David Zucker Quotes

The stakes are high on every film now because there's the opening weekend. The first week is extremely crucial; increasingly, films are being judged in terms of opening day, opening weekend, then first week. People are going berserk promoting their films.

You put a movie star or a bunch of movie stars in a movie, it doesn't mean people are gonna go see it. It's been proven time and time again.

Multiplicity was a movie that tested really well. People seeing the movie really liked it, but then the studio couldn't market it. We opened on a weekend with nine other films.

The many many imponderables come together when a film opens and for all sorts of reasons it may or may not succeed.

It's hard to market a movie when you're at the mercy of critics and journalists.

'I Wanna Hold Your Hand' and 'Used Cars' were absolute failures at the box office. Complete disasters. I learned some sad news: it's not an automatic thing that, if you make a good movie, everyone wants to see it.

Stars have no say in the release of a film. There are too many factors involved.

Really bad reviews can hurt pretty much any movie. They say that some films are review-proof, but I think that's probably big high-concept movies, comedies, and so on. But, on the whole, if a film gets dreadful reviews, it will affect its business.

When newspapers started to publish the box office scores of movies, I was horrified. Those results are totally fake because they never include the promotion budget.

Sometimes I do movies that aren't any good, or sometimes I might not be any good in them, or sometimes they don't do very well.

A lot of times, we're just sold these movies that are really cynically conceived and marketed, and they just want you there opening weekend, before everybody finds out it's not so good.

I think the success of a film is very important to an actor. It depends on how many people go to watch your movies; the more the merrier. Nobody wants to do a film for five people. You work so hard that millions of people watch the movie; this is directly related to box office success.

You want reviews to come the week the movie's opening and not a month before when they do you absolutely no good.

I've done movies I'm very proud of, but there's always a sense of: 'Come see this shiny new car!' The question I hate the most is: 'Why should people see it?'

Especially on 'Taken,' 'Taken' was not a big success the day of its release. It was released in France first, and it didn't do bad, but not as good as it did in the U.S.

Every time I do a movie, I think it's going to be a huge hit.

The best time to release a film is on a festive date like Divali or Eid, or at a time when there are no big films three to four weeks before or after.

No one can guarantee success of a film.

There have been things over the years that didn't work. 'Body Of Lies,' directed by Ridley Scott, which I did with Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, is a really tight action thriller, but when it opened in the U.S. it was number two to 'Beverly Hills Chihuahua.'

It's so rare when marketing and press doesn't ruin your movie.

If Hello' had been my debut film, the numbers would have played out differently.

I remember a few years ago, two of my films - Gulzar Saab's 'Hu tu tu' and Shakeel Noorani's 'Bade Dilwala' - were released simultaneously. 'Bade Dilwala' suffered although it was a good 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.

Everybody goes and sees 'Fantastic Four,' but nobody sees 'Sunshine.' I'd have a different career if people saw that.

I've never had a movie that got great reviews. I've had movies that got different levels of good and bad reviews, but you can more or less count on plenty of bad reviews.