Oil, Corn...and Movies?

By Rob Christopher in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 21, 2010 2:40PM

An inevitable confirmation of the obvious: Hollywood movies only exist in order to make money. On Friday, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission approved a proposal to establish Trend Exchange, a futures market for entertainment that would be run out of Chicago. Pending approval by the CFTC, the first products to be offered would be options and futures contracts on opening weekend domestic box office sales by MPAA feature films. As the company states on their website, "The creation of a regulated marketplace for these options and futures products will improve risk transfer opportunities and provide price discovery information in the public interest." Translation: it's time for us all to place our bets on which movies will make a pile of dough opening weekend, since that's all that seems to matter anymore.

As you might imagine, the MPAA is not exactly thrilled at the idea. Their lobbying group has been working behind the scenes to stop any movies futures markets dead in their tracks. A bill introduced by Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.) would ban such trading.

But filmmaker James Allen Smith, whose documentary Floored about the Chicago Board of Trade will get an encore presentation at the Siskel next month, seems open to the idea. Smith says, "I think that it's really tough to make a film. I think it's tougher to make it with piracy and an influx of home theatres and less and less people willing to go to the theatre." The thinking is that film investors and theatre operators could hedge their bets when it comes to upcoming releases. Uh, right. To us the whole idea sounds like just a novel way for some hustlers on the margins to profit from the creative work of filmmakers, yet another sign that increasingly "art" is simply another commodity.