Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Shadowdancer" data-source="post: 1299396" data-attributes="member: 515">If you are saying Liv Tyler was cast as Arwen to appeal to female moviegoers, I would say you are wrong. She was more likely cast to appeal (as eye candy) to male moviegoers than as a draw to female moviegoers. As far as building up Arwen's character, that likely had less to do with marketing and more to do with the fact that two-thirds of the team that adapted the books into the scripts were females. Hollywood doesn't succeed in dollars made more often than it fails. There are between 200 and 250 movies released each year. The average movie costs $50 million to make. Add on promotion and distribution costs, that raises the budget to close to $100 million. That's why Hollywood makes such a big deal about movies grossing $100 million -- that's considered to be the break-even point. Last year, only 25 movies grossed $100 million or more. And that was a record. The top grossing film (so far) was "Finding Nemo" with $340 million. So it paid for itself, and two other films. Even if every film that grossed more than $100 million paid for itself and two other films, that's only 75 films breaking even. Hollywood is notorious for charging off expenses from one film, which bombed at the box office, against the budget of a film that grossed more than it cost. So in effect, no movie in Hollywood ever makes a profit. That's why star actors and directors will sometimes, instead of a salary, take a percentage of the gross, and not a percentage of the profit. A few decades ago, they took a percentage of the profit, and got burned because the movie never showed a profit. There was a high-profile case a few years back involving the Frank Sinatra movie "The Manchurian Candidate." It was a big box office success. But according to the studio's books, it never showed a profit because they charged off expenses from other, less successful films against its budget. Sinatra got pissed and sued the studio. Not that this was an isolated case; it went on all the time. It was just that Sinatra was one of the few people with enough power to take on the studios and not worry about career ramifications. Because this lawsuit kept the movie tied up for so long, for years it wasn't available on video tape -- and later DVD. The studio and Sinatra eventually settled the lawsuit. The practice came up again in a lawsuit filed by columnist Art Buchwald over failure to get paid for originating the idea for "Coming to America." And the practice of charging off expenses from one film against the budget of another still goes on. And there are more people "out of work" in Hollywood -- in the film industry -- than there are people working in Hollywood in the film industry. That's why so many people in the industry take other jobs, waiting for that big break, or that next big break. And that's not just for actors -- it's true for directors, writers, and all sorts of technical people. As well as people on the business end -- accountants, marketing people, PR and advertising.</blockquote>

Verification