@Directorik
Ah, man... you know this is not true in Hollywood
My opinions are not based on the way the studio system works. I
fully understand that when there is $100,000,000 and more at
stake and shareholders and corporate concerns that polling is
necessary thing. And most often wrong. What the public say they
want and what they pay to see is often quite different.
My opinions come from the independent world. It’s still a huge risk,
but we can all give examples of small movies that no poll suggested
the public wanted did very, very well. The passion of the filmmaker
was what drove the production and when it was done the distributor
took a chance.
BTW your advice; passion to make a movie is correct, but not a good idea if you want to make money
I can name 10 films right off the top of my head that were not
made with any polling of the public but still made a lot of money.
And I know there are many, many more. Hell, I’ve made money on
films that were made with no polling of the public. So I feel
making a movie out of personal passion is a good idea if you want
to make money.
I would not make a movie using the poll results: An original,
suspense thriller with blood and ghosts. Since at this point sci-fi
is so close it seems a lot of people would like to see an original,
sci-fi thriller with blood and ghosts. Really? People want to see a
science fiction movie with ghosts? Only 12% say they want horror.
Yet one of the biggest success of 2012 was a low budget horror
film. And no Sci-Fi movie has done well in years. And an original
science fiction film hasn’t done well in several decades.
I’ll close again by saying if any filmmakers want to poll the
public and use those numbers to help them decide on what project
to make I have no problem. We do what we we want to do.
Nobody KNOWS anything.