電影業(yè)究竟靠什么賺錢?

How Does the Film Industry Actually Make Money?

電影業(yè)究竟靠什么賺錢?

I’ve been trying to come to terms with two seemingly irreconcilable facts. First, “Men in Black 3” has made more than $550 million worldwide. Second, while a representative from the parent company of Columbia Pictures told me that the movie is now “in the win column,” it seemed until recently as if Columbia might actually lose money on it. How could that be? It’s not so complicated. Its production costs were close to $250 million; worldwide marketing most likely added at least that much; and a big chunk of the ticket sales go to theaters and distributors.

我一直在努力理解兩個看似矛盾的事實。第一，《黑衣人3》(Men in Black 3)在全球收入已過5.5億美元。第二，當哥倫比亞電影公司母公司的一位代表告訴我，該片目前“正在賺錢”時，給人的感覺是哥倫比亞的這部片子直到不久前都在賠錢。這怎么可能呢?其實并不那么費解。該片的制作費將近2.5億美元;全球推廣很有可能至少也是這個數(shù);還有大筆票房收入要分給院線跟發(fā)行商。

There must be an easier way to make money. For the cost of “Men in Black 3,” for instance, the studio could have become one of the world’s largest venture-capital funds, thereby owning a piece of hundreds of promising start-ups. Instead, it purchased the rights to a piece of intellectual property, paid a fortune for a big star and has no definitive idea why its movie didn’t make a huge profit. Why is anyone in the film industry?

一定會有更便當?shù)姆ㄗ淤嶅X。就以《黑衣人3》的成本為例，制片公司完全可以成為全球最大的風險投資基金，在數(shù)百家有前途的初創(chuàng)公司中分得部分 權(quán)益。情況恰恰相反，它先要為購入知識產(chǎn)權(quán)花費一筆，再給一個大明星支付高額片酬，之后也說不清自己拍攝的電影為什么賺不到大錢。為什么電影業(yè)沒人覺悟呢?

All business requires guessing, but future predilections of moviegoers are especially opaque. If a large company wants to introduce a new car, it can at least base its predictions, in part, on factors like where oil prices are headed. Movie executives, on the other hand, come up with a host of new theories each summer about what audiences want — 3-D tent poles, 2-D tent poles, vampires, comics, board games and so on — then, sometimes over the course of a weekend, ricochet toward a new theory. Will the tepid economics of “Men in Black 3” spell trouble for “The Amazing Spider-Man,” this holiday weekend’s big release? Who knows.

做任何生意都需要猜測，但影迷的口味尤其難以捉摸。如果一家大公司想推出一款新車，它的預(yù)測起碼可以建立在諸如油價趨勢這類因素上。但是電影業(yè)的高管們每年夏天就只能憑空推想觀眾想要看什么——3D、2D，吸血鬼、動畫、桌面游戲等等——結(jié)果就是一個周末的功夫，風向突然就轉(zhuǎn)了?！逗谝氯?》不溫不火的成績，是否預(yù)示著這個周末將要上映的《超凡蜘蛛俠》(The Amazing Spider-Man)前景堪虞?誰知道呢。

Unlike other decades-old industries, Hollywood not only has a hard time forecasting, but it also has difficulty analyzing past results. Why was “The Hunger Games” such a big hit? Because it had a built-in audience? Because it starred Jennifer Lawrence? Because it was released around spring break? The business is filled with analysts who claim to have predictive powers, but the fact that a vast majority of films fail to break even proves that nobody knows anything for sure.

好萊塢跟其他經(jīng)營數(shù)十年的產(chǎn)業(yè)的不同之處在于，現(xiàn)在它不僅很難對前景做出預(yù)測，而且很難對已取得的成績進行分析。為什么《饑餓游戲》(The Hunger Games)能一炮而紅?是因為它有鐵桿觀眾群?是因為由詹妮弗·勞倫斯(Jennifer Lawrence)擔任主角?是因為它趕在春假期間上映?業(yè)界充斥著聲稱擁有預(yù)測能力的分析家，但大量電影賠錢的事實證明，沒人能對任何事情打保票。

Making matters more complicated is that the industry is filled with professionals — starting with the lowliest junior agents — adept at explaining why they were responsible for a project’s success. This self-mythologizing has real economic impact. Most major brands spend lots of money ensuring that people have a positive association with them, but most people don’t even notice which studio made which movie. (Disney and its Pixar subsidiary are notable exceptions, “John Carter” notwithstanding.) In fact, movie studios are much better at helping brands they don’t own — certain stars, directors, producers and source material, like “The Hunger Games” — capture a huge chunk of the money.

電影業(yè)遍地都是專家，這讓情況變得更加復(fù)雜。從最基層的初級經(jīng)紀人往上走，所有人都能滔滔不絕地解釋為什么自己是某個項目成功的原因。這種自我神話真地會產(chǎn)生經(jīng)濟影響。大部分主流品牌花費巨資，為的是讓人們對品牌產(chǎn)生正面聯(lián)想，但大部分人甚至并沒有注意到哪個電影公司拍了哪部電影(迪士尼和下屬的皮克斯動畫是兩個顯著的例外，雖然它們也拍出了《異星戰(zhàn)場》[John Carter]這樣的片子)。電影公司幫那些不歸自己管的品牌方面表現(xiàn)出色得多，甚至賺了個盆滿缽滿，比如某些明星、導(dǎo)演、制片人和像《饑餓游戲》這類電影的原始小說。

The reason a majority of movie studios still turn a profit most years is that they have found ways to, as they say, monetize the ancillary stream by selling pay-TV and overseas rights, creating tie-in video games, amusement-park rides and so forth. And the big hits, rare as they may be, pay for a lot of flops. Still, the profits are not huge. Matthew Lieberman, a director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, expects growth over the coming years to be somewhere around 0.6 percent.

大多數(shù)電影公司在大多數(shù)年份仍然還能賺錢。用他們自己的話來說，是因為找到了副業(yè)收入的路子，比如銷售付費電視轉(zhuǎn)播權(quán)和海外播映權(quán)，制作配套電玩游戲，授權(quán)游樂園游戲等。同時，雖然叫座電影數(shù)量可能極其有限，但只要有那么幾部，就能打平許多電影的損失。盡管如此，電影業(yè)的利潤并不豐厚。普華永道的一位主管馬修·李伯曼(Matthew Lieberman)預(yù)測說，今后這幾年電影業(yè)的年增長率在0.6%左右。

Hollywood is, somewhat surprisingly, a remarkably stable industry. Over the past 80 years or so, its basic model — in which financiers in New York lend money to creative people in Los Angeles — has been largely unaltered. Partly as a result, today’s biggest studios — Columbia, Disney, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Universal, 20th Century Fox — have been on top since at least the 1950s. This stability is initially puzzling because movie studios don’t have many assets. Worse, every one of their projects is a short-term collaboration between a bunch of independent agents.

讓人有點驚奇的是，好萊塢是個極其穩(wěn)定的行業(yè)。在過去這80多年來，它的基本模式就是紐約的融資者把錢借給洛杉磯的創(chuàng)意人士，這一點在很大程度上并未改變。在一定程度上這導(dǎo)致了如今最大的幾家電影公司——哥倫比亞、迪士尼、派拉蒙、華納兄弟、環(huán)球以及20世紀?？怂?mdash;—它們至少從20世紀50年代開始，就一直名列前茅。能保持這樣的穩(wěn)定性，乍一看讓人疑惑，因為電影公司沒有太多資產(chǎn)。更奇怪的是，電影公司旗下的項目周期都很短，是一群獨立經(jīng)紀人協(xié)作下的產(chǎn)物。

A modern studio’s main asset, however, is its ability to put together these disparate elements. They know how to get Tom Cruise to do a film, how to get it into theaters around the country and whom to call to set up a junket in Doha. They also know the industry’s language of power, with its ever-changing rules about which stars, restaurants and scripts are cool and which are not. It’s the stuff of easy parody, but it’s worth billions.

一家當代電影公司的主要資產(chǎn)，其實就是它將迥異的元素組合到一起的能力。它們知道怎樣請湯姆·克魯斯(Tom Cruise)拍部電影，怎樣將電影打入全國的電影院，也知道想要在多哈辦發(fā)布會該打誰的電話。它們還通曉業(yè)內(nèi)的話語權(quán)，明白不斷變化的游戲規(guī)則，哪些影星、哪家餐館、哪個劇本現(xiàn)在正紅，哪些已經(jīng)過氣，它們都了如指掌。這些門道雖然很容易被山寨，但價值也數(shù)以億計。

Another reason these studios remain at the top is that for most entrepreneurs, taking them on isn’t worth the risks. (Even big hits often take years — sometimes a full decade — to break even.) “If I’m sitting on $2 billion, will I invest in a Hollywood studio?” asks Anita Elberse, a Harvard Business School professor who studies the entertainment industry. “Many other industries have a higher return on investment.” Billionaires like Anil Ambani, who is a partner in Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios, presumably invest because the glamour helps them with their other businesses.

這些電影公司仍然獨孤不敗的另一個原因在于，對絕大多數(shù)企業(yè)家而言，拿它們開刀實在是得不償失(即使是那些賣座電影，往往也需要花幾年，有時是整整 10年，這才能做到收支平衡)。“假如我有20億美元，我會投資好萊塢的電影公司嗎?”安妮塔·埃爾貝斯(Anita Elberse)是哈佛商學院教授，專門研究娛樂業(yè)，她說：“很多其他行業(yè)的投資回報率要更高。”一些億萬富翁，比如斯蒂文·斯皮爾伯格(Steven Spielberg)的夢工廠合伙人安尼爾·安巴尼(Anil Ambani)，他們之所以愿意投資這一行，推想起來大概是因為電影業(yè)的光環(huán)對他們的其他業(yè)務(wù)有幫助。

People have predicted the demise of the film industry since the dawn of TV and, later, the appearance of VHS, cable and digital piracy. But Fabrizio Perretti, a management professor at the Università Bocconi in Italy, says that Hollywood is now actually destroying itself. Because it’s harder to get financing and audiences, companies are competing to make bigger, costlier films while eliminating risk, which is why ever-more movies are based on existing intellectual property. Eighteen of the all-time 100 top-grossing movies (adjusted for inflation) were sequels, and more than half of those were released since 2000.

多年來人們一直在預(yù)測著電影業(yè)的覆滅。從電視出現(xiàn)開始，再到錄像機、有線電視和數(shù)字盜版的涌現(xiàn)。但意大利博科尼大學(Università Bocconi)管理學教授法布里齊奧·佩萊蒂(Fabrizio Perretti)表示，好萊塢現(xiàn)在是在“自尋死路”。由于各家公司很難找到融資，爭取到觀眾，于是在競相拍攝耗資巨大的大片，同時，他們又在盡可能規(guī)避風險，所以現(xiàn)在越來越多的電影都是根據(jù)已有的知識產(chǎn)權(quán)內(nèi)容拍攝的。在史上100部總收入最高(已根據(jù)通脹率進行調(diào)整)的電影中，有18部是續(xù)集，而且其中有超過半數(shù)是在2000年以后發(fā)行的。