Creative Economics

The Wall Street Journal article, written by Kung and Schuker, presents much of the technical data of feature film earnings, movie’s financial patterns emerging, and large studio approaches to solving the conflict between economics and creativity in the film industry. I don’t think anyone can say that media economics does not conflict with creativity, but the extent to which creativity is hindered by the executive decisions is up for debate. As presented by Robert’s argument, we see the industries changing the way business is done, and how large studio’s are trying to bring in the most revenue, while taking into account as much creative expression as possible. Everyone wants to see a new creative masterpiece, but that doesn’t necessarily fair best for both the movie industry and its financials. The WSJ article attempts to provide patterns of how this is actually affecting what we receive as viewers, and provides statistics for how movie ticket sales and DVD sales are becoming worrisome. “Cranking out sequels,” and producing lower budget films, has seemed to be the solution by these large studios. Is this, however, the decision on behalf of the industry execs, or the creative side?

While these sort of movies still may require a large amount of creativity to produce, the budget that a movie has available for disposal, certainly hinders the creative approach going into the movie itself. It also has to be noted, that the industry is certainly not dying. It is simply changing and the way that creativity is going into this constantly updating industry needs to, and is forced to change with it. With all this being said, we can still feel “bullish” about business. For as long as the movie industry has been around, there has been a struggle to incorporate creativity into a budget’s framework. Although there is a changing phenomenon in regards to how we see the movies, and this is seemingly correlated to box office sales and DVD sales, the struggle between creativity and economics is not leading to the potential failure of the industry itself.