Boom or Bust?

  I had recently read an article that director/producer J.J.Abrams was interviewed. In it he talked about how the budgets for Hollywood blockbusters are getting out of hand. Upon hearing this I thought about it for a moment and I had to agree with Mr. Abrams.

Hollywood budgets have gotten insane. If you were to take a look you would notice that this is the case. The Avengers (which is so awesome and if you haven’t seen it yet well what are you waiting for go see it!) had a production budget of $220 million. Granted the movie has made a little over $617 million domestically (along with another $863 million overseas) the investment seems well justified. 

  It’s really a huge risk just ask John Carter (another excellent movie). Its production budget was a whopping $250 million and yet only returned $73 million in domestic box office. It fared better overseas but not well enough it pulled in $209 million. So what you have here is a major box office flop. You can look across the board and see the numbers. 

  It doesn’t seem like there is an economic downturn in Hollywood but there is. Although budgets have inflated the number of movies being made has actually decreased. So what you have is a shrinking pie in a sense. Not a lot of opportunity for films to be financed unless it has the potential to be a huge hit. 

  J.J. Abrams believes if directors and producers learn to work with less they can curtail some of these spiraling production costs. I concur having to work with less forces you to think outside of the box to get the job done. When that happens you tend to get results that end up being cinematic classics. I love my big budgeted films. I feel as a director myself we can do a lot better to control these costs by getting inventive with our visions and not getting everything that we want.