An investigative report from Film Industry Analyst Stephen Follows and Founder of The Numbers Bruce Nash

Breakout indie hits may be some of the most romantic stories in the movie business.

The plucky lone film-maker battles the odds to make their dream film, putting naysayers in their place when it becomes a box office sensation, bringing them fame and fortune beyond their wildest dreams…

But are breakout hits random events that no-one can plan for or do they share some kind of DNA that can teach us how to make successful independent films, and also what genres or techniques to avoid?

To answer these questions, we began with a list of over 3,000 films from The Numbers’ financial database, investigating full financial details, including North American (i.e. “domestic”) and international box office, video sales and rentals, TV and ancillary revenue. We narrowed our focus to study feature films released between 2000 and 2015, budgeted between $500k and $3 million, which generated at least $10 million in Producer’s Net Profit, using a standard distribution model where the distributor charges a 30% fee.

This produced a list of 63 films in total: roughly four films a year over the 15 years under consideration. Almost all of the movies will be familiar to followers of independent film, from small films that became Oscar hopefuls, like Beasts of the Southern Wild and Winter’s Bone to horror movies like Insidious and The Purge that got picked up by the major studios and became box office sensations. With the list in hand, we looked for common themes and found (with a small number of exceptions) that the breakout hits broke down naturally into four types.

Model One: Extreme, Clear-Concept Horror Films

It will come as no surprise to most producers that horror films feature prominently on the list of top low-budget breakout successes.

 Most Profitable Films: Insidious, Monsters, The Devil Inside, Paranormal Activity 2, Dead Snow.

 MPAA Rating: 82% are rated ‘R’, 12% PG-13 and 6% not rated.

 Running Time: Relatively short, with an average of 94 minutes and no film ran over two hours.

 Critical Reviews: Average to poor. Highest rated film in this category is Buried, which has a Metascore of just 65 out of 100. The average Metascore across the dataset was just 49 out of 100.

 Audience Reviews: More supportive than the critics, but still not above average for most films, at an average of 6.2 out of 10 on IMDb.

 Release Patterns: Two very distinct release patterns – half played in fewer than around 100 theatres while the other half played in over 1,500 theatres.

 Income Streams: 30% from theatrical, 64% from home video and 6% from TV and other ancillary income.

 Income Location: 46% of income was from the US & Canada and 54% international.

Model Two: Documentaries with Built-In Audiences and/or Powerful Stories

The second group of films that stood out were documentaries.

 Most Profitable Films: Exit Through the Gift Shop, An Inconvenient Truth, Marley, Tyson, Bowling for Columbine.

 MPAA Rating: A healthy spread across all ratings, with the most common being PG-13.

 Running Time: Average of 102, although a wide range from 80 minutes up to 144 minutes.

 Critical Reviews: Very high, with a Metascore average of 79 out of 100.

 Audience Reviews: Very high, an average IMDb rating of 7.8 out of 10.

 Release Pattern: Small number of theatres, with most playing in under 250 theatres and the widest release being An Inconvenient Truth in 587 theatres.

 Income Streams: 75% of income comes from home video, 18% theatrical and 7% via other sources.

 Income Location: 58% international and 42% domestic.

Critical reviews seem vital for this type of film to break out and it’s interesting to note that the documentaries with the lowest scoring critical ratings (The September Issue at 69 and Religulous at 56) each had strong inbuilt audiences (‘Vogue / fashion’ and ‘Bill Maher / religious scepticism’).

In fact, only a handful of the documentaries on the list don’t have an obvious audience: Man on Wire, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, and Searching for Sugar Man are the only ones that needed to find a crowd. The others were either about someone already very famous (Marley, Tyson, Senna, Amy… note the one-name titles!) or played very directly to a receptive audience (Inside Job, Blackfish, An Inconvenient Truth etc).

Model Three: Validating, Feel-Good Religious Films

Speaking of receptive audiences, the third group of films we found were faith-based films.

 Most Profitable Films: Fireproof, God’s Not Dead, To Save a Life, War Room, Courageous.

 MPAA Rating: Two-thirds were rated PG and the remaining third were PG-13.

 Running Time: Fairly long, all were over 110 minutes and the average was two hours.

 Critical Reviews: Incredibly poor, with an average Metascore of just 26 out of 100.

 Audience Reviews: Similar to the horror pool, with an average IMDb rating of 6.3 out of 10.

 Type of Release: An average of 1,273 theatres with the widest being War Room at 1,945 theatres.

 Income Streams: 60% from home video, 31% from theatrical and 9% from television and other ancillary streams.

 Income Location: 90% of income came from North American sources with just 10% coming from outside the US and Canada.

Two things stand out with these films. First, they make virtually all of their money in the United States. Second, they get very bad reviews from mainstream movie reviewers. The strength of these movies isn’t necessarily their quality so much as the message; they deliver to an audience that is interested in what they have to say.

Model Four: Very High Quality Dramas

At the other end of the spectrum, at least in the eyes of professional film reviewers, come very high quality dramas. Almost half of these films were American productions, with the rest coming from a wide variety of countries including Germany, Argentina, Mexico, the UK, France and Poland.

 Most Profitable US Dramas: Half Nelson, Waitress, Blue Valentine, Fruitvale Station.

 Most Profitable Foreign Dramas: The Lives of Others, The Motorcycle Diaries, Amores Perros, Sin Nombre.

 MPAA Rating: The vast majority are R-rated, with just a third being rated PG-13.

 Running Time: A wide range, from 81 minutes up to 154 minutes long.

 Critical Reviews: Extremely high, with an average Metascore of 81 out of 100.

 Audience Reviews: Similarly high, with an average IMDb rating of 7.5 out of 10.

 Type of Release: Small release, with all but four playing to fewer than 300 theatres.

 Income Streams: 67% from home video, 27% from theatrical and 6% from other sources.

 Income Location: 66% of income for US dramas came from the US and Canada, whereas the reverse was true with non-US dramas, with 64% of income coming from international sources.

The lowest rated film in this category received a Metascore of 68 out of 100, which was higher than all of the films within the Horror breakout success category.

A common thread among these films is awards attention. While they might not be big enough to win a lot of main-category Oscars, these are the films that have picked up a bunch of Independent Spirit Awards, Best Foreign Language Film at the Academy Awards, and got some screenwriting and/or acting Oscar nominations.

Do the Films Have to be Any Good?

An interesting finding from this research is that the quality of the film is only relevant for certain types of films.

Religious films received extremely low ratings from critics but had mixed ratings from audiences.

 Horror films showed a range: some were disliked by both audiences and critics (such as The Devil Inside), while others had middling support from both camps (such as Monsters) and then there were films which audiences enjoyed but critics were lukewarm towards (such as Dead Man’s Shoes).

 Documentaries and Dramas were all popular with audiences and the vast majority also received extremely high ratings from critics.

If we plot this on a graph, we can see just how distinct these three sub-categories are:

http://americanfilmmarket.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/AFM-indie-breakout-chart-03-2.jpg

What’s Missing?

Many of the films in the list come as no surprise, but what’s interesting is what’s missing from the list. We found…

 Virtually no comedies (Waiting… is the only out-and-out comedy on the list, and it was made at the peak of the DVD sales boom)

 No action movies

 No thrillers

 No musicals

 Virtually nothing directed at kids — Dr. Dolittle 3 was the only family movie that made our list — although we believe some animated franchises such as Barbie are very profitable but their budgets aren’t quite in our range.

Aside from the missing genres, the other notable absence is any major star involvement. Of course, this is largely a function of the budget—it’s hard to get Tom Cruise for a $3 million film—but it’s remarkable that none of these films attracted anybody who would even be called a B-list star at the time the film was made.

Lessons for Filmmakers and Producers from this Research

So we think there are a few lessons for independent film-makers who are hoping to make breakout hits:

 Some “niche” audiences are large enough to make for a very profitable market, if you can reach them. The “faith-based” film audience stands out, but there are also receptive audiences for certain types of documentaries. Having a very clear idea of your audience is the first step to making a financially successful film.

 If you’re aiming for a more general audience, quality matters. A lot. Honing your screenplay to what you think is perfection and then having it ripped apart at a workshop may be hard work, but it’s almost certainly what it takes to get a dramatic film to ultimately work with audiences, and to make back its investment.

 Look for good actors, not big stars, and do the same with all of the technical crew on a film. Fun fact: Affonso Goncalves, who edited list member Beasts of the Southern Wild also edited fellow list member Winter’s Bone and 2016 Oscar nominee Carol. Finding a good editor, cinematographer, production designer and other key members of the crew is more important for a low-budget film than blowing a big chunk of your budget on a famous (or, just as likely, previously-famous) actor or actress.

The Full List of Films

This analysis looked at feature films released between 2000 and 2015 budgeted between $500k and $3 million and which we estimate generated at least $10 million in Producer’s Net Profit. The films which fit our criteria are listed below.

RANK FILM TITLE YEAR METASCORE IMDB RATING ESTIMATED BUDGET

1 Bowling for Columbine 2002 72 8 $3,000,000

2 The Lives of Others 2006 89 8.5 $2,000,000

3 War Room 2015 26 6.2 $3,000,000

4 God’s Not Dead 2014 16 4.9 $1,150,000

5 An Inconvenient Truth” 2006 75 7.5 $1,000,000

6 Garden State 2004 67 7.6 $2,500,000

7 Insidious 2010 52 6.8 $1,500,000

8 Fireproof 2008 28 6.5 $500,000

9 Paranormal Activity 2 2010 53 5.7 $3,000,000

10 Hustle & Flow 2005 68 7.4 $2,800,000

Showing 1 to 10 of 63 entries. See the full list here:

What Types of Low-Budget Films Break Out?

Notes

 The financial figures come from a variety of sources, including people directly connected to the films, verified third-party data and computation models based on partial data and industry norms. It is possible that one or two of the individual figures are different to our predictions, though en masse we are confident of the larger picture.

 The number of theatres relates to the widest point of the film’s North American release.

About the Authors

Stephen Follows is a writer, producer and film industry analyst. In addition to film analytics, Stephen is an award-winning writer-producer and runs a production company based in Ealing Studios, London.

Bruce Nash is founder and President of Nash Information Services, LLC, the premier provider of movie industry data and research services and operator of The Numbers, a web site that provides box office and video sales tracking, and daily industry news.

July 2016 – http://americanfilmmarket.com

Anna Snoekstra must have wondered where her life was heading as she wrote her first novel while working nights at the Kino cinema in Melbourne. But even before Only Daughter is published in September, the film rights have been sold to no less than Working Title, the Universal Pictures-owned production company whose recent films include The Theory of Everything, The Danish Girl, Les Miserables and the coming Bridget Jones’s Baby. Even better, a script has been written by Erin Cressida Wilson (Secretary, The Girl on the Train) with talk of Emma Stone and Julianne Moore starring, pending a director being attached.

A delighted Snoekstra, who is just 28, tells Short Cuts the film rights to the psychological thriller were sold from a single line in the Publishers Marketplace newsletter that described the novel: a 25-year-old fugitive caught shoplifting pretends to be a decade-long missing girl and moves in with her family.

“It’s about growing up in Canberra but in America they just went crazy for it,” she says. The film, The New Winter, is to be set in Arizona. Snoekstra, who studied creative writing and cinema at the University of Melbourne then screenwriting at RMIT, has also worked as a waitress, barista, nanny, film reviewer, receptionist and “cheesemonger”. She started writing Only Daughter as a script then, finding it difficult to break into film, turned it into a novel. Having sold her second and third novels, Snoekstra is also writing a script with US-based Bronte Payne that they want to shoot in Australia.

Garry Maddox – SMH – July 20 2016

The film industry faces an “increasingly dire” outlook as audiences continue to shrink in the U.S., with too many studios producing too many tentpole films, which end up cannibalizing each other’s audiences, analyst Doug Creutz reported Friday.

The Cowen and Company entertainment expert said that there is no easy solution for Hollywood studios but that a “slow-moving consolidation” is the likely end result.

In “Another Memo to Hollywood. Prediction? Pain,” Creutz says the industry’s woes are demonstrated by the fifth consecutive year in which domestic box office demand “has taken a step function lower.” The fight for remaining audiences has become increasingly fierce as “the market appears to be condensing into fewer, but bigger, hits,” as studios crank out more films in the $100 million-plus budget range.

The analyst reports that, when the video game industry faced a similar dilemma, with fewer but bigger hits, it resulted in dramatic change. Rather than a series of mergers — the preferred result — a number of big gaming companies simply went out of the business, including THQ, Midway, Acclaim, Atari and LucasArts.

A similar breakdown in the film industry would not help investors, Creutz wrote.

“We note that even the stocks of the eventual survivors of the video game shakeout didn’t do well during most of this period, until their recent spectacular out-performance,” the Cowen report says.

Creutz offers a welter of stats to back up his contraction argument: “Last year, over 25% of total box office came from just five films, well above the average of roughly 16% from 2001-14 and the prior peak of 19% in 2012.” He called this a “consistent phenomenon.”

The top grossing films each week accounted for 33% of total box office in both 2015 and 2016, almost twice the average of 18% that prevailed in 2011-13, Creutz wrote.

And No. 1 films tend to persist, he said, noting the “nigh-unexplainable” persistence of films like “American Sniper” in 2015 and “Deadpool” this year.

It’s not only the few films, but the few studios that are taking most of the spoils.

While Disney and Universal’s combined profits were up 54% year over year and, collectively, managed 70% of total industry profit, the other studios saw profits drop 40%. “We expect this type of volatility to continue due to the narrowing of the window for hit films,” at least until there is a “likely slow-moving, consolidation,” Creutz wrote.

In many other industries, the consolidation might move more quickly, Creutz contends. But the entertainment business puts weight not just on profits but on concepts like “prestige” and “star power,” Creutz wrote. He said it would make sense for Viacom to sell Paramount — a move that is reportedly under consideration — but suggested a deal might be difficult because Viacom’s exit from the movie business would be seen as “diminishing its importance and reputation in Hollywood.”

Creutz predicts tough sledding for most of the studios in 2016, though he adds: “We expect that one or two of the companies will likely outperform our generally negative view; however, we also think picking the winners at this point is a high-risk proposition.”

A summary of some of the analyst’s predictions:

DISNEY: He calls the studio “the lead dog” and sees likely “outsized hits” in “Captain America: Civil War,” “Finding Dory” and “Star Wars: Rogue One.” But even the industry leader will face stiff competition with April’s “The Jungle Book” and its July distribution of “The BFG” for DreamWorks. Despite huge performance, Creutz worries “that investors are capitalizing what in retrospect may prove to be peak studio margins at a very high multiple.”

WARNER BROTHERS: Creutz is concerned about the company’s broad slate of 18 films for 2016, though he expressed some optimism for “likely success” in a new entry in the “Harry Potter” franchise and the kickoff of a two-film-a-year series of DC Comic films, beginning this month with “Batman vs. Superman.” A drag on performance could come from mid-budgeted films like “The Nice Guys,” “Central Intelligence,” “Sully,” “Storks,” “The Accountant” and “Collateral Beauty.” If the DC films underperform, he said, “then results could be very disappointing.”

FOX: Starting the year with runaway hit “Deadpool” sits well, but the studio’s year rests largely with three big summer sequels: “X Men Apocalypse,” “Independence Day: Resurgence” and “Ice Age: Collision Course.” Cruetz concluded: “We tend to think ‘Deadpool’ was more luck than skill (plus a heavy dose of passion from Ryan Reynolds) and so we don’t necessarily expect any success this year to be sustained.”

PARAMOUNT: “We see little hope for a significant turnaround in operating performance over the longer term, and expect this year to be characterized by continued struggles.” Creutz cites “indifferent film quality,” as an issue and too many “Zoolander 2”-type films to make up for winning franchises like “Mission Impossible,” “Star Trek” and “Transformers.”

LIONSGATE: Predicts “an uphill climb” to get back to better profitability, with focus on low- to mid-budget films and some bigger swings, like the $140-million-budget “Gods of Egypt,” missing the mark. Creutz sees a “struggle,” given the competition, for upcoming sequels such as “Divergent: Allegiant” and “Now You See Me Two.”

DREAMWORKS ANIMATION: “We think that being the 4th- or 5th- or 6th-best animated studio (behind Disney Feature Animation, Pixar, Illumination, and arguably Blue Sky and/or Warner Bros.) is not a good place to be.” Creutz worries that upcoming “Trolls” (November, 2016) and “The Boss Baby” (March 2017) will tough time in midst of competition from other animation and tentpole offerings.

James Rainey – Variety – March 4, 2016

Experts help THR analyze the financial forecast for ‘Spotlight’ and the seven other best picture noms, factoring in budgets, marketing and awards campaign spending.

Tom McCarthy’s Spotlight may have won the Oscar for best picture at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, but The Martian walked away with another kind of gold.

That’s according to The Hollywood Reporter’s analysis of the financial performance of victor Spotlight and the seven best-picture nominees, including Ridley Scott’s The Martian.

See below for which movies will turn a profit, or lose money. Production budgets hardly tell the whole story, since there are all sorts of hidden costs, including marketing and money spent on award campaigns. THR relied on several experts to compare total expenses against box-office returns and ancillary revenue from home entertainment and television.

In some cases, the movies were made and financed independently, such as Room, meaning their U.S. distributor won’t necessarily incur the loss.

3/3/2016 by Pamela McClintock – THR

Sir Peter Jackson makes the longest movies in Hollywood, with a median running Cinemagoers whose gut instinct or numb posteriors have prompted them to suspect Hollywood movies have gotten significantly longer over the past five years are spot on.

According to a new study the median length of the top 100 U.S.-grossing films between 1994 and 2015 was 110 minutes, and running times have increased every year for the past five years.

UK-based analyst, teacher, writer and blogger Stephen Follows found that historical films, Westerns and bios are the longest and family, animation and documentaries are the shortest.

Half of the Hollywood movies he surveyed are between 96 and 120 minutes long, and the most popular running time is 101 minutes. Films with lower budgets have shorter running times, which is probably a cost factor rather than a desire for filmmakers to be more succinct or economical in their story telling.

In his blog Follows does not seek to explain the reasons for the trend to longer movies. My guess is that speaks mostly to the power that “franchise” directors exercise over the studios, which often results in budget blows- outs and running times that drive exhibitors crazy. But the data does show audiences are willing to sit for longer periods if they feel they are fully engaged and entertained.

Don Groves – Forbes – January 19, 2016