Synopses & Reviews
Out-of-control costs. Box office bombs that should have been foreseen. A mania for sequels at the expense of innovation. Blockbusters of ever-diminishing merit. What other industry could continue like this--and succeed as spectacularly as Hollywood has? The American movie industry's extraordinary success at home and abroad--in the face of dire threats from broadcast television and a wealth of other entertainment media that have followed--is David Waterman's focus in this book, the first full-length economic study of the movie industry in over forty years.
Combining historical and economic analysis, Hollywood's Road to Riches shows how, beginning in the 1950s, a largely predictable business has been transformed into a volatile and complex multimedia enterprise now commanding over 80 percent of the world's film business. At the same time, the book asks how the economic forces leading to this success--the forces of audience demand, technology, and high risk--have combined to change the kinds of movies Hollywood produces.
Waterman argues that the movie studios have multiplied their revenues by effectively using pay television and home video media to extract the maximum amounts that individual consumers are willing to pay to watch the same movies in different venues. Along the way, the Hollywood studios have masterfully handled piracy and other economic challenges to the multimedia system they use to distribute movies.
The author also looks ahead to what Internet file sharing and digital production and distribution technologies might mean for Hollywood's prosperity, as well as for the quality and variety of the movies it makes.
Review
[Hollywood's Road to Riches] provide[s] a thorough economic account of how American film studios and their predecessors have exploited our appetite for movies over the past 60-plus years. Library Journal
Review
Hollywood's Road to Riches focuses on the details and peculiarities of the film business with a depth and breadth that no one else provides. Combining knowledge of facts and institutions with insightful economic analyses makes the book exceptional. Steven S. Wildman, Michigan State University
Review
[Hollywood's Road to Riches] provide[s] a thorough economic account of how American film studios and their predecessors have exploited our appetite for movies over the past 60-plus years.
Review
No less artful are the inspired, often Byzantine economics that have sustained the film industry for more than a century, which prove a surprisingly engrossing topic in David Waterman's Hollywood's Road to Riches. David Ondaatje - Times Higher Education Supplement
Review
Hollywood's Road to Riches is informative, intelligent, and even entertaining. Michael Riordan, Columbia University
Review
With box office returns slumping, Waterman has produced a timely study of Tinseltown's development since the end of World War II. Roy Liebman
Synopsis
Combining historical and economic analysis, this book shows how, beginning in the 1950s, a largely predictable business has been transformed into a volatile and complex multimedia enterprise now commanding over 80 percent of the world's film business. At the same time, the book asks how the economic forces leading to this success--the forces of audience demand, technology, and high risk--have combined to change the kinds of movies Hollywood produces.
About the Author
David Watermanis Professor, Department of Telecommunications at <>Indiana University, Bloomington.
Table of Contents
List of Figures and Tables
Preface
Introduction: American Success
1. The Players
2. Television: A Parting of the Ways
3. The Pay Media: A Shower of Money
4. Controlling the Release Sequence
5. Rising American Dominance
6. What Has Hollywood Done with the Money?
7. Hollywood's Digital Future
Appendixes
A. Market Shares of Domestic Box Office/Rentals and Video Revenues
B. Stability of World Theatrical Rentals, 1948-1975
C. U.S. Distributor Revenue by Source
D. Prices, Distributor Revenue, and Viewing Estimates, 1948, 1975, and 2002
E. Video Windows, 1988-2002
F. Comparative Analysis of Movie Industries and Trade in the United States and the EUJ5 Countries, Statistical Data, 1950-2003
G. Determinants of U.S. Box Office Market Shares in the EUJ5, 1950-2003
H. Movie Production Costs and Animated Movie Data
I. Motion Picture Industry Employment
J. Movie Credits Analysis, Top Ten Movies, 1971 and 2001
K. Movie Genre Analysis
Notes
Index