实用资料：2010考研英语阅读经典习题及答案(2)

　　[1] Film has traditionally been a good business and a bad investment. The dream machine has been oiled by sources as varied as property developers, tax-averse Germans and the Baptist church. But returns have usually been disappointing. The inherent riskiness of the film business is one reason; another is the studios' accounting practices, which, until recently, were as laden with special effects as the films they produced。

　　[2] The need for serious money has changed all that. The big studios now spend an average of just over $100m making and selling each film. Led by Disney, they are cutting back on the number of movies they produce, making the gambles they do take all the more risky. The studios' corporate parents would prefer it if their financial reports were a little less suspenseful. Hence the new, more open and honest attitude to private investors。

　　[3] For the past few years the big studios have encouraged hedge funds and other investors to back “candidates” of several dozen films spread over more than a year. Although the financiers are not allowed to get their hands on reliable money-makers such as “Harry Potter” or “Spider-Man”， they still find the candidates less risky, and hence more appealing, than individual films. Last September Merrill Lynch estimated that outsiders cover more than 30% of the cost of film production。

　　[4] One result is that Wall Street now knows much more about how the film business works. As their experience grows, some investors are beginning to think they can “beat the house”， as John Burke, a Hollywood dealmaker, puts it. Rather than backing every film put out by a studio, they are investing in producers with good records. Michael London, who specialises in making family dramas, and Joel Silver, who is notably good at blowing things up, are among the recent recipients of such largesse. Several more such deals are rumored and the pace may increase if JPMorgan goes ahead with its plan to set up a film-finance arm。

　　[5] This has changed the arc of Hollywood careers. Not so long ago, producers and film stars who fell out with studio bosses might retire to write books with titles like “You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again”. These days they round up some private equity and get back to work. Thanks to Goldman Sachs, Bob and Harvey Weinstein were able to set up a new film studio just two months after they angrily left Disney in 2005。

　　[6] Although the big names get most of the attention, Wall Street money is churning the independent film business, too. Until recently, investors were nervous about dealing with firms that produce only a few films a year. But financiers have noticed that cheap hits such as “Little Miss Sunshine” can be hugely profitable. And beneath their varied exteriors, such outfits are reassuringly obsessed with cost control. Jim Stern, a former fund manager who has raised enough money to start producing films, reckons he can undercut the big studios by making them for $20m--35m。

　　[7] Such a minnow tries to protect its investors by pre-selling films abroad and exploiting tax rebates offered by other states to filmmakers who shoot outside California. Overture Films, a four-month-old studio, plans to follow a similar strategy. It will eschew broad teenage fare (which is expensive to advertise) in favor of movies targeted at narrower audiences such as blacks and young women。

　　[8] Chris McGurk, who runs Overture, reckons that three-quarters of the newly financed outfits will be gone within five years, and he may be right. The film industry's real problem, says John Sloss, a consultant, is not so much a shortage of films as a shortage of eyeballs. Getting movies to the screen and the DVD racks, and persuading people to see them, is the tricky part. Here the established studios have a huge advantage. They have global networks and legions of marketing men—and can attach their trailers to blockbusters。

　　[9] The other problem is that film is such an unpredictable business. Who could have predicted, for example, that Americans would spend some $70m in just three days last week to see “300”， a poorly reviewed film featuring a Scottish-accented Spartan warrior? Perhaps nobody—but a studio like Warner, which produced the film, probably had a better chance than a hedge-fund manager trying to beat the odds. New money is transforming Hollywood, but institutional memory will always count for something.