Richard D. Zanuck Quotes

Movies are very hard to make, to get it all to come together. So many people have their say in what the end product of films are.

The film business has so many twists and turns that it's a miracle any film gets made.

The last thing I ever wanted to get involved with is Hollywood. The way it works is that people get an idea you could possibly do something, but there's a one-in-a-hundred chance that it could get made.

Well, we are not doing that film actually. At least I am not at the moment, but we are making an effort to get it done; I don't know whether we'll get the financing for it. The old story we had it, it fell out of place and this and that.

We're talking to New Line. They've got a couple projects they're interested in me doing and I'm having meetings at MGM. There's a lot of available projects.

By the time we got to MGM, and Lions Gate the movie was done there was nothing else to say. It was done. Just as at Universal, it was art by committee.

I have come close to producing films. But generally by the time they hit the screen, there's about 50 people with producer credits, so what's the point. I usually find scripts I like with no money attached and take them to producers that I know and try to raise finance.

Nowadays, to get a movie greenlit, you have to make an incredible effort.

I love it when actors come to you with a problem and you have to listen. You'd like them to just get on with it, but it often means that there's a problem with the script.

It's a good time to be making movies, despite the cynicism people have about Hollywood.

A film goes through so many hands, that by the time it's done, it might not resemble what you thought you were making.

You just can't make any movie and it will be good now. This is a really a difficult time to be in films.

It is so hard to get movies made in Hollywood that you got to have six going at once, and you know, probably none of those get made.

I really wanted 'NH10' to be made, and being associated with it eased the entire process.

I'd like to be making more films more frequently, but I do find that making movies, for me, has proven to be an extremely challenging road. No movie is easy; no movie has come together quickly.

Taika asked me to do 'Hunt for the Wilderpeople' in 2014, and I was like, 'Yeah, I am keen. I'd really enjoy it.' I didn't have to audition. It was quite cool.

I've got dreams now of reinventing 'Hellraiser' and just getting my head on anything I can get my hands on that maybe I would love. 'Cause the possibilities are endless: I can make my own movies; I can make other people's movies. But if someone had a 'Hellraiser' script and had funding, and I loved it, let's go.

You need names to get the movie made.

They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'

With 'The Last Picture Show,' Peter Bogdanovich brought the script to the company that made it. They liked it, and they gave him the money he needed to make the film. He cast it with the actors that he thought were right for the parts. Now, it's the reverse.

There was a moment when we were casting 'Groundhog Day' when Bill Murray was not at the top of my list. He'd been getting crankier and crankier. By the end of 'Ghostbusters II', he was pretty cranky. I thought, 'Do I want to put up with this for twelve weeks?'

Original movies of any size are an endangered species.

It was a different time in the 1970s. Movies didn't have to make as much money.

I think it's rare for anyone that a really accomplished, amazing director calls you up and says, 'I want to make a movie around you, and I want it to be this.'

It took five years to get 'Parental Guidance' made, and it was a fight every second.