Check out this great blog post from Screenline on 2009 Spanish box office by distributor and genre. Author Ellen Pittleman is a veteran studio executive, who most recently served as SVP, International Co-Productions and Worldwide Acquisitions for Paramount Pictures.
"Regionally, both Valencia and Catalonia have subsidies that are among Europe’s most generous and are unaffected by the new law. Valencia’s newly approved €18.9m subsidy system offers a tax rebate of up to 20% of local spend."
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Check out this great blog post from Baseline Intelligence on the story behind an indie film acquisition. Author Gary Rubin is President of First Independent Pictures and has over twenty years of experience in the motion picture and television businesses, having held an array of positions that cross the entire gamut of distribution, acquisitions, production and management.
"Given the difficult current dvd market (dvd should make up more than half of a film's revenue in most cases if things are right- and things haven't been that right lately), this one wasn't an easy acquisition for anyone for a simple reason: in dvd, you have one day, the street date, to nab the whole country's attention."
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Check out this great blog post from Baseline Intelligence on the financial state of Independent Film. Author Louise Levison is the wrote "Filmmakers & Financing: Business Plans for Independents" and publisher/editor of "The Film Entrepreneur: A Newsletter for the Independent Filmmaker and Investors."
"Throughout the first half of the year I have been reading about the “collapse” of independent film. Yet the domestic box office for independent films at $1.75 billion was 5.3 percent ahead of the same period in 2009 as of June 20th as well as holding at 35 percent of the total box office of $4.96 billion which showed a 4.1 percent gain over the same period."
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Check out this interesting blog post from the ScriptJournal Blog on writing original screenplays. AuthorPen Densham: co-founder of Trilogy Entertainment Group considers himself a triple-hyphenate: a writer – producer – & director. He writes for both TV and feature films and is responsible for reviving 'The Outer Limits' and 'The Twilight Zone' to television, Robin Hood Prince of Thieves, etc.
"Making movies that are clones of other movies mean diminishing returns. It is tough to create excitement, and reward the novelty experience with movie ideas that have been run round the track a dozen times and are so threadbare the only way to excite an audience is to throw money at them."
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Check out this interesting blog post from the ScriptJournal Blog on the process of self-marketing screenplays. Author Tim Earneart currently serves as one of many creative director's at Microsoft. Through his 13 years of experience at various ad agencies, he has wrote, produced, and directed TV commercials and interactive content for a number of Fortune 500 companies that have included complicated green screen video shoots with actors and models to heavy VFX pieces.
"At one point when I was writing both of my scripts, I think I was like most unproduced writers out there – thinking to myself, “God, if I only had an agent or manager! My worries about selling these scripts would be solved!” I eventually realized… that isn’t true at all. Just because you’re written the next blockbuster masterpiece, doesn’t mean your job is done!"
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Check out this great blog post from Baseline Intelligence on worthy TV Pilots that were left behind in 2010. Author Neely Swanson is the former Senior Vice President of Development for David E. Kelley Productions and presently an adjunct professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.
"One network left more good material on the table than any other and deserves an entire article – ABC. Although not entirely dead, “Edgar Floats,” written by Rand Ravich and starring Tom Cavanaugh and one of my all time favorite, but criminally underused, character actors Jason Kravitz, is about a police psychologist who finds himself in financial straits and must take up a second job – as a bounty hunter working for his ex-father-in-law."
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Check out this interesting blog post from the ScriptJournal Blog on writing horror screenplays. Author Ben Magid entered the entertainment industry in 2006 with the sale of PAN to New Line Cinema, a revisionist take on Peter Pan that garnered mention on the Black List. He went on to write HACK/SLASH for Rogue Pictures, scheduled to shoot early 2010.
"Here's an odd conundrum that applies to writing horror scripts: oftentimes, what reads scary on the page doesn't play scary on the screen, and vice versa. It's an odd effect, and most producers and execs don't grasp this. Horror is very much about mood and tone and how well a director can shoot the story."
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Check out this great blog post from Baseline Intelligence on the decline of the Daytime Soap Opera. Author Jim Romanovich is the President of Worldwide Media and Entertainment for Associated Television International. He is entering his 25th year in show business as an actor, producer, and distributor.
"The decline in ratings for the daytime soaps was apparent for most with the exception of the Young and The Restless, which actually had a three year resurgence, claiming the top position from General Hospital in 1988 with an 8.1 rating and climbed to an 8.6 rating by 1993. In 2010, they have dropped to a 3.7 rating and are still number one despite losing more than half of their audience."
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Check out this interesting blog post from the ScriptJournal Blog on writing a sellable screenplay. Author Lee Zahavi Jessup runs Scriptshark.com. Lee is a veteran of film development and production, who worked with such companies as Tapestry Films, HBO Pictures, and Gemstone Entertainment.
"Give Hollywood the sort of movies they want. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel or redefine the wheel until you get the monkey to trust you as a good banana source in the first place."
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Check out this great blog post from Screenline on 2009 Dutch box office analysis. Author Ellen Pittleman is a veteran studio executive, who most recently served as SVP, International Co-Productions and Worldwide Acquisitions for Paramount Pictures.
"Another Dutch film, historical disaster feature “The Storm” ranked ninth with a total gross of €4.6 million. However, if one was to measure performance by admissions, the film ranks fifth overall with 726,000 tickets sold."
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