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Reel News Tim Ryan |
Revenue fell this year
This year's final revenue figures for Hawaii film, television and commercial productions should fall well short of last year's record $146 million. Final figures likely won't be known until February but won't be as low as 1997's $71 million. 2002's production revenues largely came from five major feature films that spent about $76.6 million: "Hostile Rescue" (five months filming); "The Big Bounce" and "Blue Crush" (both three months) "The Rundown" and "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle," which filmed just a few weeks here.
This year has seen far fewer features coming here for much shorter filming schedules -- just a couple weeks for Ben Stiller's "Along Came Polly" and about a month for Adam Sandler's "50 First Dates."
What's particularly confusing is that from January through June of this year, production revenues were more than $50 million, which seemed a good sign for the rest of the year. Since then, most productions have been in the reality show category, and most of those were done on the Big Island, including NBC's "Average Joe: Hawaii," which shot nine episodes in five weeks. The series will premiere Jan. 5. (Bucking the drop in this year's production revenues will be the Big Island, thanks to the aforementioned reality shows.)
"Average Joe: Hawaii," like its Palm Springs predecessor, will feature another former Miss USA contestant, with the promise of romance to be found among a group of 18 guys with average looks, ranging from a 5-foot-3 engineer to a 340-pound sewage contractor. One "Average Joe" describes the Big Island as "nerd island." These guys are unaware that, in a few weeks, a group of eight traditional dating-show studs will join the competition to vie for her affection, creating a "Joe vs. jock" showdown. ...
Though there have been some increase in Japanese productions over the last few months (films, television and commercials), the overall total for this year so far has dropped about 40 percent, from the best of about 150 productions and $11 million spent back in 1995. Recent big spending Japanese clients have included Max Factor and Asahi Draft Beer, which spent about $250,000 over a 12-day period.
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Contact Tim Ryan at tryan@starbulletin.com.