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Date: Mon, 05 Jun 1995 12:00:18 -0500 (CDT) Subject: Re: Appeal of U.S. Films in Europe From: Philip M Napoli "pmn480@lulu.acns.nwu.edu"
Check out a book by Steve Wildman (there may be another author as well) called International Trade in Film and Television Programs. The book takes an economist's approach to the appeal of U.S. films in Europe. It points out that the English language market is the most lucrative due to both its size and per-capita income. As a result, the profit-maximizing budgets for these films are the largest. These large budgets improve American films' ability to draw European audiences' away from films in their native language, which are inherently more appealing. Films in other languages have much smaller and/or poorer potential audiences, thereby decreasing their profit-maximizing budgets. They are thus usually unable to overcome American audiences' preference for English-language films. (The main assumption here obviously is the larger the budget, the greater the ability to overcome the preference for native language films.) The result is a "one-way" flow of American films abroad, with relatively few foreign films attracting audiences in the U.S.
Philip M. Napoli
Ph.D. student, Mass Communication/Telecommunication
Northwestern University
pmn480@lulu.acns.nwu.edu
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