Steven Soderbergh Quotes

Ironically, it's easier to raise the money to make the film than it is to have the film find wide distribution.

We don't decide how a movie will be distributed until it's finished. It might be on iTunes, it might be on 3,000 theaters, but we make that decision after the fact.

Anytime you make a movie, the goal is a wide theatrical release, with the right distributor.

We own our movie and are now close to breaking even, even without finishing domestic DVD deals.

Every film may not be appropriate for a theatrical release, and the theatrical business is not a very good business for anybody except the distributor.

We make a lot of movies that I don't think merit a wide release. We have this label called Tilt, and we have the movies come out on that, and that's fine. But it shocks me when, having done this a few times, when I really believe a movie should get a wide release, and I struggle to get it released. That does surprise me.

For a broad, star-powered picture like 'The Interview,' a big-tent release in 2,000 to 3,000 theaters is the top choice for a movie studio like Sony Pictures. It's the difference between a $1 million and a $10 million box office total.

Movie theaters barely make any money. A movie can make a couple of thousand dollars, or could get lucky and make ten or fifteen thousand dollars, but theatrical releases don't really sustain the work. For me, it's the best sort of advertisement for anything else you'd want to do.

For a long time, the film business was a single-digit business on investment return. Now, because of home video, it's a low double-digit business, and the studios want to make sure it doesn't go back into the single-digit business.

I'm always slightly worried if I do a film and we're filming it in Luxembourg. I know it's going to go straight DVD.

They say now in America that final cut doesn't mean anything. As Harvey Weinstein said to some film-maker, 'You can have final cut. I'll open your film in Arkansas.'

Usually the films that I do are released theatrically in foreign markets. In the U.S., they're either picked up as HBO premier films or Showtime first-runs. In today's market, in America, you need at least $50 million for your budget to go to the big show, and I'm not quite there yet. But keep watching - maybe someday I will be.

So much of the downstream revenue is linked to that initial excitement, to how much revenue is produced in the domestic box office. For example, what we pay for a film three years later is highly correlated to how well it did in the box office.

When you work in film, you learn to appreciate a distributor. You can have this great little film, but if you don't have a distributor, you are sitting in your living room with a great little film.

The fact is, it's hard to release movies.

I've had such a great track record in making a huge profit when the movies are smaller.

One of the benefits of doing low-budget movies is you don't have to release them wide to recoup. You can release it in a smaller way, make your money back, and keep going.

One of the big problems we had was, 'Where are we going to put the trailer?' So now they've found places - they did 'A Walk in the Woods,' they put it with that movie 'War Room,' they put it with 'Ricki and the Flash.'

We have so many films that we can fit into the slate a year, and we spend $100 million on those films in order to make $400 million dollars. We don't spend $20 million in hopes of eking out $40 million.

I think, it's important to understand how to release a film.

I think of 'Beyond The Clouds' very fondly. Yes, it has not been seen by a lot of people in theatres. I had anticipated more people would watch it. But that has to do with something I don't know well: marketing. A lot of people didn't even know that it was a Hindi film.

The way we structure our deals is to work closely with the director. It is imperative to work with a studio because the way the film is marketed is crucial.

Basically, the big studios and companies distributing your movie just take a big cut of profit for making posters.

I would never want to do a content-driven film with a box office life of Rs 20 crore.

I just want to do movies, and I want to sell them. I don't want to link up with some product.