CINEMA in AUSTRALIA an Industry Profile CINEMA in AUSTRALIA: an INDUSTRY PROFILE
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CINEMA IN AUSTRALIA an industry profile CINEMA IN AUSTRALIA: AN INDUSTRY PROFILE Acknowledgments Spreading Fictions: Distributing Stories in the Online Age is a three-year Australian Research Council funded Linkage Project [LP100200656] supported by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) and Screen Australia. The chief investigators are Jock Given, Professor of Media and Communications, The Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne and Gerard Goggin, Professor of Media and Communications, The University of Sydney. Partner Investigators: Georgie McClean, Manager, Strategy and Research, Screen Australia Michael Brealey, Head of Strategy and Governance, ABC TV This report was researched and written by Jock Given, Rosemary Curtis and Marion McCutcheon. Many thanks to the ABC, Screen Australia and the Australian Research Council for their generous support of the project and to the following organisations for assistance with this report: Australian Film Television and Radio School Library Independent Cinemas Association of Australia [ICAA] IHS Screen Digest Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia [MPDAA] National Association of Cinema Operators-Australasia [NACO] Rentrak Roy Morgan Research Val Morgan Cinema Network Any views expressed in this report are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Industry Partners or other organisations. Publication editing and design: Screen Australia Published by The Swinburne Institute, Swinburne University of Technology, PO Box 218 Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122 © Swinburne University of Technology, June 2013 ISBN 978-0-9871772-7-8 This report is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/312955 CINEMA IN AUSTRALIA: AN INDUSTRY PROFILE Contents Overview ........................................................................................................2 About this project .......................................................................................... 8 The cinemas ..................................................................................................9 Phase 1: Suburbanization, 1980s–2000...................................................... 9 Phase 2: Diversification and digital, 2000s ................................................ 12 The exhibitors .............................................................................................. 19 Phase 1: Incumbent major exhibitors ........................................................ 20 Phase 2: New entrants, independents and consolidation .......................... 23 The audiences ............................................................................................. 25 The distributors ........................................................................................... 30 Timing of releases .................................................................................... 30 Release windows ...................................................................................... 35 Distribution companies .............................................................................. 37 Relationships between distribution and exhibition ..................................... 45 The films ...................................................................................................... 46 How many films – the long view ................................................................ 46 Where the films come from ....................................................................... 47 The neighbours: New Zealand and Australia ............................................ 50 Long films? ............................................................................................... 51 A long tail? ................................................................................................ 51 The blockbusters ...................................................................................... 54 Distributing Australian films ....................................................................... 63 Franchise films .......................................................................................... 68 Events and flows in the Online Age ........................................................... 74 Notes on data............................................................................................... 77 Data sources............................................................................................. 77 Abbreviations and acronyms ..................................................................... 77 Data definitions ......................................................................................... 78 References ................................................................................................... 80 Appendix: Profiles of major, mini-major and mini distributors ...................... 85 1 CINEMA IN AUSTRALIA: AN INDUSTRY PROFILE Overview Around three decades ago, multi-screen complexes began to transform the business and culture of cinema in Australia. New screens built in new locations and environments encouraged different patterns of distribution and eventually production. Audiences responded and theatrical exhibition revived but as part of a more diverse exhibition landscape where home video and later subscription TV and DVD generated more of the money that flowed back to distributors and filmmakers. Cinema retained its place as the first release medium of choice for most feature filmmakers, especially those operating with big budgets. It still offered a peerless social and cultural space to watch movies and an ideal economic site to begin their commercial exploitation. Over the last few years, the infrastructure of the cinema industry has again been transformed, this time by digital technology. As this report is being finalised, all of Australia’s major exhibitors’ screens and more than three-quarters of independent exhibitors’ screens have been converted to digital projection. By the end of 2013, few movies are expected to be distributed in Australia as film prints. The cinema industry will no longer be a film industry. Filmmakers have long embraced digital technology to help them tell their stories. Theatrical distributors have now supported it to reduce the cost of transporting movies to cinemas. Some exhibitors have welcomed the ability it gives them to improve image and sound quality in their cinemas, to schedule more flexibly and to screen content other than movies. But the digital era has also brought audiences more ways to see movies, many new types of content and novel ways of spending their time. Cinema’s place in the media and entertainment economy is again being challenged. The cinemas and the exhibitors In the first phase of the Multiplex Era – ‘suburbanization’ – from the mid-1980s until around 2000, new screens were built with smaller seating capacities in multi- screen complexes in suburban and regional shopping centres, especially by the incumbent major exhibitors Hoyts, Village, Greater Union and Birch Caroll and Coyle. Their truly national cinema chains synchronized releases, screening schedules and marketing campaigns, like the national television networks also assembled in the second half of the 1980s. These big Australian exhibitors also expanded aggressively overseas at this time. In the second phase – ‘diversification’ – in the 2000s, the expansion slowed but a wider range of cinema types and experiences were offered to audiences. A new major exhibitor – Reading International – had arrived in the late 1990s, and the national art chains Dendy (now owned by Icon) and Palace, and mainstream independents such as Grand in Western Australia, Wallis in South Australia, Cineplex in south-east Queensland and Majestic in central NSW, built new complexes, renovated and expanded old ones, and acquired some from the majors. Some blockbusters ‘crossed over’ into the art chains; some more specialised movies, especially those attractive to older audiences, ‘crossed over’ into the mainstream multiplexes. Major exhibitors sold out of many of their overseas chains in the 2000s. At home, they closed or sold under-performing theatres and opened a few new ones, but shifted the main focus of their investment to premium screens and operating 2 CINEMA IN AUSTRALIA: AN INDUSTRY PROFILE efficiencies in a mature industry facing new kinds of competition. Some screens got smaller and more intimate, branded with names like Gold Class, Gold Lounge, Director’s Suite and La Premiere. Others got bigger and louder – Xtremescreen, Titan XC, Vmax. At least one 3D screen was installed in virtually every multiplex, starting around 2008 and accelerating before the release of Monsters Vs Aliens and Avatar in 2009. Hoyts launched the ‘immersive motion technology’ branded D-Box in Hamilton, New Zealand in February 2012. Digital technology has been central to these transformations, but it has also had wider impacts. Long anticipated as a cheaper form of distribution than film prints, the introduction of digital projection and distribution has required another big program of investment in cinema infrastructure and motivated new structures of co-operation between groups of exhibitors. By the end of 2012, the major exhibition chains had converted most or all their screens to digital projection, and 72 per cent of all Australian screens were reported to be digital. Digital technology is also allowing new forms of content to be distributed to cinemas, mainly by satellite, including live or near-live opera,