Customer Reviews

The Big Picture: Money and Power in Hollywood

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An informative read that will provide the reader with a good understanding and overview of the economics of the film industry. The author provides a brief history of the major studios (consolidated into the current Big Six: Disney, Time Warner, Fox, Viacom, NBC Universal, and Sony) at the beginning and the leading men that transformed the business from post WWII into the eighties and nineties. These men provided the initial vision for licensing, international distribution, integration with home electronics and the continuing digitization of the industry.

The economics for the industry are that films at the US box office are money losers but once the revenue streams from International Box Office, DVD, Pay TV, Network TV, Foreign TV, product licensing and other forms of distribution are collected even box office failures can break even or even become profitable. The studios have developed a compensation system for the major players in the process to share in the revenue but not all of them through some unique accounting practices. Everyone knows about this but still willingly participate.

The other very interesting note is that the true money makers are films that are fairly consistent in plot (action) and audience (young) and character (young hero/super hero) but all the studios continue to make the adult movies and art house independents to please the inner world of Hollywood.

If you want to understand how Hollywood became what it is today then this book ticks all the boxes: it tracks Hollywood from its beginnings in the early-20th century and the early part of the book focusses on the development of the big six media corporations in the world and who runs them and why TV and DVD are now far more important to the bottom line than straight theatrical release.

Some of the real examples of Hollywood's incredible loss-making ability are startling: one studio's 'greatest success' actually lost over US$60m, and you learn that the drivers of money and power are not the strong but actually it all boils down to children: what they want and don't want fuels the whole industry.

Fascinating stuff and very easy to read...five stars, no questions asked.

The Big Picture by Edward Jay Epstein is well written and seems to be a very thorough and perceptive analysis of how the new money Hollywood system works. Epstein seems to have inside knowledge as well as a full account of how the old studio system has evolved into it's present day way of working. Very satisfied with the information I gained reading Epstein's account. Very highly recommended.
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I read a lot of non-fiction books about the film industry in general. This one was full of useful info but it didn't explore any new territory. It was written factually without much regard for easy reading. Useful to learn about some of the business practices in Hollywood if you haven't learned much already. A decent primer.

Epstein gives a fascinating account of the rise of Hollywood in the early part of the 20th century, focusing on the role intellectual property law played in the that development (the fact that patents in technology related to the making and showing of movies were controlled by the Edison Trust, located on the East coast, forced would-be movie moguls to relocate to the West coast away from courts sympathetic to the Edison Trust). He also explains how historical and legal developments (studio ownership of the means of production and the resulting anti-trust lawsuit brought by the federal government) led to the rise and fall of the studio system by the 1950s, and how federal legislation made it impossible for television networks to produce their own shows in the 1970s, a void the movie studios rushed to fill. Epstein details of the creative accounting methods and other legalisms that the six major movie studios use to maximize profit in the modern world of movie finance, where licensing revenue and home video sales far outweigh box office receipts.

jeffbrownlegal@gmail.com

An excellent book revealing a small portion of the creative financing, empty promises to investors and talent, and complex tax structures that go into the entertainment machine. A very good work on the subject.

But sadly, it missed a chance to explain why unsound financial decisions are made on some projects: Sexual favors. It is well documented that many of those with gatekeeper access to the business demand sex for career advancement. The casting couch is sadly not a myth. Epstein's book would have been enhanced by at least mentioning this detestable subject.

This book contains significantly more information that the newer work (2010), and I would suggest not buying the later book as it is more of an addendum and adds no new significant insights.