Betting On Box Office Opening Weekends Approved Dan Koelsch, June 15, 2010 Want to make some serious money predicting box office opening weekend results? Now you can, at via stock exchange. The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved a contract with the new Trend Exchange that allow traders to bet on a movie’s opening weekend gross. While a new revenue stream is always nice, there could be some serious downside to this. There has been a lot of opposition to betting on future box-office receipts within the film industry, most prominently from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), as it could actually hurt box office performance. This could also have a serious affect on the viral trends of new releases. Anyone with a stake in the exchange could manipulate word of mouth and other viral marketing of films if they had enough influence. As the L.A. Times writes:In a follow-up interview, [Bart] Chilton [a dissenting commissioner] added that he was particularly concerned about the ability of studios to manipulate the price of a future through marketing and other decisions, which he said was very different from existing futures contracts related to agriculture and other products. I would imagine this would bring a lot more pressure for hyped films to perform well, which only seems to make matters worse for a fickle industry. I don’t have a business degree, so some of the details on this fly over my head, but this is obviously a hotly debated issue. What do you think? News Viral News Box OfficeTrend ExchangeWeekend Box Office
District 9: DVD and Blu-Ray Details Revealed October 12, 2009I’m pretty sure District 9 would be on many people’s lists of things they would like to unwrap come Christmas morning, but alas, I have bad news for you. Perhaps missing an opportunity, the single disk and special double disk edition, as well as the Hi-Def Blu-Ray edition will hit… Read More
News Movie Review: ‘Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day’ October 6, 2014October 6, 2014In Disney’s latest live-action family feature we get to see how one kid’s bad luck streak hits every member of his family for his birthday wish. Based on the beloved children’s book by the same name by Judith Viorst, Disney brings an inspired retelling of the classic to modern families…. Read More
White House Responds to Death Star Petition January 11, 2013Back in December, we told you about a petition on the “We The People” website that requested the United States begin building a Death Star (yes, the one from Star Wars) by 2016. The petition got the minimum threshold to require a response from the White House, and they did… Read More