It’s official: Government regulators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission approved a futures market pegged to box-office receipts today. Approval was granted to Media Derivatives Inc. to launch Trend Exchange, which it hopes to do in the third quarter. If you read this week’s issue of EW, you’ll know that this is not the market that you or I can start bidding on—Trend Exchange will be limited to institutional investors only. (The Cantor Exchange, which would be open to the public, is still under review.) The approval came in spite of intense objections from Hollywood which fears the market could be easily manipulated—the head of the MPAA told EW’s Chris Nashawaty that it would be “nothing more than a platform for gambling.” What do you think? Good or bad idea? Are you planning on jumping in if the market gets running?
Apr 16
2010
05:30 PM ET
Box-office futures market gets approved
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Bad idea. I can imagine this heavily influencing what movies will get made. We already have enough mindlessness that is tied to money only; seems this would only make it worse.
exactly! there will be no incentive to make good movies, only “blockbusters”
And how would that be any different from what goes on now?
I have always wanted to buy stock or even provide monitary backing for the movie projects that I think are worth while you know kind of what PBS does only with payouts if the project is successful. I would totally do it if they had the public option.
great, another way for people to gamble/waste their money…
what do you care how people spend their money?
Oh my gahhhhsh! Naht anadder way to gamble now dere, Jees! Oh nooo.
I would invest in this in a heartbeat! Remember when EW did a Box Office Prediction game? There are a few other websites that do the same – I always did well on them, would love to try to make some $ in real life!
Yeah, it’s potentially a great idea until the next over hyped film like “Snakes on a Plane” ends up bursting the market bubble and destroying the global economy.
How can this be allowed? It’s gambling! When you purchase stock you OWN a piece of the company, you have voting rights on management. This is nothing more than a financial guessing game with no actual investment in any movie, distributor or production company.
This is just another example of how screwed up Wall Street is!
No wonder our economy is in such a shambles. Money for nothing!
That’s GREAT. I’m awesome at guessing box-office (I predicted Avatar would beat Titanic on it’s ninth day of release and predicted a final box-office of $2.7 billion three months ago). I’m gonna make a ton of dough.
The government is trying to reel in Goldman, Sachs and now it is starting Box Office futures. Box Office futures are nothing more than legalized gambling. Let’s control the investors, not give them new vehicles to gamble.