Intro -- Other Books by This Author -- Title Page -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- Introduction: Why We Don't Understand Hollywood -- Part 1: The Popcorn Economy -- Ten Years Ago, I Learned the Real Secret Is the Salt -- Why Do Most New Movie Theaters Have Fewer than 300 Seats? -- Sex in the Cinema: Asset or Liability? -- The Vanishing Box Office -- The Reel Silver Lining -- Part II: Star Culture -- The Contract's the Thing-If Not for Hamlet, for Arnold Schwarzenegger -- Movie Stars Come in Two Flavors: 20 Million and Free -- The Angst Question in Hollywood: What Is Your Cash Breakeven? -- The Sad Lesson of Nicole Kidman's Knee-Or What a Star Needs to Get a Part -- The Starlet's Dilemma -- There Is No Net -- The Video Windfall -- Nobody Gets Gross -- "I Do My Own Stunts" -- Part III: Hollywood's Invisible Money Machine -- Why Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Is Considered a Masterpiece of Studio Financing -- Money-For-Nothing from Germany -- How Does a Studio Make a Windfall out of Being on the Losing Side of a Japanese Format War? -- Romancing the Hedge Funds -- Ending Up on the Wrong End of the Deal -- Ever Wonder Why New York Looks Like Toronto in the Movies? -- The Foreign Mirage -- Pushing the Pseudo Reality Envelope -- The New Civil War among the States -- The Rise and Fall of Pay Television -- For Whom Does the Movie Business Toll? -- Part IV: Hollywood Politics -- In the Picture -- Paranoia for Fun and Profit: The Saga of Fahrenheit 9/11 -- The Saga Continues -- Plus Ça Change: Paramount's Regime Change -- Tom Cruise, Inc. -- The Studios-Required Reading -- An Expert Witness in Wonderland -- Part V: Unoriginal Sin -- Audience Creation -- Teens and Car Crashes Go Together -- The Midas Formula -- Market Testing Villains -- Why Serious Fare Went Small Screen -- Part VI: Indie Film -- The Oscar Deception -- Can Indie Movies Survive?.

How to Finance an Indie Film -- Part VII: The Politics of Streaming -- The Quest for the Digitalized Couch Potato -- The Samurai Embrace -- The Rise of the Tube Moguls -- The Last Days of the Video Store -- And the End of Theatres? -- Downloading for Dollars -- Epilogue: Hollywood: The Movie -- Appendix I -- Warner Bros. Distribution Report #6: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil -- Appendix II -- Warner Bros. Distribution Report #4: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

A fully revised edition of the popular guide to Hollywood finances, updated to reflect even newer films and trendsIn a Freakonomics-meets-Hollywood saga, veteran investigative reporter Edward Jay Epstein goes undercover to explore Hollywood's "invisible money machine," probing the dazzlingly complicated finances behind the hits and flops, while he answers a surprisingly difficult question: How do the studiosmake their money?We also learn:+ How and why the studios harvest silver from old film prints ...+ Why stars do-or don't do-their own stunts ...+ The future of Netflix: Why the "next big thing" now seems in such deep trouble...+ What it costs to insure Nicole Kidman's right knee…+ How Hollywood manipulates Wall Street: including the story of the acquisition of MGM… wherein a consortium of banks and hedge funds lost some 5 billion… while Hollywood made millions.+ Why Arnold Schwarzenegger is considered a contract genius…+ The fate of serious fare: How HBO, AMC, and Showtime have found ways to make money offer adult drama, while the Hollywood studios prefer to cater to teen audiences.+ Why Lara Croft: Tomb Raider is considered a "masterpiece" of financing ... From the Trade Paperback edition.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2020. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.