Interview with president of Universal

Great interview.

Nice to get a reminder that studio execs and as soulless as most indies make them out to be. It's just business.

(A critical hit is) great when it happens. But we did A Beautiful Mind, and I don’t know that we’d do A Beautiful Mind again. That’s the sad part. It’s great to win awards and make films that you’re proud of and make money, but your first obligation is to make money and then worry about being proud of what you do.
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And I also appreciated:
Scott Pilgrim, I think, was actually kind of a good movie. But none of you guys went! And you didn’t tell your friends to go! But, you know, it happens.

Cowboys & Aliens didn’t deserve better. Land of the Lost didn’t deserve better. Scott Pilgrim did deserve better, but it just didn’t capture enough of the imaginations of people, and it was one of those things where it didn’t cost a lot so it wasn’t a big loss. Cowboys & Aliens was a big loss, and Land of the Lost was a huge loss. We misfired. We were wrong. We did it badly, and I think we’re all guilty of it.
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PaulGriffith said:
Nice to get a reminder that studio execs and as soulless as most indies make them out to be.
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You forgot, "Without whom there would be no big budget films to inspire the indie filmmakers to want to make films."

No Indiana Jones, No Star Wars (the first one in '78), No Jaws, No Kubrick, No Hitchcock... nothing, just a blank, sad screen in the dark.

This is an expensive endeavor. There needs to be funding, and they don't need to be excited about more than making a return on their investment so the filmmakers can afford to make their films... the artist had better damn well deliver on that promise... Da Vinci had to!

The neatest part and most enlightening is that he's not soulless... they made an investment and it was on something they thought would A)Pay off and B) be worth their time and effort (they do have a reputation to uphold as well)... The fact that he recognizes the failings - and points out the audiences as well shows that he is fully aware of the ART part of it... the simple fact is that art doesn't make money but costs money to make... so every once in a while, you need to paint dogs playing cards on velvet and sell it at a roadside craft show so you can afford to buy paint.
 
I went to see Scott Pilgrim! I did! It's not my fault!!! ;-)

I was very disappointed with the axing of both Dark Tower and At The Mountains of Madness. It's a shame they couldn't have made the numbers work. As free as he feels to say that the movies that bombed sucked, it's sort of odd to hear him say "boy we make shitty pictures that make no money and it breaks my heart" right next to "boy these projects were awesome, but we chose not to make them". Think the Wolfman has a crappy script? Then don't greenlight it. And from what I remember at the time, Madness was canned more due to content than budget. They didn't tell del Toro "cut your budget" they said "cut the ending and make it PG-13". Maybe that wasn't Meyer, and maybe he really wanted to give it a go, but color me skeptical.

Of course, I kinda liked Babe 2 (not as much as the first), so what do I know? ;-) And, as he says, we're all human, we all make mistakes and sometimes we don't do things as well as we'd like. Good read, either way.
 
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