Sample Book Chapters
Chapter 10 - Indies
“I never knew why it took the majors at least 15 years to capitalize on summer releases geared for the youth market…You (simply) made a film about something wild with a great deal of action, a little sex, and possibly some sort of strange gimmick.
B-film maker Roger Corman
Independent distributors tend to fill market segments—meaning niches—not covered by the majors. They also focus on low-budget films.
Roger Corman’s book, “How I Made a Hundred Hollywood Movies and Never Lost a Dime,” from which the above quote is taken, recalls that the indies feasted on teen and youth summer movies in the 1950s to 1970s. The movies had provocative titles, such as “Sorority House Massacre” and “Piranha.” By the 1970s, the majors finally wised up by chasing the youth audience and dominated the summer seasons ever since.
It’s difficult to prosper in the hardscrabble independent sector today, yet scattered examples of films have achieved unbelievable riches, which keeps hope alive. The religious drama “The Passion of the Christ” generated a blockbuster $370 million in domestic (United States and Canada) box office via distributor Newmarket Films. Hollywood A-list actor Mel Gibson financed, directed, and co-wrote the religious drama, which cost $30 million to make.
That production budget is higher than most theatrical releases marketed by independent distributors, which typically cost $1 to $20 million to produce, versus an average $63.8 million production expense for a major studio film in 2003.
Besides “The Passion of the Christ”, the wacky comedy “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” cost about $5 million to make and took in $241 million in domestic box office in 2002 via IFC Films. “The Blair Witch Project,” the fictional documentary yarn that reportedly cost just tens of thousands of dollars to make, scared up $140.5 million in domestic box office in 1999 for what is now Lions Gate Films.
Indie companies can be divided into two camps. True independents do not have major studio backing; examples include Newmarket Films (“The Passion of the Christ”), Lions Gate Releasing (“Fahrenheit 9/11”), IDP Distribution (“Super Size Me”), and IFC Films (“My Big Fat Greek Wedding”). Then there are indie-film divisions owned by major studios such as Miramax (Disney) and New Line Cinema (Warner Bros.). The studio-owned indies dominate box office in the indie category.
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Copyright © 2005, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Note: Book passages and tables are updated where appropriate, and some bridge text may be added to smooth transitions in the accompanying excerpt.
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Chaper extracts in this website amount to 4,000 words distilled from 102,000 in the print book.
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Low-budget $1.5 Mil. Movie Ad Plan
Category Spending
Print/daily & weeklies $780,000
On-line/Web site $30,000
Wild posting (labor) $10,000
Radio $20,000
Outdoor billboards 0
Print/magazines $70,000
Television $450,000
Media subtotal $1.36 million
Creating ads $50,000
Duplicating posters & etc. $10,000
Publicity & screenings $50,000
Festival screening support $30,000
Grand Total $1.5 million
Note: The figures exclude cost of making and shipping release film prints
Source: Marketing to Moviegoers
