Just came across this post and thought I would comment on it. I believe that the data that Volkswagon use comes from the company I work for, Screen Digest, where I am the Head of Cinema. I have been collecting and analysing film stats such as these ones for 17 years now. Screen Digest has been doing it for nearly 40 years.

I have a few answers thrown up by these maps:

The size of New Zealand comes from the fact that it is being used to film several very large budget films, which all started properly with Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Local films are usually relatively low budgets and they only make around six a year. This map does not reflect New Zealand filmmaking, even if the large budget films are using the local industry to service them.

Australia makes around 25 films a year, very few of which are co-produced.

South Africa makes very few feature films, about 10 a year; the largest producers of genuine feature films in Africa are Egypt and Morocco.

Nigeria is not the third largest producer of feature films in the world. The order in 2006 was India, USA, Japan, China and France. The press seem to have picked up on Nigeria recently and dubbed it Nollywood. However, by most definitions of the term feature film (which briefly means over 60 minutes, shot in 35mm and intended for theatrical release), Nigeria hardly makes any films at all. I think this is a case of wishful thinking by the media, as it would be an interesting story. If all countries counted all the low budget and digitally shot films they produced, there would be a lot more than the 4,800 films produced in the last year (of which India produces nearly a quarter).

Countries like Iceland are in there because of the low size of their population. USA has 320m people whereas Iceland has just over 330,000 people. The USA has nearly a thousand times more people but does not produce 1,000 times more films than Iceland. Iceland usually shoots anything up to six films a year, mostly publicy supported, whereas USA shoots somewhere between 500 and 600 a year, with no public funding from US government. The average budget in USA is dragged down quite strongly by a large number of smaller indie films being shot in USA. The US major studios produce around 180 major films a year, the largest budgets of which are $250m+ but the average is $70m for large movies and $40m for movies produced by their subsidiaries.

The USA is the global centre of the film industry, in terms of financial investment and in terms of revenues generated by those films. Cinemas in most parts of the world are very dependent on films from USA. In the USA, box office stands at $9bn. Japan is the next biggest territory, at around $1.7bn. Global box office is around $25bn.

India is a big filmmaker and consumer of its own movies (cinema admissions are around 3.5bn but low average ticket prices keep box office down), and is taking increasing steps to become a force on the global stage but is not yet there.

I don’t want to over-analyse and spoil what is an interesting ad, but I thought given the intelligent nature of your discussion that these explanations may interest you.

david