Rob Thomas Quotes

Mid-range to low-budget movies have to have a name in the lead to get financing for it.

Market forces impose certain rules before a film can actually get made.

I think, on a larger note, that filmmakers and studios should start to tuck it in a little bit, because films wouldn't have the pressure they have if the word wasn't out about how expensive they were.

If you want your film to be instantly green-lit, your first approach is not to go to a relatively unknown English actor. They're not going to throw millions of dollars at you for that.

We shot ten minutes of the movie, and now we're looking for completion funds.

It used to be the case that studio executives like Robert Evans, Darryl Zanuck, and David Selznick would put aside money for what they wanted to be great movies regardless of whether they would perform well with the box office.

I never think about the budget of the film.

Does the critic wish to influence the kind of film that costs more than £250,000? It is as if he were to send a postcard to General Motors explaining that he would like them to make a raft next year, or a helicopter, instead of a car.

It's just hard to get an independent film made.

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.

I tried to film 'Leaves of Grass' in Oklahoma, but it was literally about a million dollars less to shoot in Louisiana.

It's nice when you're working in Hollywood and there's a movie you'd like to see that no one is making anymore. You make it yourself.

Usually, I make such small-budget films that I can't afford to buy weather.

The studios don't finance anymore, they get outside funds.

The long and short of it is that I am now in a position in England to green light movies, and that's really excellent - not high-budget movies, but movies none the less.

As soon as you're at the higher levels of budgeting, you've got to get the film made, and the only way to support the film is to have actors who can support the budget.

For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don't do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck.

But you know, there's always a danger nowadays that films are gonna be brought up to Canada for budget reasons. And that's something that really concerns me.

The only difference between working on a huge-budget film and a lesser-budget film, is the quality of lunch and dinner.

Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control.

If I thought there was any hope of turning 'World War Z' into a movie, I wouldn't have written it as a giant, epic, global story, because that requires a giant, epic, global budget.

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.

History is rife with stories of directors who got so obsessed that their films went massively over budget - out of control.

I've talked about this a lot, but 'The Witch' took four years to finance because there were certain compromises I wouldn't make.

It's great to make strong, powerful films, but in terms of people wanting to finance them, it's also very difficult.