 1995 through 2008.

With the statistics and information at the-numbers.com you can literally play a game of trying to create a blockbuster movie. MPAA-ratings, featured actors, distributors, and endless other categories where the numbers have been crunched are available. Wanna play lets make a movie that makes a ton of money?

Start with genre. What type of movie makes money? If your looking to play it safe you make a comedy but, if your shooting for a box office blockbuster you make an adventure movie. Comedies have grossed more money between 1995-2008 than any other kind of movie, but an adventure movie has an average gross of $66 million dollars, almost triple the average gross of a comedy.

There's not one comedy in the top twenty most profitable movies between 1995 and 2008. Nineteen of the top twenty are adventure movies. The difference is that they made 1375 comedies between 1995 and 2008 compared to only 399 adventure movies. Comedies are the steady Eddie of the movie making business. Home runs are hit by adventure movies. To be the new king of the adventure hill you'll have to be more profitable than Lord of the Rings: Return of the King at number one in the genre with a total profit for New Line Cinema of $472.5 million dollars.

Now, about the MPAA rating. The average gross of an R-rated movie is only $14 million dollars. G and PG rated movies are about the same, grossing on average about $33 million dollars per picture. The $40 million average gross of a PG-13 movie is $7 million dollars more than that. So clean up the language in the script and keep the actresses clothes on. It pays off. Play the odds and make a PG-13 movie.

When you talk about stars you have no idea how many there really are. Hollywood is a Milky Way of stars and every movie needs a star. Stars can make or break a film. The names that probably come to mind first, if you like, your personal favorites might work out, but why not go with the odds. There's a lot of money involved here and it's no time for guesswork.

What's important are the average gross per picture for the actor and what percentage of the time do his pictures gross over $100 million dollars. Brad Pitt? No. George Clooney? Not really. No offense but ideally you'd want for your adventure star either Orlando Bloom or Will Smith, preferably both of them. The numbers back this up. Orlando Bloom is today's top grossing star. He's made only 13 pictures and the average gross from each one is $183.8 million dollars. Mike Myers - yes, The Spy Who Shagged Me Mike Myers- has the next biggest average gross per picture at $132.5 million but Mike Myers as an action/adventure star?... he's a comedian, too risky. Right behind Mike Myers is Will Smith with an average gross per picture of $129.1 million dollars and 12 of his 19 movies have grossed over $100 million dollars. Orlando Bloom's batting average is also extremely high; 8 for 13. Bloom can play the good guy and Smith the bad guy or switch them around it probably doesn't matter. Actually it does matter. Great villains sell tickets so who plays what role will have to be fine tubed.

The source of your movie is important too. The top numbers belong to Disney. You knew that that Disney was a source for movies, Snow White, and Bambi and so on, but did you know their rides were a movie source. There have been five movies based on Disney rides and the average gross has been $90.9 million dollars each.

Disney stock would have to hit rock-bottom before they would consider selling the rights to anybody to make a movie based on one of their rides. That's not going to happen anytime soon. Sequels as a source take second place as money makers so the adventure movie will be a sequel. Well how in the Hellboy can an adventure sequel be made when there's absolutely nothing to base the sequel on yet?. It can be done. That's what the Star Wars franchise is all about, sequels out of order. The average sequel grosses $66.2 million dollars and there have been 293 of them between 1995 and 2008.

The third best place for source material is comic book/graphic novels. This is without a doubt the best available source for blockbuster material and good stories can still be had cheaply. Whoever heard of Ironman before it hit the big screen? Whatever else, no movie that hopes to make big money can be made that is based on a real life event. 940 of them have been made and the average gross per picture has been a paltry $7.3 million dollars; except for Titanic which grossed $1.8 billion worldwide.

As far as production methods go there is only one legitimate option for a blockbuster adventure movie, animation/live action. Animation/live action is not all animation and not all live action. Movies made this way bury the competition. They don't even have to be good. Examples are Star Wars I, II, and III. Similarly, the only real option with blockbuster potential in terms of whether the adventure is to be a fantasy, a sci-fi movie, historical fiction or a more contemporary fiction is super hero. 42 superhero movies have been made between 1995 and 2008 and the average gross has been $135 million dollars. Of the nine categories here contemporary fiction movies are the most prevalent. 2,914 have been made but their average gross has been only $22.8 million.

The PG-13 adventure movie starring Will Smith and Orlando Bloom (top billing will have to be worked out) will need a major distributor. The one you want is Dreamworks SKG. Of the top ten grossing distributors they are number one at $68.7 million dollars per picture in terms of the average gross on the movies they distribute. That's $17 million per picture more than the nearest competitor 20th Century Fox at $51 million. But Deamworks SKG distributed only 76 movies between 1995 and 2008. They're ranked tenth in number of pictures distributed which is about 175 movies fewer than ninth ranked MGM. The numbers express how much competition you'll have trying to get Dreamworks SKG to market your finished movie.

So in the end the Mother of all blockbusters should turn out to be a PG-13 adventure movie with a story bought for a song that was written by an unknown graphic novelist about two superheroes, one good, one evil, starring Will Smith and Orlando Bloom (top billing will have to be worked out), filmed in animation/live action, and distributed by Dreamworks SKG.

This does not cover all the bases. This just scratches the surface but theoretically according the numbers it will work.

In Hollywood, the bigger the risk the bigger the reward, unless it happens to be a movie like The Blair Witch Project which is still the most profitable movie based on return on investment ever made. Made for $35 thousand it has grossed $248.3 million dollars an investment return of 354,614.29%. Mad Max did pretty well too. It's made $99.7 million and was shot for $200 thousand dollars.