There's a disturbing trend that's taking over the entertainment business, specifically film and television, which is having a direct effect on how movies and television shows are chosen for production. With production costs escalating out of control and box office returns ever diminishing, the question of how much money a movie will recoup through retail licensing fees is becoming an important factor in the process of deciding what does and does not get produced.

The industry has a long history of retail spin-offs dating back to the early days of Walt Disney and Mickey Mouse when in 1933 the mouse's image started to appear on Lionel trains and Ingersoll-Waterbury watches and clocks. This reciprocal deal gave Disney the money to fund his empire and it probably saved the other two companies' butts during the depression.

As the years have passed it's become a common enough sight to see plastic figurines and other mementos of children's movies showing up as part of fast food meals or on the shelves of stores. Some movies or television shows have even been blatant attempts to advertise a toy or a game, instead of the other way round.

In recent years we've seen the trend spreading to adult movies as well. The biggest and best example has to be the Lord Of The Rings trilogy where New Line Cinema licensed expensive reproductions of items from the film. Ranging from brooches costing $70 to statuettes at around $6,500, over $1.5 billion in sales have been generated since the movies were released.

In an article in Globe and Mail David Imhoff, New Line's vice president of worldwide licensing and marketing, is quoted as saying that twenty years ago when he first started, there was no adult market, but now everything they do has an adult component. From reproductions of Jason's goalie mask, lifelike Freddy Kreuger masks, to replicas of the fleur-de-lis cross key used in the film The Da Vinci Code (steel, platinum, and gold, for only $4,599), the film fanatic can purchase almost anything he wants, if he has the money, from his favourite movie.

While a studio only gets a small percentage (between five and ten percent) of the amount earned by these sales, when total sales of retail spin-offs amounts to $50 billion dollars as it did last year, that ends up being a good chunk of change — in fact, such a good chunk of change that studios are now taking this factor into consideration when they make decisions about projects.