Movies don’t have the same value as they used to, but they now cost much more to market.
Okay, maybe this simple observation is not as simple as I first thought.
When I started out in the film business, it was considered reasonable to value North American rights on a feature at 50% of negative costs. If I was asked to value such rights today, on the average, I would say they were either zero or they would be a negative.
When I started producing movies, a well packaged and developed project could anticipate get 80% of it’s negative cost from licensing foreign rights. The value of foreign rights has been dropping consistently for years. What were once major territories in terms of revenue they returned, now seem virtually impossible to do deals in. Television rights abroad supported acquisition prices for years, but now those slots are increasingly difficult to obtain everywhere. If an independent film can piece together 50% of its negative cost from international, I think they are pretty fortunate.
