The Motion Picture Association of America released a sharply stripped down annual snapshot of the film industry on Tuesday, abandoning its decades-long practice of compiling information about movie production and marketing costs.
The organization’s “state of the business” report outlined routine box office and attendance statistics, but omitted the most heavily scrutinized section of the annual briefing: costs and whether they have gone up or down. The reports are typically over 20 pages in length and contain detailed (and rare) statistics on spending by the major studios and their specialty divisions.

Dan Glickman, the organization’s chief executive, said he made the decision to scrap the financial component because it has become too complex to gather the data. “There is nothing conspiratorial about this,” he said in an interview. “We don’t have the numbers. We didn’t do them. I’ve been concerned about the validity of those numbers for years”

Studios are notorious for keeping their financial information private – or generously rounding the numbers up or down – and the M.P.A.A.’s accounting has long been considered squishy given the difficulty in gathering such granular information across the globe. But moviedom typically pays close attention to the report because there are so few official sources of information about the industry.

To the exasperation of some studio executives, last year’s statistics depicted a sharp rise in spending by specialty labels, which make and distribute films intended for the annual awards races and others aimed at genres like horror. Such divisions’ investment in production rose 6 percent to an average $42.9 million per movie in 2007, while marketing costs jumped 44 percent to $25.7 million.

Mr. Glickman used a speech at ShoWest, a convention for movie theater owners taking place here, to note that entertainment has emerged as one of the country’s few major growth businesses. At a time when most industries are suffering harsh retrenchments, Hollywood is churning out one of the few products that people are still lining up to buy.

“It’s nothing to apologize for,” Mr. Glickman told ShoWest attendees Tuesday morning – a comment that appeared designed to debunk recent articles in the trade press that said he was reluctant to publicly tout a strong box office for fear of further hurting the industry’s lobbying efforts in Washington.

Wellywood is angling to make more money and keep it through new co-production deals being sought with the Hong Kong film industry.

A who's who delegation of film and gaming production executives has addressed the Hong Kong film industry after signing a memorandum of understanding that it is hoped will lead to Chinese money bankrolling New Zealand productions.

The conference, at Hong Kong's HK$2 billion (NZ$460.2 million) digital creative community Cyberport, lists some of Wellington's creative luminaries as speakers, including the head of Peter Jackson's Park Road Post, Aimee McCammon, production veteran Dave Gibson and Jos Ruffell, of leading game makers Sidhe Interactive.

Institute of Screen Innovation director Laurence Greig said the meeting would bring big benefits for the New Zealand industry.

Cyberport and the Hong Kong film producers Shaw Brothers were good examples of large, experienced businesses keen to learn from Wellington, he said.

Cyberport chief executive Nicholas Yang said New Zealand was a role model in the way it had achieved global status and earned international acclaim.

New Zealand already had a co-production treaty with Korea but one had not yet been established under the free trade agreement with China.

"We want to get a framework that will accelerate a co-production treaty so we get groups from China and Hong Kong looking to produce films in Wellington and New Zealand.

"Wellington features on the world stage as a centre of innovation but we haven't got the scale when it comes to capital to produce our own content."

Typically big-scale production houses came to New Zealand to work with the expertise but took all the profit potential away when they left.

More capital access would allow New Zealand companies to own more of what they produced to increase future homegrown earnings off that.

"We are trying to migrate the New Zealand industry from being famous for producing other people's films and games to producing our own and owning the content," Mr Greig said.

Wellington Mayor Kerry Prendergast was a delegate and signed the deal.