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The Oscars are the film industry's most glamorous event of the year, but when it comes to the economics of movie making, it's not such a pretty picture.
It's harder than ever to make money from movies.
For the US studios, heartland of the global industry, there's more competition from local language films.
There's the decline of DVD rentals and sales. And the unpredictability brought by the new digital distribution options.
But there are some winning avenues — and aspiring film-makers would do well to consider the key trends.
Franchise and merchandise
This is where the dollars are.
Matthew Lieberman, a director at PwC in Los Angeles, says where many studios used to make 20 to 30 movies a year, they're now focussing on fewer, with bigger budgets.But they're movies that have a long shelf life.
"Over the past couple of years the big blockbusters have grown significantly in popularity and some of those are generating significant revenue for the film studios," he said.
"The ability to make money on these films is something that is quite unique, because there are often multiple releases, spin-off television franchises, and unbelievable revenue that can be created from consumer products.
"Think sheets, T-shirts, cups, mugs, all of those types of items. Many of the studios have banked on making only these franchises instead of either mid-size or smaller fare."
Consumers will watch them over and over again. And the more international appeal, the better.
Does that necessarily mean action, established stars, and superhero or comic book characters? Lieberman is not sure that can last.
"There are quite a few nay-sayers who believe that that market is getting very saturated way too quickly," he said.
"The question will be: Can there be continued success over the next couple of years? Will consumers pay a premium to continue to watch films or other content that may be similar to what they're already seeing?"
Movie star economics
For playing one character — Tony Stark/Ironman — in three Ironman movies and three Avengers movies, it's estimated Robert Downey Jr has earned at least $150 million, and perhaps as much as $300 million.
Jeff Spross, economics and business correspondent at The Week, says that's not so surprising.
"The purpose of a movie star, especially in this current environment that we're talking about, is to get people into the movie seats," he said.
"It's a strange thing to pin down the exact nature of cultural appeal and a movie star appeal in an economic sense.
"But that's something that studios want to capitalise on, and they will pay for it.
"The other thing to remember is that every movie star, especially of a Robert Downey Jr sort, is really the face representing an entire army of lawyers and agents and all the rest of it, and they're all very well paid, professional, white-collar workers in big cities with high costs of living, and they want their incomes too.
"So there's just a rolling dynamic — just go in and bargain with the studio for as much as you can get for any star to appear in a particular movie."
Rise of small films
Alongside the blockbusters, there are the small films. Mid-sized films have fallen away, creating a bi-modal market. The small films might cost a tenth of the big ones, but they've had a surge of success thanks to ways of releasing them.
Lieberman says the old model of distribution worked against smaller films.
"In the past a film was always released theatrically first and then went through what we call various revenue windows. That would include home entertainment and pay television and free television," he said.
But now there's online distribution.
"If they can get a bit of buzz from online presence, then that is actually free marketing for the film and then it may enter the theatrical market subsequent to that online release," Lieberman said.
"We've seen a few tests of these over the past two years and some of them have been quite successful so we're expecting to see more of that in the future.
"Whether or not the traditional model as it currently stands exists in the future is a big question mark for many."
And the good news is, more people can do it.
"A lot of the smaller films get financed by independent producers," Lieberman said.
"To make a high quality film is actually not as difficult as it used to be. With the advent of new, cheap, and easily accessible technology, most people could make a cinema-grade film.
"A lot of these producers or production companies are making films like this for under a million or certainly under five million."
Netflix and Amazon saviours of the mid-size film
While the studios have walked away from the mid-size film, new players have stepped in, and some are multi-award winners.
"Netflix and Amazon, they're looking for movies in that sweet spot," said Matt Pressberg, a film business reporter at The Wrap.
"You know, La La Land, Manchester by the Sea, these are movies that are mid-budget movies that it doesn't always make sense for a Warner Brothers or a Disney or a Paramount to finance, but Amazon and Netflix have basically unlimited money.
"They can go spend $10 million here, $15 million here, with the hopes that a couple of them may be successful, but they'll get some prestige.
"And their motivation really is to drive people to subscribe to their platform, so they don't care as much if the individual film is profitable. Their motivation is different."
Investing is seen as sexy
Some studios fund their movies completely, but others are seeking finance from elsewhere. They're trading off 50 per cent of the profits to have 50 per cent of the costs covered.
"That's by large financial institutions such as private equity or hedge funds," says Matthew Lieberman.
"They are providing this money to the studio in terms of slates — a package of, let's say, 10 films in a given year."
That trend began after the 2008 economic crisis, and traditional studio backers were wary of risky investments.
"But there is potential to make money," Lieberman said.
"It's a very sexy business to be in, so a lot of high net worth individuals like to be able to get an executive producer credit on the film.
"It's been happening for about five or six years now and we don't see it slowing down at all."
Keep an eye on China
And then there's Chinese money. Pressberg says there are a lot of co-finance deals, where the big studios are bringing in partners from China to put up about 20-25 per cent of the total budget, to minimise some of the risk.
His prediction of the next five years is more Chinese stars.
"I think we'll see a lot more English speaking Chinese stars play very prominent roles in tentpole movies.
"China's obviously a huge market for Hollywood. Every studio seems to have a production partner there.
"The Chinese box office is a big part of their underwriting, and so I definitely think Chinese stars that have appeal at home and also global appeal, and can handle a lot of the English language dialogue, their profile will definitely go up dramatically.
"And we're not going to see a lot of Chinese villains in movies either."
Australian films become more money savvy
With no studio system like that in the US, the Australian film industry is reliant on government funding.
State government money is primarily to attract productions or post-productions to that state, while federal money is primarily tax-based.
There are three different streams, including the producer offset, which only gets paid after the film's release. That offset is for up to 40 per cent of money spent on Australian wages, locations and facilities.
Australian investor and producer Cass O'Connor says the government funding is working well.
"The Australian films by release share of the box office in Australia at the moment is currently around 7 per cent, which is quite high historically," she said.
"That's by number of films, by number of releases. The share of box office receipts are still down below 4 per cent, but again that's reasonably high on recent years.
"And that's because the big US and other overseas blockbusters take the lion's share of the ticket sales."
But there's no rushing into film making. O'Connor says it takes, on average, seven years from seeing a script to seeing a film on screen.
She is, though, optimistic about the Australian film industry.
"I think that the new technologies are going to allow filmmakers to hone their skills and craft good films with smaller budgets, which is what they need to do," O'Connor said.
And, they are more likely to get the money side of it.
"I think there's a great bunch of filmmakers coming up, and they have been for about the last 10 years, who are more business-minded and business-oriented," she said.
"I'm not talking away from any filmmakers of the past decades, but quite a few of them I think will admit themselves that they were much more focused on the art than on the financial outcomes.
"And I think the imperative to have a sustainable business is now ingrained in film students from the film schools and in most of the industry today."
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Topics: film-movies, film, industry, business-economics-and-finance, arts-and-entertainment, australia