This report was commissioned by Investment New Zealand to illustrate how money flows from a movie or television program back to those involved in its production.
This report was commissioned by Investment New Zealand to illustrate how money flows from a movie or television program back to those involved in its production.
The media are constantly reporting multi-million dollar box office successes, million dollar-an-episode fees for cast members on US series like Friends or an A-list star’s valuable piece of the ‘back end’. The dollars being generated by film and television, especially large studio productions, appear to be making a lot of people very rich. But what do these figures really mean? What exactly is the ‘back end’ and who gets a share of it?
The screen entertainment industry is complex. Any one production, from the initial generation of the idea through to its delivery to domestic and overseas markets, will involve many players: writers; producers; directors; actors; technicians; agents; distributors; cinema chains; and television networks.
Add to these the players involved in the exploitation of the film and/or characters through novels, comic books, soundtrack CDs, toys, collectables, online or computer games, and other emerging formats and one begins to understand why this global industry is a major economic generator for many countries.
Filmed entertainment spending globally reached US$75.3 billion in 2003 and is projected to rise to US$108 billion by 2008.1
This report, written from the perspective of industry knowledge of both industry members and policy makers in New Zealand, is designed to guide the reader through this maze of players and shed light on the roles they play and the way their involvement influences the ‘back end.’
The report does not offer a definitive description of how the global industry works. Nor does it purport to represent all the permutations and combinations of the commercial deals and legal arrangements existing within the industry that can improve a ‘back end’ deal.