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There's a legend of when Sony bought Columbia Pictures which is probably not true but the story is, after Sony bought Columbia Pictures, some Japanese executive
by gernb 4y ago
There's a legend of when Sony bought Columbia Pictures which is probably not true but the story is, after Sony bought Columbia Pictures, some Japanese executives flew over to meet with the top management at Columbia. The Columbia management explained to the Japanese execs that only 1 in 20 movies makes a profit. The Japanese executives talked to each other in Japanese and then turned back to the Columbia management and said "Please only make the profitable movies" (lol)
Just to spell it out in case the point wasn't clear. The Columbia management was trying to explain they don't know and have no way of knowing up front which movies will be good and which movies will sell and make their money back. Instead they're always gambling by funding a bunch of movies and it only works out because the few hits pay for all the non-hits.
- Ntrails 4y ago> Instead they're always gambling by funding a bunch of movies and it only works out because the few hits pay for all the non-hits. So, Venture Capital? xD
- andrelaszlo 4y agoI get your point, but it doesn't necessarily implicate that you should try to replicate precious hits? Why pretend you've found the formula when it's clear you have no idea? It seems like every celebrity had their shot at a sitcom in the 90s for example. Is it like the saying about nobody getting fired for buying IBM? But then, risk-taking within that narrow space was limited. From the Seinfeld Wikipedia article: 'The pilot was first screened to a group of two dozen NBC executives in Burbank, California, in early 1989. It did not yield the explosion of laughter garnered by the pilots for the decade's previous NBC successes like The Cosby Show and The Golden Girls. Brandon Tartikoff was not convinced the show would work. A Jewish man from New York himself, Tartikoff characterized it as "Too New York, too Jewish".' It was almost not even aired. Squid Game seems to have been a gamble. I'd like to see more like that, but I'm afraid they'll over-fit to that success as well. US remake perhaps? Sequels, prequels, spin-offs. "The 100 must-see dystopian Korean horror shows on Netflix 2023“?
- bsenftner 4y agoSquid Game's success is partially due to international mainstream audiences not being familiar with Korean overly dramatic narrative style. Once one has seen and gotten used to their melodrama style, they are in a rut just like US laugh track sitcoms.
- ZeroGravitas 4y agoThis seems like a mirror to the other classic apocryphal story where the IBM ask a new Japanese manufacturer to only have a 3/1000 defect rate and the Japanese seem alarmed by this request. When the product arrives there's a seperate little box with the defective items that have been manufactured seperately to meet the spec. (There's also the "half of my advertising is effective, I don't know which half" line)
- scarface74 4y agoThe half of advertising is effective trope hasn’t been true on the internet for over a decade. Advertisers on the internet know exactly how effective their advertising is.
- cj 4y ago> on the internet The GP didn’t limit advertising to the internet. Imagine you’re a law firm advertising on radio, billboard, bus stop benches, AND Instagram/Facebook. Do you really know which half is converting?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hyperman1 4y agoMost of the internet ads I see are for stuff not available in my country, and if they even bother to translate, it's pretty random what language they choose. Just my IP adress or browser heathers should tell em both. That's assuming the product category is something I care for. If they know exactly how effective their advertising is, they have too many dollars they want to get rid of.
- scarface74 4y agoAd networks don’t get paid for targeted ads unless you do something. In the case of Google, you click on them and in the case of Amazon affiliates, you buy something. They aren’t paying for ads based on how many people see the ad.
- zeroth32 4y agoUnprofitable movies is just accounting. Something to do with Hollywood union compensation or something.
- scarface74 4y agoThere are obvious flops based on how much it cost to make and how much it made in the box office.
- tough 4y agoYeah, and there's also a Hollywood Accounting entry in the wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting :shrugs: