Sorry, it’s been getting a bit busy with the book launch coming up. Here’s another sneaky peek.

The average US movie now costs close to US $100 million to make and the window of opportunity for marketing and distribution is concentrated on two or three critical holiday periods each year. I was talking to a Vice President of a major film studio last year and he said that even the old idea of an opening weekend as an indication of how successful a film is going to be has now shifted to ten minutes. If an audience doesn’t like the opening they are immediately on their phones sending text messages to their friends saying, “don’t bother”. Add to this the increasingly unrealistic wage demands of movie stars and it’s clear that Hollywood is looking more like a disaster movie every year. However, while things are going to get worse for a while there is ultimately a light at the end of the (digital) movie projector.