My past films came out on home entertainment in the U.S., so the next question was, how do we get a theatrical in the U.S.? Well, you put a monster in it. That will do it, because people love monster movies.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The traditional Hollywood system is pretty rigid, but the film scene in, say, South Africa is booming with a lot of possibilities. If you have the cameras and reasonable capital, you can put your film in theatres next to 'Guardians of the Galaxy.' A great example of that was Kagiso Lediga's film 'Blitz Patrole.'
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?
Usually the films that I do are released theatrically in foreign markets. In the U.S., they're either picked up as HBO premier films or Showtime first-runs. In today's market, in America, you need at least $50 million for your budget to go to the big show, and I'm not quite there yet. But keep watching - maybe someday I will be.
I wish, to be honest with you, for African American films that we could get a few more theaters. They only open them in 1500 to 2000 for an opening weekend, and how do you expect us to compete. How can we go to certain box office levels if they don't give us more theaters?
All we try and do is make the best films we can. If you do that then hopefully the audiences will come, and they have. Everything else is gravy.
It's a big battle to bring quality stuff into theaters across America, for sure.
I want to make films that cater to the world audiences.
There's a level of sophistication of filmmaking that's mind-boggling. Anything you need for your movie, there's an establishment that can make it happen really fast.
Movies are getting more and more expensive to distribute. You need a lot of money to get people into theaters.
When you first think of making a monster movie you have to realize that a lot of people may be down on you because there is a big prejudice against such films.