Australian films take 4.5% of local box office
According to Screen Australia’s box office report for 2010, 41 Australian films were released during the year, earning $50.6m or 4.5 percent of the total box office – a drop from last year’s 5.02 percent.
The top grossing film was Tomorrow, When the War Began, with $13.5m (down from last year’s Mao’s Last Dancer and its $15m). Nine projects grossed more than $2m each, for the first time in more than a decade.
“We saw films for all ages and tastes. It’s not easy to get the balance right but with special effects–laden action and animated adventure films through to comedy and crime in our top five I believe in 2010 the industry did,” said CEO Ruth Harley.
The 403 films released in Australia in 2010 grossed $1.13 billion, breaking last year’s box office record. Overall, the highest grossing film was Avatar, with more than $75m (for a total of $114m), followed by Toy Story 3 ($42.4m) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1 ($39m).
So we make 10.2% of the content and only generate 4.5% of the income.
Something’s not right there.
So more prints equals more box office returns. Does this mean the distributors get the print orders right or does it mean that films are held back by limited print runs.
And how many of these “print” orders were digital? More answers needed.
Government statistics = show the graphs that make u look good and delete the one’s that make you look bad. How do I know? I’ve created them before 🙂
maybe they should show that same graph for the last 30 years, with the percentage of Australian film revenue instead of dollars…. Hmmmm, wonder what that would highlight – the truth perhaps? …. Oops there I go again – honesty…. The lost commodity of the ‘new’ world.
@Brendan
Here is the graph from Screen Australia’s own ‘Get The Picture’ showing Australian films share of Australian Box Office for the past 32 years not including 2010:
http://www.screenaustralia.gov.....share.html
How much government funding was distributed to create that $50.6m of box office return?
Did any of these films have purely private investment, if so how does the privately funded films fair on their returns, vs films that have government related funding?
It’s interesting to note that the Screen Australia’s graph showing Australian films share of Australian Box Office for the past 32 years starts at 1977.
It would be more relevant to show the returns from the films produced and released from 1970 onwards.
That was the era of Alvin Purple, Barry McKenzie, Man from Hong Kong et al and a swag of box office winners that put the Oz industry on the map, by the late 70’s we where in the grip of the ‘politically correct’ funding bodies who only wanted to make ‘worthy PC films’…..the rest is history.
How to take a once viable independent industry and turn it into a sheltered workshop