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.

Written by Mitch Santell
Today we are in the final days of editing our first release, "Truth, Lies & Misinformation." As I was scouting over the internet today, I found this article that I know will be of inspiration and another idea toward your own production and film. Enjoy and read on......... (this blog is for educational purposes only so be aware that we find the best content on the net and place it right here)........

by Eric D. Snider
The Internets are saving independent film again! Often the biggest dilemma for small-time filmmakers is that distributing their movies, whether in theaters or on DVD, costs too much money. So we're seeing more and more films skip theaters, skip DVD, and go straight to the Internet, where movie downloads are becoming increasingly common.

The latest development is that a company called Cinetic Rights Management is releasing its catalog of indie films through Amazon's Video on Demand service and its CreateSpace DVD on Demand system. The arrangement will allow customers to rent or buy digital copies of films that aren't available anywhere else, many of which are just as worthy of being seen as the ones that were lucky enough to get theatrical distribution. (And that often really is the only difference between a movie that makes it to theaters and one that doesn't: luck.)

The new arrangement launches today with the featured title On Broadway (pictured), a gentle comedy about a Boston man who writes and stages a play in the back of his pub. The cast includes Eliza Dushku, Will Arnett, and New Kid on the Block Joey McIntyre.

On Broadway is a new film, but CRM will be releasing many of its older titles through Amazon, too, including the Oscar-winning 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk and 1995's A Modern Affair, a romantic comedy about a man and woman who meet at a fertility clinic. The newer titles include Your Mommy Kills Animals, a documentary about animal-rights extremists; and Happy Birthday, Harris Malden, a rather delightful comedy that I reviewed at CineVegas earlier this year and that I'm glad to see is getting some kind of distribution.

And that's really why we're telling you about all this -- because we're excited about the way new technology is making it possible for small films to find audiences. I've never used Amazon's Video on Demand service, I don't know how well it works, and Amazon certainly ain't givin' me a kickback for mentioning it. But it's there, and more and more titles are being made available through it. Digital distribution is the way of the future! I, for one, welcome our new Internet overlords.