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March 06, 2006
Magnum force: George Lucas sez big budget pics are over
Lloyd Grove in the NY Daily News gets some more pre-visionary stuff from George Lucas: "The market forces that exist today make it unrealistic to spend $200 million on a movie," said Lucas, a near-billionaire... "Those movies can't make their money back anymore. Look at what happened with King Kong." The portly Lucas, whose Star Wars sequel was nominated for the Oscar in makeup, was clearly in Yoda mode at Saturday's Weinstein Co. party... "In the future, almost everything that gets shown in theaters will be indie movies," Lucas declared. "I predict that by 2025 the average movie will cost only $15 million." [Back in November, Lucas was selling the Reporter's Paula Parisi on the death of theatrical: "I think it'll happen— it'll have to happen... because of piracy. It's the only way you can stop piracy; there is no other way...
If you look at the (theatrical) divisions, I don't think they make any money. I don't think they've made money for five or six years... For studios, the fact is that the theatrical film market is less than 10% of their business—it's very, very small. I mean, you could chop that off in a second, and it wouldn't even bother them—they're just doing it as a promotional thing."
Posted by pride at March 6, 2006 07:45 AM
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