damianHow Aussie Box Office is Comparing
August 12th 2006 06:34
For those who may be wondering how the local film industry has been going in relation to previous years I’ve done up a simple graph to compare the last twenty years of box office takings. It’s not the most scientific way of doing things and the figures are a bit dodgy (when I put the list together I left out movies I thought weren’t that Australian- e.g. Queen of the Damned and The Phantom- but then forgot what films I’d left out. There were only a half dozen or so) and I left out all films earning less than $800,000 but, dodginess to the contrary, it does give a fairly accurate picture of what’s going on.
One important aspect of the graph is the second blue line. Successful Aussie box office years have a nasty habit of being dominated by one-off hits that outweigh all other releases for the year. Because of this I’ve added the lower line that shows what the figures are like without the top rating movie of that year. Hence 1986 is dominated by Crocodile Dundee and 1995 is dominated by Babe, both movies single handedly creating that years box office total.
So how is 2006 going? Well, with eight months down things are far from spectacular but they’re definitely not dire. For some reason we have a back-log of local product being released over the last half of the year, some of which will be appearing in the next few weeks. As you can see, were the industry to make no more money this year then things would be a nasty repeat of the infamous 2004 season, but with the new films being released soon, Jindabyne doing okay and the box-office boosting AFI awards still to be held we could very well be on our way past $20 million. To do so would mean five $2 million films, not hard considering we’ve already had one $3 million and two $2 million films this year so far.
Personally, I’m barraking for the blue line. To call 2006 a success would require plenty of successful films across the board and I reckon a good solid knock of $20 million from the blue line will give us that. Sure, other people will argue that one big mainstream hit will have a better impact than many, less visible films but I think that sheer force of scale will have the same effect. People walking into their local video store in a few months time will be coming face to face with a good slab of local product, building an awareness of a local industry rather than a local film. That, I think, is worth just as much as the advertising generated by a single hit and will have a longer lasting impact. What do you think?
One important aspect of the graph is the second blue line. Successful Aussie box office years have a nasty habit of being dominated by one-off hits that outweigh all other releases for the year. Because of this I’ve added the lower line that shows what the figures are like without the top rating movie of that year. Hence 1986 is dominated by Crocodile Dundee and 1995 is dominated by Babe, both movies single handedly creating that years box office total.
Red = Total Box Office, Blue = Total minus top film
So how is 2006 going? Well, with eight months down things are far from spectacular but they’re definitely not dire. For some reason we have a back-log of local product being released over the last half of the year, some of which will be appearing in the next few weeks. As you can see, were the industry to make no more money this year then things would be a nasty repeat of the infamous 2004 season, but with the new films being released soon, Jindabyne doing okay and the box-office boosting AFI awards still to be held we could very well be on our way past $20 million. To do so would mean five $2 million films, not hard considering we’ve already had one $3 million and two $2 million films this year so far.
Personally, I’m barraking for the blue line. To call 2006 a success would require plenty of successful films across the board and I reckon a good solid knock of $20 million from the blue line will give us that. Sure, other people will argue that one big mainstream hit will have a better impact than many, less visible films but I think that sheer force of scale will have the same effect. People walking into their local video store in a few months time will be coming face to face with a good slab of local product, building an awareness of a local industry rather than a local film. That, I think, is worth just as much as the advertising generated by a single hit and will have a longer lasting impact. What do you think?
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