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Talking about film budgets is a tricky thing. Talking about the budget for Avatar is an even trickier thing. I recently mused about how Fox's huge gamble had caused four highly-anticipated films in China to flee from its shadow, poising the film on the precipice of a perfect storm of box office success in China that no previous film had been privy to. In doing so I invoked the ire of a good number of commenters, all of whom felt my budget-returning extrapolation from the news that Avatar is set to dominate in 80% of China's screens during its biggest blockbuster season wasn't just a wrong hypothetical, but downright ignorant.

While I still stand by the point of that post - that the hitherto unseen convergence of all the elements behind Avatar's release is going to see unprecedented box office in China - I'll concede that there is no chance that the film makes its budget back from China alone; not with the New York Times now claiming that the film's price tag is breaching the half-billion mark. As with all things budget, however, this number isn't as simple as it looks.

The $500 million is NYT's combination of the estimated $300 million it cost to actually produce the film, the approximately $150 million Fox plans to spend on global marketing alone, with the remaining $50 million being a cushion for the cumulative costs some of the film's partners have already ponied up (such as Avatar Day, whose bill was footed mostly by IMAX). However, even if their newly estimated number is accurate, that doesn't mean that Fox is on the line for the full half-billion.

Left to right: Hand painted movie poster, Peshawar, Pakistan, 2006 (photo by Jim Henry); The Odeon Cinema, Lahore, Pakistan, 2009 (photo by Rahat Ali Dar for Los Angeles Times).

You've heard of Bollywood, Nollywood, and even Dollywood, but what about Lollywood? Based in Lahore, the second-largest city in Pakistan (and home to the U.S. Consulate), Lollywood produced more than 100 movies annually back in the 70s and 80s. Today, however, "Pakistani cinema has all but vanished," writes Alex Rodriguez in Los Angeles Times. Reportedly, the number of movie theaters in the country has declined from 1,100 in 1985 to just 120 today, and local film production has shrunk to fewer than a dozen movies each year. It's gotten so bad, the theater pictured above has been playing the same movie for three years. The same movie, and evidently not by popular demand!

Most of the usual suspects are blamed, with one that is unique to the country: "VCR, cable television, President Muhammad Zia ul-Haq's Islamization of Pakistani society, and finally DVD piracy." (Emphasis added.) While film industries have weathered changes in viewing habits, it appears that government edicts played a big role in the collapse of the industry: "Many cinemas were shut down, the rest were heavily taxed. New laws that required producers to have college degrees thinned the ranks of movie makers. The message Zia ul-Haq's government was sending to society was clear, [theater owner Jahanzaib] Baig says: 'We were being told that filmmaking was a vulgar and bad business to be in.'"

I don't know how many moons orbit Cameron's fantasy planet Pandora, but I'm just going to assume they're currently all heading for alignment. Screen Daily tells us that Avatar's two-months away release in China has caused no less than four of its own would-be blockbusters to hide from the giant shadow the blue cat-people will inevitably cast when they debut there January 1st. Zhang Yimou's remake of the Coen Brother's 1984 directorial debut Blood Simple has now decided to bow closer towards the beginning of December. Same goes for the road movie Wu Ren Qu, The Pang brother's fantasy/action sequel The Storm Warriors, and the sci-fi western Treasure Hunter (starring Jay Chou, who America will soon know as Kato in The Green Hornet).

Now I understand that few people who read Cinematical are going to be affected by the release date shift of those four films, but what makes this news worth paying attention to is the fact that these changes slot Avatar into a position in which it could conceivably earn its budget back from Chinese cinemas alone. The biggest time of the year for the Chinese box office is the three month window that covers Christmas, New Year, and the Chinese Lunar New Year and now that these four domestic films have made way for an international usurper, it means Avatar will be taking over a whopping 80% of China's screens during its most crucial box office season.

In the 2007 awards season, Fox Searchlight had two strong films in the mix with Juno and The Savages, and then in 2008, they dominated with Slumdog Millionaire and The Wrestler. As many other indie arms were folding (Paramount Vantage, Warner Independent, Picturehouse), Searchlight managed to keep things up on their end.

2009, however, hasn't been so kind to them. January's Notorious didn't do bad actually, though March's Miss March was indeed D.O.A. June's My Life in Ruins similarly underperformed, while July's Adam failed to catch on as that same month's (500) Days of Summer had. Post Grad was dumped in the doldrums of August, while Whip It failed to find a crowd in October.

Cut to now: Amelia has been effectively neutered as a ready-made Oscar contender, while Gentlemen Broncos (from the director of Napoleon Dynamite, which did particularly well for the same studio) is being pulled from wider release after this weekend after posting modest numbers on two screens and earning savage reviews for the most part.

With Miramax also facing tough times, it's a shame to see studios like these have an off-year, though there's time for a turn-around yet so far as Searchlight is concerned. Summer's summer release means the timing could work out to earn a push for Original Screenplay as a happy-go-lucky alternate to many dour contenders. This month's similarly light Fantastic Mr. Fox is an Animated Feature candidate at the very least, and -- according to THR -- the Jeff Bridges drama Crazy Heart is getting a last-minute test run of sorts at the moment to see if it can merit a move to be positioned for this year's race instead of next year's.

Fans of the comedy troupe Broken Lizard won't have to wait much longer to see the group's latest film, The Slammin' Salmon. Variety reports that Anchor Bay has acquired theatrical rights and will open the film on Dec. 11. No word yet on how wide the release will be, but all of Anchor Bay's previous titles (including Spread and While She Was Out) have been fairly limited.

Broken Lizard's first film, Super Troopers, premiered at Sundance in 2001 and earned a cult following when it hit theaters a year later. But the follow-up efforts, Club Dread and Beerfest, failed to recapture the magic. Slammin' Salmon, which premiered at Slamdance this year and subsequently played at South By Southwest, is a return to form. It's about a boxer-turned-restaurateur who bullies his waitstaff into a contest to see who can sell the most food in one night, all to help him repay a gambling debt; Cinematical's Eugene Novikov said the Broken Lizard guys demonstrate their "singular, goofy, off-the-wall sense of humor, refined and sharpened from their prior efforts."

Eugene wasn't alone, either. The film got several other rave reviews at SXSW, nearly all of them calling it the best Broken Lizard film to date. I was afraid the last two disappointments would doom this one, so I'm glad Anchor Bay stepped up and will let audiences see it. Best of all: now you can enjoy the insane magic that is Michael Clarke Duncan's performance. It truly is a thing of beauty.

Netflix subscribers rejoiced when Microsoft partnered with the incredibly popular online rental service a little shy of a year ago to bring Netflix Watch Instantly streaming service to the Xbox 360 free of charge to members with a Gold Xbox Live Subscription. This move boosted Netflix' subscriber base considerably while also being a feather in Microsoft's multimedia cap; the 360 may not have a Blu-ray drive, but it does allow a user to stream all of Netflix' WI library to their TV. Well, now that feather has lost a little bit of its luster, as Microsoft's exclusive arrangement with the movie provider is no longer all that exclusive.

Starting this November, Netflix Watch Instantly streaming will be available for Sony's Playstation 3, also completely free of charge to anyone who owns a PS3 and subscribes to at least the $8.99 per month Netflix plan (that would be the 1 DVD out at-a-time plan with unlimited instant watching). It's a deal that should give PS3 owners a great feeling, as they now have the most multi-media friendly console on the market. I'm not picking sides here, but the system will soon be boasting the impressive combination of A) Sony's own online rental service, B) a Blu-ray drive, C) a built in web-browser that allows users to access sites like YouTube and Hulu, D) unrestricted access to Netflix' Watch Instantly library, which includes a several thousand strong selection of movies and TV shows. Oh, and it plays games too.

Read on for more details, including how to enable your PS3 for the new service, which is slightly more complicated than a system update.

If you're an aspiring filmmaker hoping to break into the studio system, you'll want to hop on over to Massify.com and create an account. If you're unfamiliar with the site, it's a portal that links together actors, writers, directors and producers for all kinds of in-community projects that result in everything from Internet shorts to TV commercials to actual feature-length films. Now Lionsgate has taken notice of the service, signing a deal with the startup that will hopefully lead to multiple theatrical films down the line.

The collaboration is being dubbed the Lionsgate Incubator Project (LINC) and will kick off later this year with a "high-concept, male-driven comedy short", no doubt inspired by the enormous success of The Hangover, that will serve as a proving ground for future development. If the end product satisfies Lionsgate, they'll usher it into their feature film development program the same way they would any other project.

Lionsgate isn't the first studio to take advantage of the Massify process, either. After Dark Films created the film Perkins 14 by running a competition through the site in which users submitted and then voted on scripts, cast, and even directors. And though Lionsgate doesn't cite ADF's success (Perkins 14 was one of the better reviewed titles of the last Horrorfest), it's clear that they see the bonus inherent to working with thousands of hungry talents. From the Massify press release on their new deal:

Last night at an all-media screening for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day, audience members – both fans who had lined up for blocks to get in to see the stars and director of this long-awaited sequel and journalists – were treated to a colorful Q&A session with the director of Boondock, Troy Duffy, and its stars Billy Connolly, Sean Patrick Flanery, and Norman Reedus.

After Duffy told the audience where the afterparty would be held, a journalist asked why there was so much time between movies. Duffy was somewhat discreet, replying, "There was a rather serious bit of litigation. We sued the people who financed Boondock I and a bunch of people that distributed it, as the movie was extremely financially successful and myself, the producers, and none of the actors saw a cent of that so me and CB [producer Chris Brinker] went after them."

He went on to add, "When you're writing for a sequel and there's a movie that's been deemed sacred ground by the fanbase that's the predecessor, you cannot do anything to tread on that, so it's a bit trickier than just being able to sit down and write something."

After a one-week break for bad behavior, Indie Roundup returns, refreshed and ready to sum up what's new and what's been happening in the independent film community.

Deals. Multiple deals have been made in the last two weeks, indieWIRE reports, notably involving higher-profile directors Catherine Breillat (Bluebeard, based on a classic fairy tale, will hit theaters next spring, courtesy of Strand Releasing) and Atom Egoyan (Chloe, starring Julianne Moore, Liam Neeson, and Amanda Seyfried, due in the first half of 2010 through Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group). Of the latter, an erotic thriller, Monika Bartyzel wrote: "Chloe might not connect on a personal level, it does trap you into these lurid lives that flirt with every notion of bad behavior. I just wish they were characters I could love or hate, or simply feel for."

Director Chris Smith may be lower-profile, but fans of American Movie and The Yes Men (me! me!) will be glad to know that his latest work, Collapse, will hit theaters and VOD simultanteously next month. Kevin Kelly posted an exclusive poster and provided release dates, as well as a tidbit about the doc. Also coming to theaters and VOD next month is suspense thriller Uncertainty, starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Lynn Collins; indieWIRE has more details on that one.

Online Viewing. As practically the only film critic in America who liked Couples Retreat, I feel honor bound to tell you that one of its stars, Faizon Love, had a much better showcase for his talents in Tao of the Golden Mask, which he wrote and directed. It streams exclusively on Babelgum this month. And Ti West's Trigger Man is finally available at iTunes Movie store.

The Maid cleans up -- after the jump!

Adjust your calenders, and don't hold your breath for Terrence Malick. (If you ever hold your breath for Malick, that is. His latest opus, The Tree of Life, starring Brad Pitt and Sean Penn,was given a tentative release date of December 25, 2009. But it won't be making that date, according to Apparition Films' Bob Berney. Thompson on Hollywood caught up with Berney, who said the date was "wishful" thinking, and that the film will not be released in 2009.

Why the delay? If you know Malick at all, you know the answer to that. The film is not yet finished. The Tree of Life has already been a 30-year journey for Malick, and another year (or two, or three) won't make any difference to the notoriously meticulous director. No one has even seen the film, or knows what form its final cut will take. All that's really known about the movie is that it's a family drama that spans the 1950s and deals with the loss of innocence.

Apparition Films remains optimistic that you'll see the film in 2010. It won't make Sundance, but it's likely to make Cannes. (That is the film festival that belongs to Pitt and Angelina Jolie, so fate would dictate that's where it would premiere!) But even that is up in the air, as Berney admits he has no idea when the film will be finished, or when it will be released.