An article in the WSJ states that the 1994 movie, the Lion King was re-released in 3-D in movie theatres this week. Up until now, it had grossed 29.3 million dollars topping all other movies in the U.S. Box Office. This is a record in history as it added to the film’s lifetime gross on top of the $40.9 million it made on its opening weekend in 1994, the $765 million earning world-wide and the $19.4 million large-format reissue in 2002.
The idea of transforming a classical movie into 3-D was genius. The statistics in the article prove so as “92% of the weekend's gross came from 3-D ticket sales”. So we can see here, that the marketing media has a huge and evident effect on business.
The movie also had an effect on social media as it gave people something to talk about. According to twitcritics.com, 4140 tweeters mentioned the Lion King 3-D till 06:20 pm September 18, 2011.
It must have affected the publishing industry as well. The WSJ newspaper is writing about it and many other newspapers have it mentioned in their movie theatres page. Each newspaper company must have asked for some amount of money in exchange for a space in their paper. This further expands the flow of money.
Other than newspapers, operators of broadcasting and owners of television stations had to display the movie trailer. This means that they also got paid in exchange for the time period they spent showing the trailer as a form of advertising. The same applies to radio stations.
The movie’s tremendous success did not only affect Walt Disney Co. by earning a huge gross/profit, but it also affected the competing movie production companies by beating them on the box office and by affecting their revenue as well. If some had one opportunity to go to the movies for the weekend, they might choose to watch Lion King 3-D (a number one rated movie) instead of the Smurfs which ranked 15 on the box office.
Not to forget to mention that the movie itself “is largely a promotion for the debut of "The Lion King" in 3-D on Blu-ray disc next month” as mentioned in the article which means that the revenue will not stop here.
Rand, this is so crazy! I didn't realize it was all a plug for the BluRay edition of "Lion King."
ReplyDeleteAre tickets for the movie priced regularly- like all 3d movies? I feel like people would pay >$20 to see it if it's only in theaters for two weeks. It would be ridiculous, but people would still pack the theaters.
When I found out about this, I wanted to go to the theaters immediately! This is big for Disney who has been fairly quiet this year. They are definitely a company you want to look at from multiple angles.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure how much an affect this had on publishing. Remember you are looking at industry as a whole, but this doesn't mean everything is interrelated.
Great job overall!
I think it's amazing how much power Disney has. By simply remaking a movie in 3d, they are able to generate millions in revenue. This seems like such an easy way for them to make money as remakes don't require a new screenplays. I believe that we might see more Disney remakes in the near future seeing how it requires little effort from the movie studios and creates such a large profit.
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