The World Can't Wait for 'Indy'? It Won't Have To

CANNES, France, May 18 -- It has been almost two decades since the irrepressible archaeologist with the bullwhip and fedora last graced the big screen, but as Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford walked the red carpet here on Sunday for the world premiere of "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," they were launching more than a summer sequel.

Hollywood blockbusters have become global mega-events -- as the films are released on the same day in cities around the world, in a mass moment of pop culture consumption that rivals traditional shared experiences such as the Olympics.

Just a few years ago, even the hottest Hollywood properties opened first in the United States and later were rolled out overseas, where audiences had to wait for weeks or months to see them. But the latest "Indy" movie reflects the new realities of movie marketing and distribution. Foreign box office receipts for American movies often far outstrip domestic ticket sales, making it more important than ever to satisfy the Internet-savvy, plugged-in, impatient teenage consumer in Korea or Bulgaria or Egypt.

"You feel like the eyes of the world are focused on this one event, and you can't ask audiences -- anywhere -- to wait," says Frank Marshall, one of Spielberg's longtime producers attending the Cannes Film Festival. "When a movie is ready, they want to see it now, not later."

Indeed, there was a near riot among the international press corps when the 2,300-seat Palais theater here quickly filled to capacity Sunday, leaving hundreds of critics and reporters stranded outside and unable to instantly file reviews and summaries of the film, whose plot had been labeled TOP SECRET by the filmmakers. (Now it can be revealed: The movie is set in 1957, the villains are commies, Indy is a Cold Warrrior, and E.T.'s pals pay a visit.)

Marshall recalled that the first Indiana Jones movie, "Raiders of the Lost Ark," made $8.3 million on its opening weekend in 1981 when it first showed on 1,078 screens (and only in the United States). The current juggernaut, starring a 65-year-old Ford, will be released Thursday on 15,000 screens worldwide, including those in Europe, Latin America, Australia, Asia and the Middle East. The studio has been churning out prints from six laboratories in 17 dubbed-language versions, including Russian, Arabic and Swedish. The film may pull in more than $200 million on its first weekend -- or so hopes Paramount Pictures, which spent an estimated $125 million making the film and could go through an additional $75 million or more marketing it.

Many potential blockbusters -- and even some smaller films, such as dramas and comedies -- are now released simultaneously in dozens of countries. "It is the trend," says Paul Hanneman, co-president of 20th Century Fox International, one of the studios that pioneered the technique. In May, for example, "Iron Man" went global, earning $200 million on its opening weekend, half of it overseas. Then came "Speed Racer," which crashed and burned. Now it's Indy's turn.

Why are the studios releasing the product on the same day worldwide? Money, of course. "There has been a paradigm shift in box office revenue," says Kevin Goetz, president of the OTX Worldwide Motion Picture Group, which does market research for movies overseas, gauging how audiences in different countries judge plots, actors and movie posters and how they plan to go spend their money at the local multiplexes. "There has been explosive growth in international box office, while North America remains flat."

In 2001, domestic and foreign sales were about evenly split. Last year, international sales represented 64 percent of the total box office for Hollywood movies. In the first quarter of 2008, overseas ticket sales accounted for 71 percent.

Going global was initially one of Hollywood's best answers to the gnawing loss of profits to film pirates, who sneaked camcorders into movie houses and then sold cut-rate DVDs on the streets of Moscow or Hong Kong within days of a movie's release in the United States. By releasing the movie everywhere, the studios gained a few days of exclusivity before bootleg copies of their product appeared.

Now the problem is less about pirated DVDs and more about illicit downloads available on the Internet. "And we're talking very good digital downloads," says Kathleen Kennedy, an executive producer for Spielberg. "Anybody who has a big movie is vulnerable to piracy. If we make it from Friday to Monday before a copy is out on the Internet, we'd consider that a major victory."

But the Internet is also good for movies -- especially in the developed world, where seemingly every 14-year-old has access to a computer. There are thousands of film and fan Web sites, operating in every language, that are devoted to news and gossip about the latest Hollywood offerings. Now everybody knows everything at the same time, which is why they won't wait to see if Indiana Jones finds that crystal skull (and if his protege Shia LaBoeuf can act).