ABSTRACT
Film production is a manifestly risky activity. Each unit of output is unique, expensive to produce and has a limited life in the market place. Film-goers are attracted by films that offer ‘surprises’, although they are generally unable to articulate what they are looking for in the film-going experience – they will ‘know it when they see it’. Thus film producers are engaged in a constant process of innovation, periodically producing ‘hits’, and even in a small number of cases developing successful ‘hit’ formulas, which can then be exploited, although generally for only a relatively short period of time. In between lie scattered large numbers of loss-making films.
