ABSTRACT
Marketing is designed to create and intensify the public’s desire to see a film or TV show, and distribution makes it available in a wide variety of media outlets. Movie and television companies don’t routinely publicize their distribution costs, but it’s well known that films like Man of Steel, which cost Warner Bros. Distribution costs can also greatly exceed the budget of a very inexpensive movie if that movie becomes successful in theatres around the world, as happened with such ultra-low budget movies as Paranormal Activity, Saw, and Napoleon Dynamite. The bottom line is, if a studio makes a movie for “X” number of dollars, the distribution expenses can make the studio’s all-in cost come close to “2X,” or occasionally exceed it. Hollywood has routinely employed this distribution strategy, but when widespread piracy came along, questions arose about whether distribution had to change.
