1. Spending Less Is A Safer Way Of Doing Things
The film industry is all about risks. It always has been and it always will be. Therefore the key to being a financial success in filmmaking is knowing how to manage risks. Adapting a novel? Choose a popular one. Casting a film? Make sure you've got somebody well known and marketable in a prominent role. And most importantly of all: don't over-budget. It's simple risk analysis. The more money you spend making and marketing a film, the more money you stand to lose if it fails. And that risk isn't a two way street because spending a lot of money on a film doesn't guarantee that it will make more than its low budget competitors. Despicable Me 2 completely trouncing The Lone Ranger at the box office proved that pretty conclusively. Because a high budget film can still fail spectacularly, spending an exorbitant amount of money on making a film is a huge risk without the potential extra payoff to justify it. And since filmmaking is such a high stakes business where hundreds of millions of dollars can be lost on a single product, minimising how much of a company's liquid assets are put at risk should be at the top of every studio executive's list of priorities. Making a commercially released film always comes down to taking a gamble. No matter how much you try and count the cards. But the smart gambler knows when to play it safe and bet less, or to walk away from the table altogether rather than empty his wallet onto it. Hopefully he's able to come up with better metaphors than that as well. Having said all of this though, since most of the blockbuster films you'll see are largely made in the UK, Hollywood studios practically draining their bank accounts on a few films is good for our economy. So, although it's a needlessly expensive way of doing things, it's a system with some benefits.
Do you think studios are spending too much money on films? Leave a comment...