State of Cinema: Steven Soderbergh

[Varnsen]

I thought this was worthy of its own topic; Steven Soderbergh giving a very interesting talk on the state of cinema.

http://vimeo.com/65060864

One of the interesting things that he said was regarding how much a movie needs to make to break even being double the production costs. That's come up a few times recently after the colossal write downs for movies like John Carter when they made about $300 million worldwide. John Carter needed to make more like 700 million to be considered a 'success'.

There's lots of other things he talks about, very entertaining and thought provoking talk.

[Treble]

Be interested to watch this. Especially as he comes over as a bit of a tool during Side by Side, and his what - last 4 films? - have been crap.

[mushashi]

Be interested to watch this. Especially as he comes over as a bit of a tool during Side by Side, and his what - last 4 films? - have been crap.

Last 4? a bit harsh, I've seen the first 2 of that last 4 and thought they were pretty decent actually, and apart from those 2, I've only watched Out of Sight from his directorial back catalogue, which was also perfectly fine from what I can recall of it.

Not sure about his 2:1 breakeven ratio, sounds like he might only be talking about ticket revenue versus pure production costs only, if you factor in all the other bollocks, I'd be more inclined to believe the 3:1 ratio is closer to the truth, I'll have to watch this to see how he worded it I suppose.

[Delargey]

I think he nailed it on Studio's missing the trick by constantly remaking famous films rather than films with great ideas that didn't really work.

[Lag]

http://www.paulrossen.com/paulinekael/whymoviesbad.html

[deerokus]

and his what - last 4 films? - have been crap.

He's been churning out about 4 slightly rubbish films a year recently. The (semi-?)retirement he's been talking about seems like a good idea to recharge his creative batteries. Haywire is a good example of a film that would have been good if he'd made it ten-fifteen years ago. Instead it was just a complete waste of everyone's time.

[mushashi]

Having watched this, the thought did cross my mind that if you changed a few details, he might aswell have been complaining about the state of interactive entertainment Because the problems Hollywood has are similar to the problems AAA games have.

The breakeven ratio he mentions makes sense, the problem is only the studios know all the numbers for how much they spent on production and marketing.

[Hanzo the Razor]

I think he nailed it on Studio's missing the trick by constantly remaking famous films rather than films with great ideas that didn't really work.

Which explains why he remade Ocean's 11 three times.

[mushashi]

Which explains why he remade Ocean's 11 three times.

But actually isn't that an example of the sort of thing he said was the better way to do remakes, take an interesting idea with so-so/crappy execution originally and throw some modern creative talent at it to improve upon it, unlike the SOP Hollywood method of taking an established well done widely recognised classic and fucking up its memory by remaking it more shiney but worse and at several times the original cost?

[FishyFish]

But actually isn't that an example of the sort of thing he said was the better way to do remakes, take an interesting idea with so-so/crappy execution originally and throw some modern creative talent at it to improve upon it, unlike the SOP Hollywood method of taking an established well done widely recognised classic and fucking up its memory by remaking it more shiney but worse and at several times the original cost?

It's not that he didn't make a good remake of the original Ocean's 11, but that he then made two pointless and self-indulgent sequels to it.

[Delargey]

Yeah, but regardless of the shitty cash cows SS has milked, Hollywood should,as an artistic industry rather than just a money maker, be exploring ways to make great ideas that fell flat in the past due budget or technology or whatever into the hits they good be.