ARTICLE: HOW DOES THE FILM INDUSTRY ACTUALLY MAKE MONEY?

A view on how Hollywood does it, or tries to do it..

By Adam Davidson — New York Times

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?

All business requires guessing, but future predilections of moviegoers are especially opaque. If