Ben Kingsley Quotes

No one can guarantee success of a film.

It is very difficult for anyone to predict how a film will do. It depends on so many things: the mood of the audience, the state of their mind at the time, how they have reacted to the whole treatment.

And the insidious thing is that people will either see a movie because it did well last weekend or won't see it because it didn't do well.

You know, it's not the people in Hollywood who go to see movies that will make a movie successful; it's the people all around the country; it's word-of-mouth.

Content is now the most import factor that decides a film's success at the box office, so we as filmmakers are all trying different stories.

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.

It's a myth that you'll know the box office result of any film. I don't think anybody can predict a film's fate accurately, otherwise nobody would make unsuccessful or flop films.

There are films which are good, but sometimes it doesn't work at the box office.

I do not keep a track of numbers as such, but I am definitely aware of how a film of mine is doing when it is playing in theatres. More than the numbers, it is important to know how the audience is reacting to the film.

For a filmmaker, whether the film is liked, understood or appreciated counts as much as the moolah.

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.

We can't say whether a film will be a hit or flop. There's something which just clicks with people.

A successful film is a good film, and a non-successful film is a bad film. It's as simple as that.

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.

Westerns are very difficult to predict whether they'll reach an audience or not.

The success of the film should depend on its budget.

I don't believe that you can judge the worth of a movie in the atmosphere in which it comes out the first time. There's just so many reasons why some pictures don't catch on.

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.

A film cannot make it into the culture without the support of critics.

It didn't happen every time for every movie. Ruthless People was a good movie, but we didn't get a good release or marketing. They completely blew the opening.

I've learned that you can never predict what will happen to a film. You can never predict if people will love it, if they'll hate it. It's an act of ego if you're hoping for everyone to love the film and tell you how great you are.

I don't think 'Cocktail' was a perfect critical success, but it touched a vein in our culture.

Hollywood is a roulette wheel. Each project dictates what's going to happen for you next, and it doesn't really matter that your project is critically acclaimed or won awards or has fans worldwide. It's a matter of how many movie tickets and DVDs and on-demand movies that you sell.

The effort always remains that my new film outdoes my last in terms of performance and gets better box office success. Box office is the sole reason why I do films.

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.