Jiang Wen Quotes

For me, money has never been an indicator. And it is very sad that each and every film these days is being judged by the money that it makes. It's a world that I don't want to be a part of, and I try and stay away from that.

It's a sin to have your films not to make money.

There are two kinds of success. One is musical or artistic and the other is commercial.

Ideally, I'd like to have a movie that people like and makes money.

I want my films to make money first. Awards and all can come later.

I want to be a commercially viable actor. I want that the distributors and producers should earn the money; then only, you become a bankable actor.

What eventually counts is whether your film was successful at the box-office or not, or more so if the film has made its money, and 'Race 3' did that.

When I see good films not doing well, irrespective of my role being appreciated or not, I have a problem because then the producer who has made a loss will never believe in investing in good cinema.

If my film doesn't make money, it means people didn't go watch it. So it doesn't matter then that the critics loved it.

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

I always say, what really makes a movie commercial is that it makes its money back.

You want the film to be critically successful - you certainly want the film to be financially successful so that you can...well, because that's how movies like this are made, you know, they need to make money. But as a director, you can only make the movie that you want to make.

Basically, movies come down to economics, and they're always too expensive. From a producer's point of view, an actor is either going to make him money or save him money.

If someone puts up $100 million on a movie, they're gonna be concerned about whether they'll get it back. So they're not gonna make a movie about three girls, you know?

A lot of dumb pictures have made a lot of money, but that doesn't mean they're going to be anything cinema students will revel over in the future.

When Silence of the Lambs did well commercially it was more than anything. My partner Ed Saxon and I were just so relieved that finally we had made a movie that had made some money!

Unless a Western's made money - doesn't matter who made the money, doesn't matter what the subject is - if the last one didn't make any money, you can't make another one for a four-year period. Westerns more than any genre.

I have an issue with the commercial aspect of moviemaking: I don't see why a movie can't make a lot of money and also be good.

The chance to be both artistically appreciated and commercially appreciated... That's what you hope for.

Well, I started thinking about what you were saying about how your movies need to make a profit. Now, what is the one thing, if you put it in a movie, it'll be successful?

I've made movies where people say it's their favourite, but they don't take it seriously because it just didn't seem to break through commercially.

You come out of drama school and do theatre and are interested in creative endeavour, then you drift into TV and movies and realise that artistic endeavour needs to balance with financial success. There's no point spending millions on a movie that doesn't make any money, because the people producing it won't make another one.

Because movies have gotten so expensive, and they're so expensive to market, that means that for a movie to break even or to make its money back, everybody has to go see the movie, and if everybody has to go see the movie, then it can't be about anything.

If you make a good film, then there's no harm if it achieves commercial success.

If I want to be a leading man in a film, box office numbers count because producers have invested money. I see no wrong in that process.