The marketing, distribution, and promotion of films has changed in the last decade as the result of changes in ancillary markets, notably the continuing development of sales to cable and other television outlets and the growth of the home video industry both as a rental market and as a sales market. In addition, there have been changes in the structure of exhibition which has contributed to new methods of distribution and promotion. Costs have also been a factor. The film business has become more expensive and more risky, but at the same time the potential for high returns has continued as an incentive for producers. Indeed, this potential has itself contributed to the increase in costs because it has created a blockbuster mentality that causes studios and producers to throw everything into a few large movies in the hopes of producing high grosses at the box office. This has always been a risky venture, but it appears to be getting even riskier as costs rise so high that grosses have to be extremely high in order to reach break-even. Independent films tend to cost less to produce and so can address more controversial and less obviously commercial material, but such material still has to be marketed. The way independent films are marketed and the way major studio productions are marketed shows both very different techniques and different outcomes, as will be seen with reference to the independent film The Doom Generation and the studio feature Get Shorty.
For studio productions, television has become the centerpiece of every campaign, with an advertising blitz in the week or so before a film opens considered the determining factor in the success or failure of the effort. Television time is expensive, and in the past marketers made their media buys very close to the time of release. Thursday is the prime movie advertising day on television because films open on Friday, and usually ads would begin at the most a week before ope...