Hollywood has just enjoyed a record breaking Summer at the U.S. box office. This despite the studios and filmmakers constantly warning us that online piracy is the devil’s own work and that if movies continue to be shared illegally we’re all doomed. Which is clearly a myth.
Hollywood Hype
Following in the fine tradition set by the music industry a decade ago, Hollywood is set on going after online piracy and the illegal sharing of copyrighted movies. Fair enough, I suppose, as an industry it’s the logical thing to do to try and keep a vice like grip on how we all consume movies.
However, logic will only get you so far. And I’m afraid Hollywood is missing the bigger picture that’s been proved time and again in the last few years: that movie piracy isn’t harming the film industry in the way it would have us believe.
Summer 2009 U.S. Box Office
Summer 2009 has seen the highest box office in U.S. history with around $4.18 billion taken at theaters around the country. This beats the previous record set in 2007 when $4.16 billion was taken. So the last three years has seen two of the biggest Summer box offices in the history of cinema.
Variety reports that the biggest earners were Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, while there were some surprisingly big hits in the shape of Pixar’s Up, The Hangover, and The Proposal.
What About Pirates?
But hang on there a Goddamn minute. It was only a few years ago when the major studios banded together under the umbrella of the MPAA to declare that online piracy was costing the industry $8.5 billion. Granted, this was a worldwide figure and came on the back of a couple of years of sustained decline, but it’s since been proved incorrect.
This year has seen the MPAA and studios sue The Pirate Bay and win, and go absolutely nuts when X-Men Origins: Wolverine leaked online a full month before release. And yet box office takings are massively up. And even those films widely available online have performed stoically.
Exaggeration
is a problem for the industry, that much is clear. But the scale of the problem has been exaggerated until it bears no resemblance to the truth. In fact, there is evidence that having downloaded and watched a dodgy copy entices more people to go to the cinema to see that film.
Conclusions
This little thing called word of mouth, especially coupled with social networking, can work massively in favor of a movie. And the starting point for that is a copy being shared over the Internet to create the buzz needed to have a hit.
As usual, it all comes down to quality. If Hollywood pumps out good content then people will pay their money regardless of alternative methods for consuming the goods.
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