That is an exact quote.
We've come a long way. That was in 1978. That wouldn't fly today. Canadian films do get access to theatres, and if they have a distributor who is willing to ante up and spend serious marketing money, which is really what it's all about, then the theatre doors are wide open. In many ways, those tough old days are behind us, but we have many more obstacles and challenges facing us today.
The biggest challenge is really a global showdown between independent films and the Hollywood studios. It isn't that one has declared war on the other; it's just that the studios today have an average budget per film of about $130 million. That significantly exceeds the total annual expenditure of Telefilm Canada and all Canadian films. That is per film and does not include the marketing budget. They have a typical marketing budget for a big Hollywood so-called tent-pole franchise movie, such as the one that opened this weekend, the new installment of X-Men.
The typical marketing budget is about $150 million. That is for a global launch, and this is a fairly recent idea. This idea of of releasing films globally in every country in the world and every theatre on the same day, and backing it with enormous juggernaut marketing budgets, really only developed over the course of the last dozen years. I won't get deeply into a sermon about the digital age here, but that's what the cause of it is, for better or worse. The digital age brought piracy along with it, so the Hollywood studios' approach to beating the pirates is to release their films on the same day in every city in the world, in order to get ahead of the pirates.
Also, in the digital age, the Internet makes that possible, because you can advertise globally, which is something you couldn't have done 15 years ago. If you were to turn back the clock a dozen or 15 years, Hollywood studio movies would be released in America, and by the time they got to places like Japan or Scandinavia, it could be a year later. Today it happens on the same day.
What does that mean to independent films, not just Canadian films? European films and Australian films face the same hurdle. Ours is a little greater because of our geographic proximity to this giant. The hurdle is that you have two, three, and sometimes four of these juggernauts being released every single weekend of the year, with the number of screens they occupy when they open in 10,000 or sometimes 12,000 theatres on the same day, and the cacophony of noise that's made by these massive advertising campaigns is such that the smaller independent voices have a harder and harder time being heard.
I was here a few minutes ago and heard the discussion about getting eyeballs to see Canadian films, about films not being seen or heard from. That is the major challenge here. As I say, it's not specifically a Canadian challenge. It's the challenge of independent film versus the six studios, and it's the challenge of making films that are essentially made for grownups, films that have stories to tell that may be of interest to people who may be over 25, versus the business of the Hollywood studios. They each make their one exception per year, but for the most part their business is to make repeatable franchise movies aimed at the under-25 audience, which rushes to the movies on the opening Friday night. That's the challenge we face. That's the biggest challenge.
Here in Canada, we have a few other issues, such as, for example, the massive talent drain we have, which is incomparable to anywhere else. Most of our stars, our directors, our writers, and some of our producers, when they have the opportunity to go to Los Angeles and work with much bigger budgets, avail themselves of that opportunity. They don't quite share my penchant for masochism, and I don't blame them.
Some of Hollywood's biggest names are Canadian. Directors such as James Cameron, Paul Haggis and, more recently, Jean-Marc Vallée and Denis Villeneuve are also making Hollywood movies. Movie stars like Ryan Gosling, Jim Carrey, and Keanu Reeves are all from here, but they live in L.A. and they work in L.A.
In the face of all these obstacles, here's the question I have for this committee when we get around to switching sides and you speak: what's the importance and value of feature films? Why should they be supported? Why should they be supported at all and why should they be more supported by government? There are several answers to this question.
First, feature films are like cultural flagships. When a Canadian film is in competition at the Cannes film festival or is nominated for an Academy award or a Golden Globe, it's like a Canadian athlete competing at the Olympic Games or world championships. When they get prizes, it's like winning the gold medal. It's an honour to our country. It makes the world take notice of us and our stories. It allows us to take our place in the global cultural mosaic.
Feature films do that better than any other medium today because they have attracted that much more attention. Even though we are in the golden age of television and it is a very effective mass medium, still the greatest attention goes to the biggest award show of all, the Academy awards.