Budgets, Marketing, and Lies

LA Times reports that a dozen summer movies will top $100 million just for their marketing costs.  It makes you wonder how much it cost to make the movie itself.  Earlier this year, the MPAA, which normally gives the average studio movie budget for the year, declined to give out the budget statistics for 2008, saying: 

"Year-to-year average costs comparisons are really useless and misleading,'' he said. "I'm not sure what these numbers mean anymore." (Quote from LA Times).  

The biggest marketing cost for the studios is TV ads.  It can cost as much as $3 million for a 30-second spot.  But they say that TV ads are the only way to get a mass audience.

According to the numbers crunched by Thomas Trenker, the founder of Institute for International Film Financing, the theatre-released movies that made a profit are the ones that spent at least the same amount on marketing as they did on making the movie itself.  It's an interesting stat except for the fact that filmmakers and studios regularly lie about their film budget.  For an interesting perspective on the studios lying about movie budgets, check out the LA Times article, Why Everyone Lies About Their Movie Budgets.  The article's author says that studios tend to say the budget was lower than it really was.  In my personal experience, indie filmmakers tend to inflate their budget numbers so it doesn't smell like the backyard production it really is (for the record, I am very pro-backyard production.  I think it's absolutely ridiculous that movies cost as much as they do.).  Many of these indie budget lies can be significant, say, by an order of magnitude...

Susan Ee
www.feraldream.com