Tuesday, December 27, 2022

A Bondian Guide to the Economics of Movies

I came across this table from Wikipedia, and it got me thinking about how the Bond franchise provides an excellent case study of the economics of Hollywood over the past sixty years.

[Note: budgets and box office are corrected to 2005 dollars despite the films going to 2021.]

Both movie budgets and box office are deeply flawed metrics even before you factor in Hollywood accounting, but they they are often pretty much the best we have. Any discussion of motion pictures as a business has to start here and any discussion of cultural impact has to at least take these things into consideration.

One useful way of framing the discussion is to ask, for every dollar put into this film, how many dollars in box office would it bring in? (not the formal accounting definition of ROI, but close enough for our purposes here).

Return on investment is a very poor metric for individual low budget films. When your denominator is that low, it's not that difficult to get a really big number now and then. For that reason we should probably ignore Dr No and possibly From Russia with Love and even Goldfinger. From Thunderball on, however, the Bond films became a big budget franchise given the standards of the time. We can definitely learn something looking at ROI from that point on. (One of the remarkable things about the series is how expensive those first three films look, particularly given the special effects of the day and the fact that even big budget movies still used embarrassing rear screen projection.)

With the exception of Bond which came about a decade earlier, franchises before the blockbuster era (which started in the 1970s) tended to follow patterns of slowly diminishing returns. You would possibly start out with one or two big budget films but sequels as a rule would become more modest. Those that did not simply fade away settled into a low-to-medium budget equilibrium. Of the many reasons you could argue the Bond films invented the modern blockbuster franchise, one is how it introduced the practice of ramping up budgets following successful installments.

On the whole, the budgets for the franchise provide a pretty good example of how Hollywood has approached  major releases with  sharp growth kicking in over the past twenty or so years. In retrospect, the industry looks remarkably well disciplined before 1990. Even the notorious Heaven's Gate which went almost four times over budget only clocks in at slightly under $160 million in 2022 dollars, which would put it squarely in the middle of the pack for a big budget film these days. 

While it would take a serious analysis to actually nail this down, it certainly appears that while box office numbers have been spectacular, return on investment for big pictures has been in steady decline for a few decades. That is certainly the case with Bond.


Monday, December 26, 2022

Misalignment of policy

This is Joseph.

As a follow-up to my prior discussion on housing supply due to this article, I want to discuss a more delicate topic. Canada has an aggressive immigration target at the federal level. Immigration is good. You always want to the country that ambitious people move to and create new wealth in. It creates economic growth, supports old age pension plans, and helps bring in an important diversity of perspectives to allow for fast and effective growth. It is good.

But it needs to be properly supported. The conservative idea that the people who live in a neighborhood should have the ability to shape how it changes in character is a serious problem. It is not that any one place resisting change is a problem or that any specific rule is bad, it is a slow and cumulative effect. Mark has this example of a rule that will not great, really isn't making a big impact in this instance and the net effect of this specific tax policy is a good approximation of zero. 

Let me give an example. When I first visited Winnipeg I was shocked by the traffic. Everything was slow and congested -- key arteries were simply on the verge of being nonfunctional in the winter (adding ice to construction and congestion). Then the pandemic hit and driving, in the very same places, was just fine. Almost pleasant. The drop in traffic volume made for massively faster commutes and far better user experiences when doing basic tasks like parking. Then the traffic came back and the problems returned.

Which car was it that tips the system over? Which short sighted infrastructure decision was it? None of them.

Instead it was a collection of small decision, all justifiable, and all made with an intent to be sensitive to communities.

But there is a housing shortage and a large planned immigration coming. All of a sudden, you have the problem that 500,000 new Canadians (per year) need a place to live. That's a 1.3% annual population growth from immigration alone. Greater efficiency of existing housing could clearly absorb this for a year, or two years . . . But eventually, realistic plans for new housing have to exist. 

Unless the laws of geometry change, that involves more density in existing settlements, expanding the borders of settlements (sprawl), or creating new settlements. The first involves changing the character of at least some neighborhoods. The second involves accepting traffic jams. The third involves finding new sources of employment for these new places. All of them require an alignment of goals between the different levels of government.

Again, no single rule is bad and many are good. But there does need to be a plan that avoids increasing Canadian homelessness and that, to be blunt, requires homes. 

Sunday, December 25, 2022

Merry Christmas from Little Nemo



And make sure to drive safely.

Saturday, December 24, 2022

Christmas Eve

 From XKCD




Friday, December 23, 2022

Thursday, December 22, 2022

If you've gone through the holidays without hearing Sugar Rum Cherry...

 

  ... you have not had a cool Christmas.
























Wednesday, December 21, 2022

Actually, the kids' atomic energy lab wasn't as horrifying as you'd think, but the cabbage patch doll with a taste for human flesh...

Though it takes away a bit of the romance, the Gilbert U-238 Atomic Energy Laboratory wasn't as dangerous as it sounds.

The professional journal IEEE Spectrum published a more-detailed review in 2020, discussing the kit in the context of the history of science education kits and safety concerns. It described the likely radiation exposure as "minimal, about the equivalent to a day’s UV exposure from the sun", provided that the radioactive samples were not removed from their containers, in compliance with the warnings in the kit instructions.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists published a brief article on the web, which featured Voula Saridakis, a curator at the Museum of Science and Industry (Chicago) hosting a detailed video tour of the Atomic Energy Lab components. She concluded by saying that the kit failed to sell because of its high price, and not due to any safety concerns at the time.







Tuesday, December 20, 2022

Christmas with CollegeHumor

We'll get back to the serious stuff Monday, I promise.


My favorite Katie Marovitch sketch.








Monday, December 19, 2022

Housing supply

This is Joseph.

Twitter has been discussing homelessness after the recent Jerusalem Demsas article which really places the blame for homelessness on housing costs and supply. I am not completely convinced that asset inflation and the rise of the REIT has not accelerated an underlying problem, but it is becoming beyond doubt that this is an important part of the picture and one that imposes enormous social costs. 

Homelessness and rent affordability

The inflection point in this graph is alarming. It is clear that zoning in Canadian cities, for example, favors detached housing (60% of the area of Toronto) which limits the ability of the market to build enough housing. 

That said, I am not sure that this criticism is really well aimed:

The small-c conservative belief that people who already live in a community should have veto power over changes to it has wormed its way into liberal ideology. This pervasive localism is the key to understanding why officials who seem genuinely shaken by the homelessness crisis too rarely take serious action to address it.

I would instead tend to say that it is the elites in these locations that are important; few people in poverty are going to be upset that house prices are not going up. Instead it is the need to appeal to middle class homeowners that is the issue. And, honestly, this suggests that a lot of the solution is to push the decisions about zoning much further up the political ladder. We see some early signs of this in California

The truth is that we need to stop worrying about preserving neighborhood character and accept that things change. Here is Ken White talking about losing an online space he had once valued. It is the same for cities. All of places I loved when I first lived in Seattle are gone (university village Barnes and Noble, Half price books, Bauhaus cafe, Wayward Coffeehouse, Northgate mall, The Dreaming comics) and that is with the keeping of single family zoning. Living places need to grow, evolve, and change. 

I just hope we can allow the growth before the homelessness crisis gets any worse. 

Friday, December 16, 2022

Well, that heated up rather quickly

Remember yesterday, when we talked about Musk suspending Elon's Jet, the automated twitter account that posted publicly available data about the flight plans of Musk's private jet. James Fallows (himself a pilot) walks us through the details.

The jet-setting was something Musk would rather people not talk about -- It doesn't go with the whole monastic planet warrior thing -- so we all knew he'd look for an excuse to kill it. What he came up with was an unverified claim of stalking that didn't seem to have anything to do with the flight tracker

When people started looking into this, Musk escalated.

Details: The following accounts were suspended on Thursday night...





Then Musk started going after Twitter's main competitor.





On the bright side.

Thursday, December 15, 2022

Thursday Tweets

For starters, Musk World has been really busy.




 

Another reminder that, yes, he (or perhaps it should be He) really does talk that way, and not just on twitter.You ought to hear him on the TED stage.






Musk embracing QAnon and the alt-right gives the New York Times a chance to run another "Neo-Nazi's rantings are more nuanced than you think" piece, but it's not one of their better ones.




While reading the following thread, pay close attention to Marshall's points and remember that Elon lies a lot.




And on the business side.

 




As we've said before...

   DeSantis = Trump + Anti-Vax - Personality








Only the savviest politicians get to use 'secret weapons.'



Questionable Political analysis from AP




Good thread by Pepper.

...

...

...

Just because the election is over does mean this story should go away.

Speaking of stories we should be paying more attention to...


What do you mean "we"?




A former boss of mine (back when I was still in Arkansas) used to say that Southern Baptists are firm believers in serial monogamy.


And Misc




Insightful thread.




Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Essential catalogs -- Part 1 (this one kind of got away from me)

Since the following is critical of this post by Josh Marshall, I should start by pointing out that the main thrust of his post, an analysis of the implosion a few years ago of the news industry, is sharp, insightful, and on target. Definitely a must read if you have any interest in the topic.

Where Marshall goes off track is in his comments on the state of the streaming industry.[Problem areas emphasized.]

You may have noticed that storied Disney CEO Bob Iger is back in his old job after successor Bob Chapek was unexpectedly fired last month, the corporate equivalent of a drumhead trial and summary execution. The issues at Disney are partly the bearish stock market, partly Chapek’s poor performance. But the central issue is managing Disney’s transformation or attempted transformation into a streaming behemoth. You may already subscribe to Netflix or Amazon Prime or Hulu or AppleTV. If you do, maybe you’ll sign up for one or two more such services. But not more than that. There’s been a furious competition to be one of those one or two more. Under his long tenure at Disney, Iger made a series of acquisitions — Marvel, the Star Wars franchise, Fox entertainment and more — that made that plausible. Now the future of Disney as a streaming business is in question and that is a central reason why Iger is back.

Normally I wouldn't make such a big deal over this, but Marshall's comments reflect the conventional wisdom and there are few subjects on which conventional wisdom has been so consistently and entirely wrong about as it has been with the future of streaming. If you go back 8 or 10 years and read all of the major publications on the subject, you will see that virtually every major assumption and prediction has been proven comically off base.

One of the standard tenets was that Netflix was on track to become both vertically integrated and the absolute leader with substantial monopolistic power. We'll get to the vertical integration later. How about the market dominance?

From TechCrunch:

Disney reported results for the final quarter of its 2022 fiscal year today, revealing a total of 164.2 million Disney+ global subscribers, an increase of 12 million subs from 152.1 million in Q3. The flagship streaming service was only expected to gain 9.35 million subs.

Across Disney’s streaming services, Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ had a combined total of 235.7 million subscribers, up from 221 million in the third quarter. The company beat expectations of 233.8 million.

“2022 was a strong year for Disney, with some of our best storytelling yet… and outstanding subscriber growth at our direct-to-consumer services, which added nearly 57 million subscriptions this year for a total of more than 235 million,” said Bob Chapek, chief executive officer, The Walt Disney Company, in the letter to shareholders.

The company overtook rival Netflix for a second time, despite Netflix reaching 223.09 million global subscribers during its third quarter.

 

 We could go back and forth on whether comparing Netflix to the Disney bundle is the most valid approach -- there's no right answer to that one -- but you can't really talk about an "attempted transformation into a streaming behemoth." Chapek is a textbook Peter Principle idiot, but Disney is, by at least one reasonable metric, the biggest streaming service and if you believe the standard narrative about first mover advantage and the market only supporting only two or three platforms, running this division at a loss for a while is perfectly defensible.

But we need to throw in an important bit of context here.

While most of the money and virtually all of the attention goes to 'originals,' viewers mainly spend their time watching older shows. Pretty much all of the subscription based services other than Netflix, and AppleTV have large, often huge catalogs. Even Amazon, which is pursuing a partnership-based model, jumped in with MGM. Not only has Netflix never shown any interest in acquiring existing catalogs; many of its originals such as House of Cards and She-Ra actually belong to other companies. When Disney spends big money on the Mandalorian, it will cashing in on baby Yoda for years; When Netflix spends big money on the new Airbender show, Paramount will be cashing in for years.

If Netflix had such an overwhelming lead, this might not matter that much. If the company had effective monopsony power over the streaming industry, the studios would have to play ball, but that is not and very probably will never be the case, which leaves Netflix, of all the platforms, by far the most dependent on its competitors. (If you go back eight or ten years, that monopsony assumption was a fundamental part of the standard narrative, It didn't make sense then either.)

None of this means that Netflix is doomed. It's a well-run company with a viable business model as long as things stay basically the same. It is, however, unlikely that Netflix will make it to a final duopoly in anything like its current form. (And, no, the company will never catch up with its competitors' catalogs simply by producing new content, and it doesn't really appear to be trying to.)

But what about the very possibility of a duopoly? 

With a handful of exceptions, the major studios (and now, to a limited degree, Amazon) have long controlled every major title, character and franchise you can think of that's not in the public domain, and these are where the money is. Even shows in their fifties and sixties like Andy Griffith and MASH absolutely crush hits like the Crown in terms of viewership. Reboots, sequels and spinoffs of often decades old IP are among the biggest 'new' shows.

Disney was the 800 lb gorilla in intellectual property even before the Fox merger (which was an enormous anti-trust violation, but that's a topic for another post), but valuable properties are spread out among all the majors. Disney, WB, Paramount, Universal, and possibly Columbia all have big enough catalogs to demand some kind of seat at the streaming table. 

This doesn't rule out consolidation down to two or three platforms but it does complicate the situation. These four or five have and --barring further studio mergers -- will continue to have content that is essential for the paid streaming industry if it wants to continue being a one-stop-shop. With purely ad-supported platforms nipping at their heels, the subscription services can't afford to chase a large part of their audience to cable or niche streamers or some à la carte option.

A Netflix/Amazon duopoly supported by a small cartel of suppliers might actually be better for consumers than what we have now, but they would be nothing like the vertically integrated behemoths that everyone was predicting a few years ago. If anything, it would be closest to the dynamic of broadcast television before deregulation when the networks were prevented from favoring their own studios.

As for the troubles at Disney, I think Marshall underestimates how much of a rake-stepping idiot Chapek proved to be, walking into political minefields that a competent CEO would have seen a mile off (see the video below), spectacularly screwing up major releases ("the worst opening for a Disney Animation Thanksgiving title in modern times"), spending big money on tons of streaming originals that got lost in the shuffle due to oversupply and bad marketing. Other than solid profits for the parks, perhaps the only accomplishment he has to boast about is Disney+/Hulu/ESPN passing Netflix.

Is "the future of Disney as a streaming business" in question? If we are talking about getting out of streaming entirely, then the answer is obviously no. Will there be some rethinking of strategy and goals? One would certainly hope so. There's plenty of room for cost cutting, much of it low hanging fruit. They could stop trying to maintain Hulu and Disney Plus as more or less autonomous platforms and roll them up together, perhaps with the latter as a premium tier for the former. They could start licensing more of their less valuable properties which would bring in a great deal of revenue (Paramount brings in 6 1/2 billion or so a year following this strategy) In addition to the money, broader licensing is a good way of raising the profile of these lesser properties without crowding out the shows you are trying to push.

For the record, Disney never should have been allowed to accumulate most of this IP. Congress should have stood up for the public domain and against the studio's lobbyists when copyrights were due expire and the Justice Department should have blocked the Fox merger, but they didn't and any analysis worth listening to is going to take these facts into account.