This book explores the complex, multifaceted and contested subject of risk in the film business. How risk is understood and managed has a substantial impact upon which films are financed, produced and seen. Founded on substantial original research accessing the highest level of industry practitioners, this book examines the intertwined activity of independents, large media companies including major studios, the international marketplace, and related audio-visual sectors such as high-end television. The book shows how risk is generally framed, or even intuited, rather than calculated, and that this process occurs across a sliding scale of formality. This work goes beyond broad creative industries characterisations of a "risky sector" and concentrations on Box Office return modelling, to provide a missing middle. This means a coherent analytic coverage of business organisation and project construction to address the complex practicalities that mobilise strategic operations in relation to risk, often in unseen business-to-business contexts. Informed by economic sociology’s concepts addressing market assemblage and valuation, alongside applications of science and technology studies to media and communications, the book respects both the powerful roles of social and institutional actors, and affordances of new technologies in dealing with the persistent known unknown – the audience. Examining a persistent business issue in a new way, this book analyses top level industry practice through established mechanisms, and innovations like data analytics. The result is a book that will be essential reading for scholars with an interest in the film business as well as risk management more broadly.

Scholars of film studies will appreciate this daring and inventive collection, and readers with a general interest in film studies will enjoy its accessible style.

Why the future of popular culture will revolve around ever bigger bets on entertainment products, by one of Harvard Business School's most popular professors What's behind the phenomenal success of entertainment businesses such as Warner Bros., Marvel Entertainment, and the NFL—along with such stars as Jay-Z, Lady Gaga, and LeBron James? Which strategies give leaders in film, television, music, publishing, and sports an edge over their rivals? Anita Elberse, Harvard Business School's expert on the entertainment industry, has done pioneering research on the worlds of media and sports for more than a decade. Now, in this groundbreaking book, she explains a powerful truth about the fiercely competitive world of entertainment: building a business around blockbuster products—the movies, television shows, songs, and books that are hugely expensive to produce and market—is the surest path to long-term success. Along the way, she reveals why entertainment executives often spend outrageous amounts of money in search of the next blockbuster, why superstars are paid unimaginable sums, and how digital technologies are transforming the entertainment landscape. Full of inside stories emerging from Elberse's unprecedented access to some of the world's most successful entertainment brands, Blockbusters is destined to become required reading for anyone seeking to understand how the entertainment industry really works—and how to navigate today's high-stakes business world at large.

The International Film Business examines the independent film sector as a business, and addresses the specific skills and knowledge it demands. It describes both the present state of the industry, the significant digital and social media developments that are continuing to take place, and what changes these might effect. The International Film Business: describes and analyses the present structure of the film industry as a business, with a specific focus on the film value chain discusses and analyses current digital technology and how it potentially may change the structure and opportunities offered by the industry in the future provides information and advice on the different business and management skills and strategies includes case studies on a variety of films including The Guard (2011), The King’s Speech (2010), The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012), Cloverfield (2008), Pobby & Dingan (aka Opal Dream, 2005), Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2002), The Reckoning (2002)and The Mother (2003), and company case studies on Pixar, Renaissance, Redbus and Zentropa. Further case studies on films that failed to go into production include Neil LaBute’s Vapor and Terry Gilliam’s Good Omens. Taking an entrepreneurial perspective on what future opportunities will be available to prepared and informed students and emerging practitioners, this text includes case studies that take students through the successes and failures of a variety of real film companies and projects and features exclusive interviews with leading practitioners in all sectors of the industry, from production to exhibition.

Movies expected to perform well can flop, whilst independent movies with low budgets can be wildly successful. In this text, De Vany casts his eye over all aspects of the business to present some intriguing conclusions.