James Wan Quotes

It's just hard to get an independent film made.

I think, honestly, that the word 'indie' is a false gimmick. 'Independent' used to mean a movie that was financed outside corporate Hollywood, but a lot of what gets called independent these days is totally produced within that system. And there's nothing wrong with that.

I'd just as soon do a big-budget movie as an independent one.

I can make a movie for $5M, which used to be a routinely low, independent movie, but there's no such thing as that any more.

When you make a movie independently, you raise the money beforehand, and then you make the movie kind of by yourself.

Saw' was a film that James Wan and I came up with back in Australia and we were just hoping anyone, literally, anyone would make that film and if nobody would give us the money we were going to shoot it in a garage somewhere.

Along with loving the script, the reason I did 'Aeon Flux' was because I needed the job, and I couldn't find $5 million to make a movie independently - after making a fairly successful movie for a million dollars.

I'm just thinking of 2001, which I think is the most expensive independent film ever made - which is great, someday I hope I will do one. But I know the parameters when I got onto this project - I have to take care of everyone, make sure that they are all on board, and this process interests me.

I'm from that world where I feel so comfortable making small independent movies.

'Brothers McMullen' would not be picked up for theatrical distribution now.

It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.

I gladly, I voluntarily gave up the kind of commercial film career I had going as soon as I had enough money to finance my own films.

You know, in the film making business no one ever gives you anything.

Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.

It's hard to get personal films off the ground, and it's hard developing them.

Ultimately, making movies, if you don't have a big star, it's hard to do. Or if it's not a star director.

You make a movie for 9k for the freedom it allows you.

The major studios are by and large banks, and they give you what is by and large a loan to make a movie. Like banks, they want their money back plus.

The long and short of it is that I am now in a position in England to green light movies, and that's really excellent - not high-budget movies, but movies none the less.

And in movies you must be a gambler. To produce films is to gamble.

Independent film is not only an oxymoron; it doesn't exist anymore.

I think what Hollywood has done for so long, is make movies for themselves.

When I tried to get 'Stargate' made, I took it to every studio in Hollywood and every studio said, 'Sci-fi is dead. It's a dead genre. No one wants to see science fiction anymore.' And I had to go and raise the money independently to make that movie.

It'll be the Internet and piracy that will kill film. There's a philosophy that the Internet should be free, but the reality is that piracy will destroy the film industry and film as an art form because it's expensive to make a movie. Maybe you'll have funky little independent movies, and it'll go back and then start up again some other way.

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