Idk if economics was the right flair but I don’t know how it’s economically feasible for big studios to lose money on a lot of films with huge budgets and to make them so bad.
In: Economics
Because plenty of bad movies have made money. The studios aren’t in it to make art. Sure, Oscar-winning movies can make some money, but the big action movies make far more and lend themselves to merchandising and franchises.
When a studio greenlights a movie, it’s not really about the script, it’s the package: yes, the script is part of it but also who’s attached to star, direct, and produce. They’re looking for a package that puts butts in seats and can potentially lead to sequels, toys, video games, theme park attractions…lots of revenue streams.
So when you look at movie making through this lens, you’re not going to care about a good quality script with good actors as much as you care about a decent script, probably from an existing IP that already has a built-in fanbase, with proven bankable talent attached.
It’s not new; studios have approached filmmaking this way for decades. They’ve always been about money over art. But the ’70s and ’90s were kind of a golden age of independent filmmaking – movies made outside the major studio system that were cool and smaller-budgeted. Now a lot of that type of content goes straight to streaming.
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