Money is a topic that's shrouded in mystery in the adult entertainment world. While it's widely presumed to be a multibillion dollar industry, there's no real firm accounting to back that up. Companies regularly inflate their numbers when speaking publicly and may deflate them at opportune times as well. The same is true of performers.
The median household income for the United States was $53,657 in 2014 (the most recent data available), according to a Census Bureau survey. While that report breaks down average salaries among several careers, there is no data about adult performers.
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So to determine who makes what, CNBC spoke with a number of individuals who work in all aspects of the adult world to get a sense of what sort of money trades hands. While there's no way to say with absolute certainty that the figures are correct, they were supported by enough people to at least seem roughly right.
"When the girls first get into the business and they're new, I think they can command additional money for different sex acts," said Steven Hirsch, owner of Vivid, one of the biggest adult entertainment studios. "Initially they make more money, then it depends on how popular they become."
It takes more than performers on screen to make an adult film, of course. While the production values typically aren't on the same level as a Hollywood film and the writing is generally skipped via the fast forward button, they're still roles that need to be filled.
One difference between an adult film and a more mainstream one, aside from the sex, is that directors are a lot more hands-on when it comes to the filmmaking process, sometimes securing locations, ensuring lighting is correct, picking up the food for the craft services table and sometimes even acting as the film's cameraperson.
Affiliating with a line of adult novelties can also be lucrative. Generally, there's a base payout for that, but some companies offer a percentage of each product sale. The more items that bear an actresses' name, body and face on the packaging or the product, the bigger the check.
TR: I love Cardio Barre, Pilates, yoga, and keeping fit. I love my family and friends and doing activities like travelling abroad and going to the movies. I just graduated from UCLA and will probably apply to start a graduate programme soon.
TR: I hope the industry is at a strong place where many companies are thriving and justice is being served to those who have had all their content pirated on tube sites. Realistically, the adult industry will mould and transform to whatever comes their way and possibly invent a new revenue stream for the performers and entrepreneurs. As of now, there is limited work for a limited pool of performers, and I'm lucky to be in it!
AW: I will stay in the industry for as long as is viable. I'd like to go back to university to complete my PhD. For my university honours thesis I conducted qualitative research into female experiences in the Australian pornography industry, and I'd like to expand on those studies to include a broader cross-section of performers.
KM: I have never really worked for any other adult companies, just here and there, so my livelihood has always been my own company. Leaving really isn't an option. Rather it is growing old gracefully and continuing to have my hand in our productions and day-to-day workflow. I still update my personal website, which I enjoy immensely. Obviously at some point I'm going to have to remain completely behind the scenes for all the sites because at 47 years old, I don't know if I'll have an audience three years from now. I don't know if grandma porn is in my future.
This does influence their first sexual encounters, and I think it can "imprint" them with ideas of what sex should be like. I spend a significant amount of time during seminars explaining to adults the difference between watching porn for the fantasy benefit versus watching it for sex ed, but kids don't get that. I think that we all need to be open in our discussions about sex and porn, and never underestimate what they've already seen. I think parents need to commit to taking an active role in their child's developing sexuality.
AW: I don't think online porn is the problem; it's the lack of education that makes young people confused about sex, sexuality, and pornography. I think age-appropriate sexual education is absolutely necessary for all young adults and children. That way you empower young people with the tools to interpret what they are seeing and an understanding that not all pornography is meant as an educational manual for sex, just like the Fast and Furious franchise is not an educational manual for driving.
Harry Potter is finished, Batman is about to ride off into the sunset, and with them those two franchise are taking billions of dollars in previously "sure-thing" revenue from film studio Warner Bros. As the movie industry looks around desperately for new sources of content to adapt for films that will keep audiences filling theater seats, one particular source of inspiration has risen to the forefront alongside comic books: young adult novels. And this weekend's opening of The Hunger Games should go far toward demonstrating the power of the books and their audience.
It could be said Harry Potter really started the blockbuster status of young adult fiction at the cinema. The series has created a massive source of revenue for Warner, the combined global box office and worldwide DVD/Blu-ray sales and rentals adding up to a staggering average of more than $1 billion per year in revenue for the studio over the course of the last decade. With Potter gone, where can a studio hope to possibly make up for the coming drop in revenue stream?
Part of the problem is that film studios focus too much on the supposed "gold standard" of target audiences -- young males -- at the expense of other demographics. And the fact is, there are only so many movies young men can really go see in any given year.
When you invest too much in movies that appeal to that single audience, you are setting yourself up for several failed films when you can't get "the guys" to show up consistently enough for your entire slate of films. Meanwhile, you steadily lose the interest of other demographics when they get sick and tired of being either ignored entirely, or (perhaps worse) presented with genre films that conform to stereotyped, cliched standards (for example: women get an annual offering of derivative rom-coms that assume women's only interests are dating and shopping).
So, while superhero movies and other films generally pandering to young males continue to reign supreme at the box office overall, it's become obvious that there's a need to find other profitable properties fit for adaptation and which can broaden the audience in order to bring in greater revenue.
And in walks the young adult novel. As noted, Harry Potter might be said to be the first, but it still focused its appeal toward young male viewers. However, within that series came unexpected revelations for the studios -- female audiences turned out in high numbers as well, as did parents who read the books along with their kids. The studios started to think about it, and to see how such novels were already branded and had a built-in audience of young people who might also bring their parents to theaters as well.
Now, stop for a moment and consider something. Twilight had female viewership that actually matches or exceeds male attendance at superhero films. And female viewership helped propel Harry Potter films to unprecedented heights at the box office as well. So... what happens if you adapt a young adult novel series that appeals to both the young female and young male audiences?
We might be about to see the answer to that question, when The Hunger Games opens this weekend, brought to us by Lionsgate. Notice, the film still clearly targets the female audience, but the book series has a firm foundation of male fans as well, and the film itself is tracking pretty well with male viewers. There's little doubt the movie is going to open huge, so the only question is whether it will have the legs for a sustained run that makes it into the blockbuster franchise everyone expects it to be.
If it's half as good as everyone says it is, then I think yes, it'll indeed be a big success. And it will probably be widely popular with males as well as females, and I bet the viewership age will even be relatively diverse (as compared to most summer blockbuster fare, especially superhero films).
The latter won't be true of every film, obviously, since there's still plenty of room in theaters for the movies that are designed to appeal straight to those same young men. But over time, as more and more films demonstrate that female audiences have finally started to be recognized as a valuable, powerful segment of the film-going public, it will be reflected in the choices of studios when they decide what content to adapt and how to adapt it.
With luck, this will have an impact on superhero films as well, and Warner Bros. will finally move on adapting a big screen Wonder Woman film that has great appeal for female viewers as well as male fanboys. After all, just as the film studios have for years neglected female audiences in their efforts to focus on appealing to male viewers, so too have comic books really dropped the ball on appealing to female readership and instead just overtly continue reaching out almost exclusively to young male readers.
The reason there is such a large fan base of females for young adult novels is simple: the book industry doesn't suffer from the same narrow male-centric focus that hinders film and comics, and so it's a no-brainer to authors that there's value and credibility in appealing to female audiences. Now that cinema has caught on to this obvious fact, it will reap the financial rewards if the industry continues to pay attention and respect that audience. 2ff7e9595c
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