- Industry suffers from credit crunch and digital revolution
- Current peak of 600 movies produced per year is likely to fall to below 400
The famous Hollywood sign in Los Angeles. Film studios’ finances are in freefall and the number of movies in production has dropped sharply. Photograph: Craig Aurness/Corbis
The number of films being produced by Hollywood is set to fall by more than a third as the major studios struggle against a twin threat, industry analysts say.
Their problems stem from a dearth of funding and from the digital revolution in the way people consume moving images.
Mark Gill, head of the Film Department, an independent film finance firm, predicted that last year’s peak of 606 films to emerge from Hollywood would fall to fewer than 400 next year “and it may go lower than that in future”.
The finances are in freefall, Gill said. In the wake of the financial meltdown, banks that had acted as the main funders of big- and middle-budget films have withdrawn their largesse, sucking $12bn (£7.4bn) out of the $18bn available to the top studios.
Read moreHollywood: Film studios’ finances are in freefall, film output likely to fall by a third