Hollywood Economics Quotes

Yes, you can have art films about the triumph of the human spirit and all of that, but you'll have it done with a big-budget icon with a $20 million salary. You'll have Julia Roberts, you'll have Robert Redford, you'll have Russell Crowe doing those films, because if they're going to cost $90 million, they're going to make that movie for a public that's very large and mainstream. They're not going to make it for three or four million black people.

The only difference from one $100 million budget film to another is which of the 12 box stars are getting $20 million to be in it.

Movies, far more than the traditional arts, are tied to big money. Without a few independent critics, there's nothing between the public and the advertisers.

It's either 'Saw' made for $4 million or 'Star Wars,' 'Star Trek,' 'Guardians of the Galaxy' et cetera being made for $150 million. So the $30 and $40 million films don't get made unless they're maybe 'Ride Along.' But I don't really know why. I don't get paid to know why.

As great as Ed is, the wisdom out here is that he can't carry a movie. They'll pay him $3 million to be the second banana in Julia Roberts things. But they won't put up $3 million for an Ed Harris movie.

Why don't they make more science fiction movies? The answer to any question starting, Why don't they- is almost always, Money.

I think, unfortunately or fortunately, the reality of Hollywood is that if your movie makes money, they'll make another one.

When you're spending $200 million on a movie, you need to make $400 million to break even. It's a spectacle.

Trying to convince Warner Bros. to make a $30 million 'Veronica Mars' movie just wasn't going to happen, for understandable reasons.

The corporate system dictates what gets made, and the movies are so bad because of the economic structure of Hollywood. The big business takeover of Hollywood is at fault rather than American storytellers - it's what keeps textured movies from getting made.

With major films costing hundreds of millions of dollars to make, Hollywood is an industry that tends to repeat patterns when they make money.

In general, the final filter of Hollywood is for-profit. Nothing goes through unless it can make money.

I can see television much more easily than I can see features, because the economy and politics of making big, big features seems to me to be narrowing even from what it was.