Wednesday April 18, 2018

Yesterday I posted on the release of A  Quiet Place.'

I suggested that Aaron Gleason, the producer and star, might become the next Clint Eastwood. Both began in television and had success with low budget but popular films.

Well here is another candidate with the same formula. Byron Allen bought the Weather Channel for $300 M in cash.

Byron has been building his own media network. Turns out the big boys, that would be Comcast and Blackstone, bought the Weather Chanel in 2008 for more than ten times this amount, $3.5 B.  So we know Byron buys right.

The article relates that when the weather threatens, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, this is the Super Bowl of TV. And it is on televisions in every civilian airport and boat marina in the world,though Byron does not have the digital side.

He bought the horror hit 47 Meters Down which grossed $44 M in 2017, one of the top independent films that year.

The more complete story is in today's WSJ.

Once again someone is buying at the right price where others do not see the potential.

His mother was a tour guide at NBC. This allowed him to view Johnny Carson in person. Eventually he became a comic guest on the Tonight Show. He bought Chappaquiddick for $4 M and it grossed $6.2 M the first weekend.

Here students is yet another example of managerial accounting successfully applied.

Tuesday April 17, 2018

Aaron gleason explains why Q Quiet Place Might be an Instant classic.

Not many movie reviews go as far as comparing the ethical theories of Hobbs and Locke but this one does.

No wonder then that Gleason has an MA i philosophy of religion from Talbot University.

But that is not my focus here.

I cited Clint as a cost accountant in just the second month  of this blog back on Oct. 4, 2006.

When I began this blog and was teaching managerial accounting, I used Producer Director Clint Eastwood as an example.

of budgetary excellence. While Clint is popular with the audience he is really popular with the studios. His hEvery Which Way but Looose   was the second biggest grossing film Universal had at the time 

The film took  in $90 M but costing a mere $5 million. Clint always comes in on budget and on time.

Perhaps this can be traced to his early experience in the TV series Rawhide. Television with its weekly requirement of   a new show a week, is fast and low cost.

After gaining fame in Italian produced Spaghetti Westerns, he returned to do a few Hollywood westerns. But his directorial debut was a bit of a horror film itself.

Play Misty for Me was estimated to have cost less than $1 M but grossed about $10 M, ticket prices were a lot lower then. It was the story of a stalking woman out to terrorize a DJ and his newer girl friend.  

This was the first production of his new Malpaso company. He never looked back and has only had one flop at the box office, The Beguiled.

Now another former TV player, John Krasinski, is directing A Quiet Place.  He cast himself and his real wife in the lead roles.   The film cost $17 M but grossed $50 M the first weekend.  this is how one gets attention in Hollywood. 

Summarizing the similarities

Both men began in television learning 'lean production methods'

Both men cast their real life wives in their movies

Both men  started with relatively low budget, tightly scripted projects

Both came in on time and budget

Each had a terrorizing or terrifying theme for their first movie

Managerial accounting is all about efficiency.  Successful movie making is much the same way, on time, on budget, a simple idea made unique.