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Movies are produced as unique prototypic media content to serve a highly uncertain demand. Film producers have to address the consumption risk while their projects are still in their development phase. This paper provides a literature review of key risk dimensions of movie projects and how to control them. The interviews conducted with movie producers have made it possible to compare the industry's risk control strategies. Content attributes, personnel, and funding emerge as key project resources and risk reducing elements both in theory and practice. Three distinct risk control strategies are identified and assigned to different resource configurations and market constraints of individual producers. Managing Risk in Motion Picture Project Development M. Bjørn von RimschaUniversity of Zurich ABSTRACT Movies are produced as unique prototypic media content to serve a highly uncertain demand. Film producers have to address the consumption risk while their projects are still in their development phase. This paper provides a literature review of key risk dimensions of movie projects and how to control them. The interviews conducted with movie producers have made it possible to compare the industry's risk control strategies. Content attributes, personnel, and funding emerge as key project resources and risk reducing elements both in theory and practice. Three distinct risk control strategies are identified and assigned to different resource configurations and market constraints of individual producers.KEY WORDS: project management, project selection, movie producer, industry structure, project resources This paper focuses on the development phase of movie production in which projects are selected rather than on movie distribution; it concentrates on producers developing a movie package rather than production companies building a portfolio of several movie projects.

Centralization and decentralization are key concepts in debates that focus on the (anti)democratic character of digital societies. Centralization is understood as the control over communication and data flows, and decentralization as giving it (back) to users. Communication and media research focuses on centralization put forward by dominant digital media platforms, such as Facebook and Google, and governments. Decentralization is investigated regarding its potential in civil society, i.e., hacktivism, (encryption) technologies, and grass-root technology movements. As content-based media companies increasingly engage with technology, they move into the focus of critical media studies. Moreover, as formerly nationally oriented companies now compete with global media platforms, they share several interests with civil society decentralization agents. Based on 26 qualitative interviews with leading media managers, we investigate (de)centralization strategies applied by content-oriented media companies. Theoretically, this perspective on media companies as agents of (de)centralization expands (de)centralization research beyond traditional democratic stakeholders by considering economic actors within the "global informational ecosystem" (Birkinbine, Gómez, & Wasko, 2017). We provide a three-dimensional framework to empirically investigate (de)centralization. From critical media studies, we borrow the (de)centralization of data and infrastructures, from media business research, the (de)centralization of content distribution.