John Slattery Quotes

It costs a lot of money to release a movie. What you'd call art-house movies - movies that don't have big stars or big budgets - they're very hard for distributors to get behind 'em and take chances.

Filmmaking involves a lot of money and hard work, which should not be wasted, though nobody knows which film will be a hit.

If I give five flops, I won't get a job. You have to perform at the box office when you are at the top. No one is running a charity here. People are putting huge amounts of money to make movies, and they want the films to be successful. They have invested money in you, so it is your duty to make sure the film does well.

Films that score very high with test audiences generally tend to not be so great. But, there's a lot of money involved in making movies, and it's a way for people to reassure themselves, who have spent money, and it's also a way to work out how to market a movie.

I want people to see my name on a movie, pay money and know they're going to be entertained for 90 minutes.

I don't really have much to prove. I can easily go in a comfort zone, make two films a year, hype them because I've signed them as a star, make them cheap and they will be big hits.

If you look at film, distribution is pre-bought. If you've paid for the distribution, you say, 'I have to make sure it's a film that gets enough butts in the seats.' I think that's the problem: It becomes prohibitively expensive, and you can't develop films for a smaller amount of money.

The bottom line of Hollywood is money.

We make movies for the cineplex. They're designed for wide release. They're designed to be seen by a lot of people and eventually make money.

You have to acknowledge that films that have a strong concept and are easily marketed to people are the ones that stand the biggest chance of success.

Basically, movies come down to economics, and they're always too expensive. From a producer's point of view, an actor is either going to make him money or save him money.

Anybody who understands how a movie gets made understands that a deep-pockets player is not going to make a movie that has anything defamatory in it without protections.

They thought in terms of: whatever you had that started you at the box office, this was it.

Jokes apart, people are constantly asking me, 'What are you doing for the industry?' When one makes a blockbuster, you plough back money into the industry. If my film makes 100 crore, I'm not taking the entire sum home! It gets distributed between the exhibitors, distributors, producers and actors.

I think people who make movies and have invested a lot of money in them get frightened that if they challenge an audience they are going to repel them. And I think the opposite; it's really true.

Now it really is, believe it or not, 90% of the films are green lit, not by the studio heads, but by the marketing department.

Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre.

Film is the most expensive, highest risk industry in the world.

From now on, I approach the cinema as a business woman.

I don't care how much hardware you throw at an audience. If they are not emotionally invested in the thing, it's zero. I can name a slew of films, but I have no ax to grind. I understand the commerce of Hollywood probably better than anyone.

I would love to do a big studio movie, just because they're going to put the money into distributing it. A lot of times you do these little movies, you love them and they never get seen by anyone.

Making a big commercial movie is hard when you think about how many of them flop.

When you do bigger films, the financiers take more risks.

Just selling through a movie theater is not ever going to be a viable way to make money back on a movie anymore.

It seems there's a sliding scale between the money they spend on a movie and its creativity.