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Answerman - How Does Merchandise For Live Action Remakes Work?




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leafy sea dragon



Joined: 27 Oct 2009
Posts: 7163
Location: Another Kingdom
PostPosted: Fri Dec 15, 2017 9:29 pm Reply with quote
Hollywood is a notoriously secretive place where you cannot trust anyone and no one can trust you. (That's how it felt like when I worked there, anyway.) The secretiveness is not without good reason though, even if it's gone out of hand: There is an extremely real threat of people spilling the beans to their competitors, screenwriters letting slip details of what they're writing so other screenwriters can snatch them up and quickly make something, and reporters and paparazzi whose very jobs involves trespassing, that major Hollywood studios will closely guard everything they have and not let anyone outside of those directly working on a project know anything about it until the time is right, not even those in other departments. (Also, they seem to have all the best attorneys in the country.)

I'm actually kind of surprised this sort of environment never developed in Japan. I'm guessing there is a greater value in privacy in Japanese culture, and a higher amount of introverts in the entertainment business (I mean, look at how so many manga artists refuse to have pictures taken of them). At the same time though, this lower level of aggression seems to result in producers and executives in Japan having a higher level of control in other aspects, such as what actors are allowed to do and say in public and much longer working hours for everyone else. Or the Japanese entertainment business cheats as much as the American one but does a better job at hiding it.
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ZeArNkN



Joined: 27 Dec 2010
Posts: 95
PostPosted: Sat Dec 16, 2017 12:19 am Reply with quote
Answerman questions are getting awfully obscure and specific these days.
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Sat Dec 16, 2017 1:40 am Reply with quote
ZeArNkN wrote:
Answerman questions are getting awfully obscure and specific these days.


No, Alita was just the most specific anime-related question that the poster could knee-jerk tie to "Oh noez, the Disney/Fox deal went through, it's the END OF THE WORRRRRLLLLD for our favorite franchises, as the Rat is going to TAKE OVER ALL MEDIA!!!!! Anime exclamation "
Justin will have to tell us how many generic questions and variations he got on the topic in the last eight hours, that didn't show the courtesy of focusing it down to the more answerable Cameron and Alita.

As for Alita, no questions yet about the implied anime/manga cluelessness of Cameron and Robert Rodriguez's CGI-enabled "But it's Japanese manga, the eyes have to be bigger!" idea that, yes, does look as unnatural in the trailer as the thumbnail photo suggests? (And which only resembles Tim Burton's idea that "But the heads have to be bigger in Alice in Wonderland!")
Yes, fans, this was the Cameron movie that was going to "validate" anime into the public mainstream, wasn't it?
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samuelp
Industry Insider


Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 2231
Location: San Antonio, USA
PostPosted: Sat Dec 16, 2017 3:51 am Reply with quote
ZeArNkN wrote:
Answerman questions are getting awfully obscure and specific these days.

I thought this was a very topical and interesting question! Specific questions are good, especially when the answers aren't well known or understood by most readers.

I'd much rather questions like this than: "What makes Goku so powerful?" or something.
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nobahn
Subscriber



Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 5120
PostPosted: Sat Dec 16, 2017 4:15 pm Reply with quote
ZeArNkN wrote:
Answerman questions are getting awfully obscure and specific these days.
I find it hard to believe that you missed the below.....
On 12/8 Justin Sevakis wrote:
It's the holiday season, so people are pretty busy. There's gift-buying, there's decorating, there are parties and for students, final exams. But that also means my questions tend to run dry, so if you can spare a moment, please send a question in! Thanks, I greatly appreciate it!
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EricJ2



Joined: 01 Feb 2014
Posts: 4016
PostPosted: Sat Dec 16, 2017 5:04 pm Reply with quote
nobahn wrote:
ZeArNkN wrote:
Answerman questions are getting awfully obscure and specific these days.
I find it hard to believe that you missed the below.....
On 12/8 Justin Sevakis wrote:
It's the holiday season, so people are pretty busy. There's gift-buying, there's decorating, there are parties and for students, final exams. But that also means my questions tend to run dry, so if you can spare a moment, please send a question in! Thanks, I greatly appreciate it!


Think it was more in the sense that a fan wanted to jump on existing Internet-buzz headlines, take them to his favorite hangout, and find an anime-related tangent to ask Answerman about them, but couldn't decide whether to do a "The Battle Angel Alita trailer just hit!" or "What will happen with the terrible new Fox-Disney deal?" question.
So, he came up with a clever idea of doing Both. (And somehow ended up with Neither. Confused )
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
Posts: 13549
Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 2:12 am Reply with quote
Article:
Quote:
Ah yes, royalties. Hollywood studios are infamous for their funky accounting tricks to make it look like even their most successful films never turn a profit, thus never necessitating that they pay out royalties that are based on profit. Studios are actually sued so often for such things that forensic accountants for attorneys suing the studios actually have office space AT the studios.

Creative Accounting is a big business, especially in Hollywood. I find it interesting that a film company that does this practice might go after someone for pirating film from said person. The USA has somewhat severe penalties for piracy, but might not hold the same for Creative Accounting because such accounting methods might be harder to prove.
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Polycell



Joined: 16 Jan 2012
Posts: 4623
PostPosted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 4:38 pm Reply with quote
The problem is one of what, exactly, constitutes "creative accounting". Specific practices have been outlawed(even if the US government continues to use them), but there's no real way to easily come up with a comprehensive definition. Civil actions aren't bound by this, however, and just proving you got screwed over is usually sufficient(the exact method isn't all that relevant for most cases).
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Kadmos1



Joined: 08 May 2014
Posts: 13549
Location: In Phoenix but has an 85308 ZIP
PostPosted: Sun Dec 17, 2017 10:42 pm Reply with quote
Going with the creative accounting bit, that would be a novel approach to a copyright infringement case.
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