Despite widespread concerns in the film industry of a decline, it appears overall, celluloid spending is set to increase.
According to a report released by IHS, global consumer spending is expected to continue to rise over the coming years, with a jump from $61.4 billion in 2010 to $68.9 billion by 2015.
Testament to the bewildering amount of film consumption includes areas such as DVD rentals, Blu-ray sales, cinema tickets and streaming services among others.
The growth arguably jars with the message set out by the film industry itself.
According to IHS, the overall spending on films shot up last year to a record $62.6 billion, a 2.1 percent increase from the preceding year. A 2.6 percent rise is expected for 2012, with viewers splashing out $64.2 billion in the North America Western Europe, Central and Eastern Europe, Asia-Pacific and Latin America markets.
The research suggests the industry is perhaps not in quite as bad shape as groups such as the MPAA claim.
However, it is clear that the increases are predominantly in the emerging regions. While movie spending is set to increase by a compound annual growth rate of 8.9 percent from 2010 to 2015 in Eastern and Central Europe, in the West the industry will grow just 1.1 percent.
A lower CAGR rate is expected for the US market, which is likely to attain only 0.2 percent growth over five years.
This shows a growing shift from spending in mature and developing markets, and points to some of the problems faced in the UK or US.
The report says there is a continued resistance to the consumption of films online. Digital rentals accounted for just two percent of movie spending in the US, and even less in Western Europe.
It seems that while the industry laments the continued threat of film piracy, online streaming services are struggling to provide an alternative through video on demand services.
Spending on cinema tickets is doing well, though, again, this appears to be more inclined towards developing markets.
The rampant growth in China over the past few years can also be seen in the amount of cinemas that have opened – eight new screens opened every day last year.
Growth in developed countries is also up, with Western audiences still willing to shell out for expensive seats and stale popcorn.
According to PirateParty UK leader Loz Kaye, the increase in spending conflicts with the message given out by the industry, which attacks piracy as a debilitating force on film revenues.
“We have been told all the time that there is a crisis of internet piracy, blighting the creative industries at the moment,” he told TechEye. “This shows once again that there is no crisis.”
“There has been a huge over-exaggeration on behalf of quite a narrow group of lobbyists," Kaye said. "We already knew that we hit the £1 billion box office revenues in the UK last year. The film industry is in rude health.
“But still groups like the MPAA are pressing for anti-internet legislation like SOPA and supporting site blocking here in the United Kingdom. This report shows that the justification for this has no basis.”
He believes that more should be done in mature economies to ensure that growth rates can continue to increase by offering improved services for online viewers.
“Time and time again consumers are expressing a real frustration about how difficult it is to access content, with regional locks," Kaye said. "That drives people towards illegal downloads.”
“Consequently, the industry has been missing a trick. We can see growth in sales in the music industry is being powered digital outlets. The government should be encouraging this in their policies,” he said.
A human has only 2 hands but through the imaginations of others, those 2 hands will multiply. This is how wars are created and fought and wars for modernday barons and kings are conducted through thoughts, not so much through the virtuality of the digital but through others’ thoughts of their past or future. When a human starts thinking, he begins to lose his immunity to nonsense and when the [mis]behaviour is then unleashed onto the physical dimension of “Others”/The-Material, he becomes a pawn/puppet and this dummy can be made to imagine that he is either the driver or the driven. With 101% certainty, with the extra 1% for “insurance”, because thinking is what captivates and shackles a human and not the reverse as most “intellectuals” believe. Is that why there as 6 odd billions against One and still the imbalance is maintained?
Being thoughtless but fully realising [which is beyond knowledge/deliberation] with lucidity and depth is the so-called Secret of The Ages because very few are able to escape the clutches of thoughts and even fewer are able to experience Reality as one sees with the eyes. The Empowerment of Divinity, the joke being that popes and similar creatures of wantoness and imaginations are the last to be so empowered. Afterall, when your cup is full, first ensure that it is not filled with nonsense otherwise the meaning of “Impossible” is the only reality.
It is essential to realise that The Chosen Few, Tojo Inc., Quackery & Handler and other Tentacles of The Bookie [ToTB] have only one duty/principle which is to facilitate Permanency of Destruction without rhyme nor reason. This is because Devolution has neither rhyme nor reason and Evolution is beyond rhyme or reason whereas Humanity is all about rhyming and reasoning. Through either pandering egos/overtness or massaging comforts/emotions/covertness, the victims of Devolution are made to take positions/thoughts of either “For” or “Against”, thoughts being of imagination until acted upon.
All humans are partial humans, all being weighed-down by our vegetative/inactive or animal/active legacies. To become/be a fuller/full human, one needs to switch-on one’s spiritual dimension such that when the moment for the removal of all the manmade Religions & Religiosities arrives, one’s Immune System, which has 5 dimensionalities, will then be a part of His presence and not merely to accept-reject. But how to “switch-on” one’s spirituality? How will anyone realise his Desire for Purity? By being Pure within Desire. When there is no other. As Gandhi has advised, “We must be the change we seek”. If true, what are people taking sides for without being certain which side they are really on?
When a human is “taxed”, he gets to become someone’s “credit”, just like a candle being lit from both ends. The only way to Evolve is to bypass/avoid [but not to evade, the former being of real choice with evasion being of gambling] Devolution. Any other method or methodology means that The Bookie has gotcha with the icing on the cake being those who are limited but are imagining that they are the unlimited freed to lead others into their voids. Just like the democraticos which is why when a human thinks that he is free/freed, he’ll end up being of abandonment. Guaranteed. Sooner if not later, Freedom being a matter of self and not of others. This is the main reason why abandoned nutters are tethered by their abandonment/wanton desires whereas those who have little outward resources but are otherwise at peace with their self, are the truly free, Freedom being having the means to be truthful, loving and acting intelligently as opposed to being free to deceive, desire or debase on behalf of Fame, Fortune or Immortality. A topsy-turvy world indeed when the zoo is when you’d stepped out of your abode. Jokes aside, the primates already had their laugh, it is now the elephant’s turn to trumpet the insanity of humans.