Boxoffice-August.1989

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OPENING CREDITS
THIS
ISSUE OF BoxoFFiCE marks the 51st edition of our
annual buying guide to the motion picture industry.
As in years past, our annual listing of distributors of
theatrical films and suppliers of motion picture equipment
is the most comprehensive in the industry. A quick look at
these information packed pages wiW give you an impressive
overview of all aspects of this business: from the suppliers
of hard-to-find parts for aging projectors to the distributors
of an film shorts; from back-of-seat cupholder manufacturers
to the people who write software for in-theatre computer
systems. But an equally quick comparison between this
year's directory and last year's provides some sobering
thoughts for the theatrical industry.
In our listings of film distributors, for example, some
familiar names no longer appear: in the last few months the
industry has lost the distribution talents of Atlantic, Cannon
(absorbed by Pathe), Cineplex, New World, Spectrafilm and
Vestron, to name just a few. Some of the these companies
folded due to a lack of return on their investment money
Buying Fever
who only are interested in New World's television division).
Though these moves might make sense from a short term
conglomerate business standpoint (all the above companies
are part of or were taken over by conglomerates), we worry
about the long term effects on the film industry as a whole.
The conglomeration fever in our industry has now moved
from the acquisition of exhibition outlets to the acquisition
of production outlets, and this does not augur well for us.
Just recently, George Lucas bemoaned the rash of corporate
takeovers (in particular, the almost scandalous hostile
Time-Wamer-Paramount takeover battle) by stating that
such actions "damage the creative energies of the entertainment
industry" by creating companies with enormous
debts, thus tying up resources that should be made available
instead for risk-taking on new films, new filmmakers, and
new ideas. That is precisely what has happened to New
World and Atlantic; despite what one may have thought
about their film product, two voices of independent distribution
have been silenced. What this means is less product
for American theatre screens and, in particular, less product
for the screens of American independent theatre owners.
Taken alone, that is a bad sign for our industry, as more
(Vestron, for example, which just couldn't come up with a
major boxoffice hit after their success with "Dirty
Dancing"); others were folded up as a result of sales or buyouts
(Atlantic, purchased by the owners of Kartes Video Communications,
was promised an infusion of money which
was never forthcoming; New World Distribution has seem-
and more smaller theatres are forced out of business. But
worse yet is the impact on American society as a whole, of
which more will be said in this space next month. Harley
ingly been jettisoned by new owners Andrews Group Inc., W. Lond
••••
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