Kodak and the present growth or decline of the cine film business

[dcy]

{Moderator note: this thread was split off of another one that dealt with a related, but distinct topic: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/shot-lucky-c200-new-color-film.214984/ }

Just think about it: Kodak will remain in the market as long as there's demand for film for movie production. This demand isn't decreasing. It's constantly growing.

Is this true? The market for movie film is growing? Not being replaced by digital?

 

[MattKing]

A lot of the film produced for the movie industry is used for the intermediate steps in the editing process.
The "Product" list on the Motion Picture Film part of the Eastman Kodak website:

The link is here: https://www.kodak.com/en/motion/home/

 

[koraks]

Is this true? The market for movie film is growing? Not being replaced by digital?

For now I think demand has bottomed out a few years ago and demand is on the rise. IDK how substantial that rise is.

One of the key factors for Kodak staying in business is not so much demand on photographic film, but how successful they are in continuing to exploit their technology portfolio with products aimed at entirely different markets than those related to photography.

 

[halfaman]

Is this true? The market for movie film is growing? Not being replaced by digital?

The "digital replacement" happened in Hollywood a decade ago, more or less. Similar than with still photograhpy, it seems that there is a growing interest in the past years on shooting movies with film.

 

[dcy]

The "digital replacement" happened in Hollywood a decade ago, more or less. Similar than with still photograhpy, it seems that there is a growing interest in the past years on shooting movies with film.

Do you have any evidence (even if it's just circumstantial) that there is *growing* interest?

I know that film continues to be a big part of the movie industry. Tarantino is a strong advocate for film. But my understanding was that film still on the decline; it's just a slow decline now. I tried to find information online, but all I could find was this page with a plot that ends in 2018, but that doesn't tell us what's happened in the last 7 years. Perhaps it's been a slow decline, perhaps it stabilized, and perhaps it bounced and recovered.

 

[brbo]

The entire cine film business is about half or less (and falling) the size of Eastman Kodak's still film business. I guess the falling share of EK cine film business is mainly because the (faster) growth in still film.

 

[koraks]

The entire cine film business is about half or less (and falling) the size of Eastman Kodak's still film business.

It's much less, indeed. >70% of EK's revenues is associated with print(as in industrial inkjet, flexo etc., not photographic or cinematographic prints). Of the remainder, only a part is photography-related, with other applications being e.g. battery technology, wireless tech, semicon etc. So present-day Eastman Kodak is really only to a very limited extent a photographic company. It's a bit like Fuji, but Eastman Kodak was evidently much later and much less successful in their diversification.

The print business isn't going so well at the moment for Kodak, in part because they're still apparently invested in flexography, which is on its way out (e.g. Fuji shut down an entire production line here in the neighborhood in that segment only a few years ago). In the inkjet domain, they're a small player, even in the American market, let alone elsewhere. Whatever concerns or hopes there are w.r.t. the cine film business, it's all dwarfed by much bigger strategic issues.

 

[Spektrum]

Do you have any evidence (even if it's just circumstantial) that there is *growing* interest?

For this topic, I created a website with information on the number of movies using analog film produced between 2019 and 2024. I used Gemini 2.5 Pro Deep Research.

The Analog Renaissance: A 2019-2024 Film Analysis

I assume that the data availability is quite good, besides, I used AI Deep Research in the "pro" version, so I would not expect any falsehood called AI hallucinations.

 

[Alex Benjamin]

But my understanding was that film still on the decline; it's just a slow decline now.

One can wonder if what's important for the company itself isn't how much a product is used but rather how much money it's making, or losing, from manufacturing it.

Not to forget how much are people willing to pay for it, and how does the profit margin (or loss) fits in your entire portfolio.

 

[brbo]

It's much less, indeed. >70% of EK's revenues is associated with print(as in industrial inkjet, flexo etc., not photographic or cinematographic prints).

This is correct, but I wanted to point out that cine film is now less than half of still film business for EK. Some people still live in a world where still film is produced in miles and cine film in thousands of miles. Not true.