Each year, a handful of successful films account for the disproportionate share of the domestic box office - which this year will total about $5.5 billion. The ever-mounting risks, however, may be justified by the potential rewards. The casualties so far this year include the $100 million "Volcano," which has attracted just $37 million in ticket sales. With so many glitzy films vying for attention, a financial bloodbath is all but guaranteed for those movies that don't catch on fast. That means moviegoers will run into a glut of movies crammed with expensive special effects during the 15-week high season that runs from Memorial Day to Labor Day. This summer, nearly a dozen movies scheduled for release will cost in excess of $100 million each.
#WATERWORLD MOVIE SHIP TV#
Marketing spending for TV commercials and newspaper ads added millions of dollars more. Last year, the three most successful films - "Independence Day," "Twister" and "Mission: Impossible" - all cost in excess of $65 million to produce. In 1992, for example, the top two revenue-producing films - "Aladdin" and "Home Alone 2" - cost about $30 million each. But the budget-busting production has become almost routine, part of a blockbuster arms race that has swept Hollywood. Griffith raised a remarkable $2 million to make "Intolerance" in 1916. And as the studios come to rely on these giant "event pictures" to bring in profits, "Titanic" is emerging as the prime example of the risks.Īmerican film studios, of course, have churned out expensive epics since D.W. Increasingly, Hollywood seems caught in a bigger-is-better mentality. But there will always be that conversation about: Is it too much money?' Should it be done?' "
"If it turns out to be epic, it will make money.
"The bottom line is, nobody wants to spend that kind of money, but that's the way it turned out," said Tom Sherak, chairman of Fox's Domestic Film Group.
We have nothing but excitement and enthusiasm for this movie."Įxecutives at Fox, which put up the bulk of the money (Paramount's share was capped at $65 million) aren't quite as sanguine. "It's going to be perceived as one of the best movies of this year, and any year.
"This movie is going to be gigantic," insists Robert Friedman, vice chairman of Paramount Communications Inc.'s Motion Picture Group. Now they say unofficially that "Titanic" won't be ready for release at all this summer the movie probably will debut around Thanksgiving.īoth Paramount and 20th Century Fox are standing by Cameron - they don't have much choice - but with varying degrees of confidence. Studio executives first hoped to reschedule it for a late July or August opening to take advantage of the summer movie season. Originally scheduled to open on July 2, the movie has been continually pushed back as director Cameron (whose credits include "True Lies," "Alien" and the "Terminator" movies) labors to finish it in his Malibu editing room. Indeed, the film is so big it took two studios - Viacom Inc.'s Paramount and News Corp.'s 20th Century Fox - to shoulder its ever-growing financial burden.Īnd it's not done yet. With a production budget estimated at $180 million to $200 million, "Titanic" will easily surpass another ocean-borne epic, "Waterworld," for the title of the costliest movie ever produced.įilming "Titanic" required construction of a $20 million studio in Mexico, a 775-foot facsimile of the doomed ship and a year of meticulous special-effects work. Even before anyone has actually seen it, the movie has engendered its own legend of ego and excess, both the personal and financial kinds. By Sharon Waxman Paul Farhi May 25, 1997Ĭan a disaster epic about an epic disaster avoid the very fate it dramatizes? "Titanic," director James Cameron's cinematic retelling of the story of the doomed luxury liner, is over budget, behind schedule and plagued by the sort of vicious Hollywood gossip that stokes the ulcers of studio executives.
0 kommentar(er)
