or Yes Another Blog Post About Movie/TV Stuff or TV’s Just Better With Some Blood, Swearing, and T&A

Let’s clear one thing up right away – I’m not counting The Bachelorette  or Breaking Amish as “good TV.” I don’t care how much you love them, I’m not counting them. So if shows like that are what you consider to be the “best shows” on TV, you’re probably going to hate this column. For everyone else . . .

Let’s take a quick look at some of the “quality” shows (and the scare quotes don’t mean that some of these shows aren’t flat-out amazing) that are airing right now, either currently on air or in-between seasons: Mad Men (AMC), Hannibal (NBC), The Good Wife (CBS), Louie (FX), 24 (FOX), Homeland (SHOWTIME) etc., etc.  Plus there’s shows like Breaking Bad, The West Wing, and The Shield that have finished their time on air. Not a bad bunch, right?

But now let’s glance over HBO’s current crop: Game of Thrones, True Detective, Boardwalk Empire, Girls, Veep, Silicon Valley, True Blood, and The Newsroom. And I’m probably missing something. And that’s without counting shows that have concluded their runs like The Sopranos, Deadwood, Oz, Six Feet Under, Eastbound and Down, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Generation Kill, Band of Brothers, and oh, that little thing called The Wire.

I’m not listing all the great (or even good) shows from the other networks, but the point I’m trying to make should be clear from that list: a huge number of the “best TV shows” are from HBO (and yes, I know “best” is subjective and all, but work with me here, willya?). Why is that? There’s a couple reasons this could be true (and some are even economics-related and not just based around my pro-creativity-in-movies/tv rants), but to do so, I’m gonna take a quick detour to explain (as best I can) how most TV works:

In Brief: A writer pitches a show to a Network (capitalized for a reason), either based on a concept or a script they’ve written. If the Network likes the pitch, they order a pilot, the first episode of a series. If the pilot turns out well (and sometimes even when it doesn’t, depending on who owes who a favor and other boardroom BS), the Network can order the show to series, that is, order more episodes (12 extra for a cable series, 21 extra for CBS/NBC/ABC/FOX basic network tv) to fill out a season. The Network then sells ad space for the show, and the more anticipated the show is (based on stars, pedigree, whatever), the more money they make off the add spaces. Once the show airs, people tune in to watch it, and the number of people that watch the first airing of an episode live is then registered as a show’s Nielsen Rating for the week. In normal people speak, the higher the rating, the more viewers, the more viewers, the more the Network can charge for ad space, and if the show is doing well, it gets to keep making episodes. Basically, as long as a show gets decent ratings, it can stay on air because it’s making money for the Network. This is true for most networks, such as the “Big Four” mentioned above, AMC, TMC, Comedy Central, TNT, USA, FX, etc.

HBO does not work like that.

HBO and channels like Showtime and Starz are subscriber-based, or premium channels, which means people pay their cable company extra to get those channels on their TV. HBO doesn’t have ads because it charges upfront for its services, and thus doesn’t need them (plus people are, in part, paying to not have ads play on HBO).

Still with me? Great. So what does this all have to do with HBO’s shows being, on average, better than everybody else’s? And how is that economics? Well this is the part where I tell you, since I know you all must be breathless with anticipation (and bear in mind that what I’m saying doesn’t mean great shows can’t appear on other networks; AMC is home to Breaking Bad and Mad Men after all). HBO’s shows are better because HBO the company doesn’t have to care about how many people watch them.

That sounds weird, I know. To clarify: yes, HBO cares about subscribers. More subscribers = more money, which is what HBO wants. So they do care about demand in that sense. But the actual number of people who watch a given show is totally irrelevant. Because people pay up front for the premium channel, it doesn’t affect HBO whether or not they make use of what they paid for. Money has already changed hands. And because there’s no ads on premium networks, they don’t care about how many people watch their shows live because they don’t need viewers to bring in advertisers to bring in money. AMC has to worry about how many people watch Mad Men every week – if ratings are slipping, they can’t make money off of it, and the budget for the show (its Average Total Cost (per episode)) might become larger than the money it makes off of ads each week (its Total Revenue). That’s why shows that, while good or even great TV, such as Awake, Firefly, Twin Peaks, etc. get cancelled – they just aren’t making money, because nobody’s really watching them. Because of this, most network shows have to play it safe (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and Hannibal being three recent exceptions to the rule). If they upset the status quo too much, audiences might not stick with them, and so they follow the rules. That’s why you see so may crime or medical dramas that are all pretty much the same on TV.

Not having to worry about viewers gives the showrunners of programs like Game of Thrones or True Detective the chance to take huge risks in their storytelling and approach to TV, and this, in many cases, pays off by creating better shows (HBO is also able to give them bigger budgets to play with, but that’s not the focus here). With potential viewers paying up front for the service, revenue is already taken care of. It also helps that because they’re on a premium channel, HBO’s programs aren’t regulated by the FCC, which allows them to tackle stories and content other shows simply aren’t allowed to (which is why Game of Thrones is currently the only place you can get your sexposition fix on TV). These two factors combine to create an absolute freedom of creation, allowing the writers and directors (and actors) at HBO to focus entirely on the art, and not necessarily on creating something that will entice people to tune in every week.

And it’s not like people don’t tune in: Game of Thrones pulls in a huge audience for a premium cable show; True Detective’s finale crashed HBO Go. It’s just that the viewership is incidental to the art. It’s not the goal, it’s the side effect.  And for a lot of these shows, this has resulted in increased audience demand – see the aforementioned about True Detective, note how Game of Thrones has only gotten more popular since its first season, hell, even Girls has had a cultural impact. The demand for HBO shows is high, but it’s that way because the shows are good, and they’re good because HBO’s business model allows them to take chances (HBO is also one of the best places to work as a creative, by all accounts).

I’m not saying that all HBO shows a great, some of them aren’t even that good (I’m looking at you Entourage). But HBO is the only place a show like Treme could exist. That show would have died in three episodes on a basic network, if it even got picked up. The Wire probably would’ve died there too. But because HBO is subscriber-based, shows like that can exist, even thrive. The Wire isn’t considered the best TV show of all time for nothing. That’s why the best shows are on HBO. Because advertisers don’t even come into it. Because HBO’s method of commerce, their economics, makes it about the art, not the product.

It’s all about making great TV.

The U.S. is a second-class blockbuster nation.

(All box office statistics from Box Office Mojo)

As more and more Hollywood studio tentpoles do more and more of their business overseas, the above statement becomes more and more true. America, while still a box-office titan, is becoming a second-class blockbuster nation. But not just to any one country – to the rest of the world as a whole. Look at some recent examples:

Pacific Rim  – Worldwide Gross: $411,002,906;  Domestic Gross: $101,802,906 (24.8%);  Foreign Gross: $309,200,000 (75.2%)

Gravity – Worldwide: $716,392,705;  Domestic: $274,092,705 (38.3%);  Foreign: $442,300,000 (61.7%)

The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – Worldwide: $633,169,864;  Domestic: $172,169,864 (27.2%);  Foreign: $416,000,000 (72.8%) – (still in theaters)

Notice a trend? These three films aren’t isolated incidents, but part of a larger pattern that shows a massive shift not necessarily in how American films do overseas (they’ve always been massively successful in foreign cinemas; the majority of screens in other countries show U.S. films, often times dubbed, as opposed to movies from their own country), but in how this money compares to the business these films do here. Foreign box-office is no longer just a portion of a film’s overall take, for blockbusters, it’s often times the biggest portion. Three of last year’s 5 top-grossing films (#2, Iron Man 2, #3, Frozen, and #4, Despicable Me 2) did more than 60% of their business overseas, while the other two in the top 5 (#1, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and #5, Man of Steel), accounted for more than 50% of their box-office from foreign grosses. And we’re not talking chump change.

Put simply, foreign box-office rules blockbuster movies today (indie films and studio prestige pictures play in a different, less expensive ballpark). If Pacific Rim gets a sequel, it’s because international audiences want it, not because U.S. moviegoers do (not that I’d complain about getting Guillermo Del Toro another $190 million dollar movie to play with). The Amazing Spider-Man 2 may be getting stomped on in the U.S. by the combined power of Godzilla and Zack Effron’s abs, but overseas it’s doing pretty  well (even though its overall take will probably be less than the first ASM, and therefore be the lowest-grossing film of the series; that’s a conversation for another time).

Why is this happening? Well one reason might be the fact that foreign audiences are just hungrier for special-effect filled, blockbuster films. In the U.S. we’re very much used to seeing these kinds of pictures. In fact, the average moviegoer might be confounded by the very idea of a blockbuster that doesn’t rely heavily on CGI and other digital wizardry. The studio system of the U.S. is rich, and the infrastructure is constructed in such a way that studios here can afford to bankroll $250 million dollar films (like ASM2), while studios in other countries simply can’t. Spain, for example, has a very weak, highly exclusive film industry, and can’t afford to spend even $100 million on a tentpole film (and for those of you who think $100 million is high, you don’t know Hollywood – most tentpole films cost between $150 and $200 million, with some bigger films like Spider-Man or X-Men: Days of Future Past getting $250 million or higher budgets). These countries aren’t domestically capable of producing CGI spectacle films, and the U.S. is happy to fill that gap for viewers. Foreign markets aren’t as oversaturated with blockbusters as the U.S. is – many countries (such as Spain and South Korea) have quota systems in place to ensure domestic films get into theaters, thus preventing Hollywood from totally dominating, but without comparable studios, these countries have no other way to fulfill demand for spectacle other than to release U.S. films. Foreign audiences get from American pictures what they can’t get from their own.

To that, I’d like to posit another idea: maybe the U.S. is losing its sense of filmgoing awe. We are living in an age of casual magic (and I strongly suggest you read the linked article, both because its author is an excellent writer, and because it raises some powerful points about films and filmmaking today). Because of all these blockbusters, we have become used to seeing the amazing. We expect it. And filmmakers are still trying to figure out how to wow us again. That’s why a lot of these movies don’t make as much money at the domestic box office as they do abroad. In America, we look at a giant robot wrestling with a massive monster in the middle of the Pacific ocean and shrug to say “what else you got?” In an age where pretty much anything we can imagine can be created on a computer, filmmakers have exploited their new abilities so much that we’ve become numb to it. Spectacle has become so much of a focus that actual storytelling has become lost in the process, and the box office says that as a nation, we appear to be unimpressed.

But all is not lost. Some filmmakers are still trying to create magic that awes us. Alfonso Cuarón, with Gravity, is proof of that. So is Gaerth Edwards, who’s Godzilla was just released last Friday. These, and others, are movies that treat their massive budgets and CGI wizardry not as a fact but an opportunity. They want to show us things we’ve never seen before, but more importantly, they want us to be amazed by them. For filmmakers like this, a blockbuster isn’t an obligation to throw a bunch of money and pixels at a screen and hope audiences will swallow whatever crap they wrap it around (I’m looking at you, Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Transformers). It’s a chance to create.  And maybe U.S. audiences are catching onto that idea. The box-office numbers for Gravity and Godzilla are prove that. Audiences are demanding blockbusters that give them the unexpected, that show them something truly awe-inspiring, and there are filmmakers fighting to do just that.

I hope they win.

Neighbors destroys Spider-Man at the box-office

Sony executives are not having a good week. The company’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 apparently just can’t stick: after a $91 million first-place opening last weekend (which, for everyone who doesn’t read box office reports like a film nerd, is a huge opening), the sequel dropped to a second-place $37.2 million, with newcomer comedy Neighbors taking the top spot with $51 million – more than $10 million above most box-office predictions, and a huge success for an $18 million comedy (again, for non-film nerds: a movie typically needs to make at least double its production budget in theaters to make a profit, since marketing costs are not included in budgets; Neighbors passed that mark in three days, while Spider-Man needs to make about $750 million worldwide to be considered a success).

Why the upset? More specifically, why did Spider-Man fall so far (it had a bigger drop than is typical for a tentpole in week 2) and Neighbors absolutely crush expectations? There’s a couple of possibilities when looking at the situation economically (since as much as I would like this to be about the actual quality of the movies, this is an econ class post), involving supply and demand. It’s entirely possible that Spider-Man is the victim of “blockbuster fatigue” – it’s entirely a formula movie, sold to audiences entirely on the basis of its spectacle. And audiences have a lot of spectacle to choose from. The film market is flush with images and films that were impossible even five years ago; now every film studio is off on a special-effect superhero blockbuster craze. Moviegoers have a lot of superhero movies to choose from (Captain America: The Winter Soldier is still in theaters; X-Men: Days of Future Past is coming out soon and audiences may be waiting for that), so if the product is mediocre, skeptical filmgoers might choose to see something else, and wait for a better blockbuster. Demand for superhero blockbusters is high, sure, but not so high that audiences don’t discriminate at least a little. Longevity in theaters is often determined by quality and resulting word-of-mouth (i.e. Captain America, which got great reviews (and was pretty damn good too), topped the box office for three weeks running).  Hence, Spider-Man‘s massive opening weekend haul and fast drop off.

The success of Neighbors is perhaps easier to explain in supply-demand terms: there’s a distinct lack of comedies in theaters at the moment (the most recent prior to neighbors was The Other Women, and that was the first in a while), so Neighbors was able to satisfy a greater-than-expected audience demand. And it should have a good run – the supply of comedies is fairly low for the next few weeks until Adam Sandler’s Blended is released (and will likely be swallowed opposite Days of Future Past). And it doesn’t hurt that the movie is supposed to be hilarious to boot.