• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, December 9, 2008

After years as an entertainment game site, Hollywood Stock Exchange, otherwise known as HSX, wants to become a real marketplace where you can buy and sell --  just like on the commodity exchanges -- future contracts on actual movies, directors and actors.

The new commodities venue would be called the Cantor Exchange -- HSX's parent company is Cantor Entertainment, which is owned by longtime Wall Street financial service broker, Cantor Fitzgerald, a company that suffered major staff losses from the 9/11 attacks.

HSX says actual commodities contracts will be based on predicting the box office openings of theatrical films.  Andy Wing, a senior executive for Cantor Entertainment, says the actual futures contract would be pegged to the first four weeks of a film's gross.  The company is awaiting approval of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and trading could start in March.

Wing says such a commodities market could help movie companies better monitor their marketing spending. Film producers might wage money on their own movies. Perhaps this will include betting against certain movies -- as a hedge, I guess.

For over ten years HSX has been acting as a marketplace for serious film aficionados in an online game form. Right now you can buy stock in the likes of "Mark Wahlberg," "Sacha Baron Cohen," "Drew Barrymore," "director Peter Jackson" or "Batman 3."  

HSX should not stop here. Think about predicting the average rating of a new TV show after four weeks.  

People will gamble on anything -- dice, cards, horse races, and sporting events. Soon movies. Why not TV? The public is already so tuned in -- figuratively and literally -- it could dramatically change the business. Perhaps you could get a line -- a contract -- on canceled shows that might return to action.  

Just think what those avid "Jericho" fans would do if they really put their own life savings on the line.

There would be problems, of course. Though the NFL shuns betting, the city of Las Vegas, and other legal betting municipalities believe wagering is perfectly normal part of life. For TV, I'm wondering whether Nielsen Media Research would have a say. Would the biggest TV measuring service want to be a party to organized financial speculation? (Nielsen also offers up data on theatrical box office revenues, by the way).

In these troubling economic times, people turn to entertainment as a form of escapism, of distraction. Now, they can take whatever money they have left and play along, paralleling their favorite celebrities and films in ongoing dramatic depths and turmoil.

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