Now a movie goes out to two, three thousand theaters and by Friday night at 10 o'clock they know if you are in or out. That desperate competition is, I think, horrendous. It's awful.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The hard thing is getting people to come to the theater to see something, no matter if it's good or not.
Movies are getting more and more expensive to distribute. You need a lot of money to get people into theaters.
People say, 'If you open a movie online at the same time as in movie theatres, no one is going to go to the movies.' That's just not true. People love to go out and have a shared experience; they always will.
The industry has to have the audience in order to make these films. So it's a serious thing - how do you get people to leave their houses and go to the theater?
So many large movies come to you with a huge marketing campaign and it's like you have to see this movie this weekend, otherwise you'll be culturally bankrupt and can't converse with your friends.
The only time I have a good hunch the audience is going to be there is when I make the sequel to 'Jurassic Park' or I make another Indiana Jones movie. I know I've got a good shot at getting an audience on opening night. Everything else that is striking out into new territory is a crap shoot.
So much of selling a film in the industry is about creating a fulcrum where all the pressure comes to bear, and something seems suddenly valuable and approved by an audience. It's amazing how people could pick up tons of films on the cheap, but they don't because they wait until everything is laid out for them.
The idea of a film staying in theaters for a year is something of a fantasy today.
If you have skills to pull off even a four-hour film, people will go and watch it.
The movies have a way of seeping out there over time. We don't put them in 2,000 theaters. It wouldn't work that way.