The Perils of Producing

You go to a movie, you get your ticket, your popcorn and soda and you find your seat. The film starts and you are either agog with anticipation or they watch and ultimately fall asleep -- it's hard to make a good movie, especially one that has wide ranging appeal. What is the magic secret to making a STAR WARS, or an INDIANA JONES -- what does it take to create a multi-Oscar winning movie like TERMS OF ENDEARMENT or BROADCAST NEWS -- I name these somewhat older films because today, especially in America, we don't make movies with stories anymore, not many anyway. In the age of EVENT movies, every movie would seem to have story as an afterthought . They look at their CG possibilities and thing, what can we do that we can build a story around, I feel it was this way in the recent remake of TARZAN, and certainly in the HOBBIT and LORD OF THE RING movies, where the movies were more about the visual element than it was about story.

We are looking to change that -- we want to make movies that are about something, and usually that SOMETHING has to do with the human condition and relationships. Today, the best non-event movies we are seeing are being turned out of England, and in many cases in partnership with Indian Filmmakers, in other words -- BOLLYWOOD. These are movies created for entertainment, made on a smaller budget than most American movies and are of the best quality acting and story-wise. Look to films like THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, THE NAMESAKE, THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL, THE HUNDRED FOOT JOURNEY, THE IMITATION GAME and THE KING'S SPEECH to be examples of the kind of CHARACTER DRIVEN stories we are hoping to produce in the next few years.

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