Steven Knight Quotes

I never think about the budget of the film.

If we do another 'Deadpool,' we'd love to have more money for visual effects. But I don't think anybody does good with an excess of time or money.

You can't compromise to keep the film in budget.

Whenever you're doing film for television and you look at the budget that you have, which is much more constricted than a movie budget, you think, "God, are they going to be able to do what they say they are?"

If you're a producer, you always spend too much money because you want that shot - and you're willing to spend a bundle to get it.

Because television doesn't offer the kind of budget that a movie offers, you've got to be a little more careful where you spend the money to put the fiction in science.

If a manager can't control his costs, fire them.

On Lock, Stock, we didn't know where the money for shooting the next day was coming from.

I keep my overhead as low as I can.

The key, I think, from a business point of view, is to learn how to be efficient in making a record that's not too expensive, so that you're not going crazy spending tons of money making a product that might not ever return that money.

Budget drives everything that we do.

I think 'Cyrus' has a lot of fat in it. It was a $7 million movie. If you're going to make a movie with famous people, you don't necessarily need to spend 7 million dollars. Make it for less than that, and you'll be able to sell it and make a ton more than that, and everybody shares the profits.

In the private sector, you have a budget and you stick to it.

It doesn't matter how big or small your film is: you still don't have enough money. You don't have enough time to shoot it.

I always cooperate to complete a film within the budget. Not a single film of mine has overshot its budget.

We are able to create incredible set-pieces here in the US that TV shows often don't have the resources to create in the UK.

I try not to shoot unnecessarily or spend on extra expenses that normally happen on a film set - like actors' fees.

The first thing I control is the cost by not shooting for many days. It is not control, but somebody has to drive the whole thing. If I shoot unnecessary things, it will raise cost.

Somebody once told me - and I could be wrong about this - that The West Wing was, on any given episode, $300,000 over, on average. Now today, if you were $10,000 over budget, they would cancel you. For sure.

Sometimes little things can prolong an experience in a way that you run over budget. It's very scientific; a lot of people don't understand the science that goes behind making a film.

If you're directing, it doesn't really matter any more if it's going straight to TV - what matters is whether you have the resources to make a story that moves you.

I know I'm in the exceptional position of having money, but I didn't have it for many decades. I'm always trying to get shows put on for 25 per cent less production costs.

And with the money from your corn, from your rents, and from the issues of pleas in your courts, and from your stock, arrange the expenses of your kitchen and your wines and your wardrobe and the wages of servants, and subtract your stock.

Well, you can't improvise story, which is a fact. If you could, the budget would be insane.

When you're shooting a movie that's not necessarily a huge budget, you have to think about what you can leave out and still make it interesting.