Ram Gopal Varma Quotes

I thought of 'The Big Sick' as a placeholder title, to be completely honest. I've grown to love it.

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.

The success of the film should depend on its budget.

Hard Day's Night was one of those great films that will never happen again to anyone in their lifetime. UA were in profit before we'd even finished shooting - The advance sales on the album - the film was out before the album was out was more than it cost UA to make the film.

With 'Good Will Hunting,' Miramax made certain the recruited audience wasn't expecting to laugh at Robin Williams like they normally do. From my limited experience, you can really blow test screenings by conducting them in the wrong way.

Think about trailers you see in theaters. If you're seeing a Warner Bros film, the studio might have three of the five trailers. So having a hit helps you create the next hit.

You look back on films sometimes and if they have not been as all-out successful as you anticipated you try to find reasons why maybe it didn't come off for audiences as well as you would have liked.

A book's title is vital.

A lot of things and a lot of money is involved in a movie. It is very upsetting when a movie doesn't fare well at the box-office.

Star power opened 'Mission Mangal.'

You want your film to be seen by the largest audience and stars help in facilitating that. Star-power does work.

According to me, a film can talk for itself. Like, Aamir Khan does not promote his films on a large scale, but his films work on the box office.

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.

There are films where the promos reveal all the punches and when you go to watch the film you feel like having seen it all. Such films don't last after a good opening.

The success of 'Kick' will help in the marketing of other small budget independent films I have acted in.

I don't think you can name a good picture where the production or the possible promotion isn't "cast-contingent." That means the film needs not just star power but star box office power.

Basically you want as many people as possible to see your movie.

I've never been in the position where that conversation is a serious conversation before the movie even comes out. On one side of it, that's so great because you've got such great potential. The other side of that is that there's a level of pressure. Now, that clearly means that there's an expectation level, from the studio side, potentially from the audience's side, and from our side.

If you're not connected emotionally to a story, then you're dead. You're as a filmmaker really just opening the door for people to lose interest and their minds to wander, for them to start picking it apart. That's what people will do, people will naturally tear stuff apart because they're trapped with it, they paid money for it. And they came into it wanting to love it. So all you can really do is piss off the audience. Unless you do things right.

You make a film and you can't really pick the way it's put to the public. You control the content, but the way it's marketed, or the poster, or what they're telling the public about the film, it's beyond you. Some people don't even see them, because they think they already know it. That can be frustrating, when something you've done is marketed in a way you think is antithetical to what it is.

If you test Iron Man and that audience doesn't respond well, you can be damn sure that there is something wrong with the movie that you have to address. Because they're expecting a certain amount of action, right? They want a hero. There are certain things that have to be compatible with the way the audience is thinking about it. If you take some other film, like No Country for Old Men, you can end up with all kinds of crazy reactions.

"Are We There Yet?" was the perfect title, because it's such a common saying. And having made the movie with the same name kinda locks it all in.

The movies have been so rank the last couple of years that when I see people lining up to buy tickets I sometimes think that the movies aren't drawing an audience - they're inheriting an audience. People just want to go to a movie. They're stung repeatedly, yet their desire for a good movie - for any movie - is so strong that all over the country they keep lining up.

That's an actor's life. I thought Meet Joe Black was gonna be one of the big changes for me, and it was gonna be a runaway hit - and it wasn't. And with Mr. Mom, I said, "There's just no way." And it turned out to be a huge hit.

The bigger problem still is that it determines in many ways what movies get made in the first place. Because as sources of finance are considering a project, they ask themselves, "Does this lend itself to a simplistic marketing approach which will guarantee a big opening weekend?" As a movie-goer, I think that's tragic, because when you look back at those movies that made us fall in love with movies in the first place, most of them were not high-concept, and most of them would not have "won their weekend."