I had a conversation with my sister about that recently.
The amount of shows and movies that have $100,000,000+ budgets is rising, yet half of them feature very limited sets, small casts of mid range talent, and a dozen executive producers all putting up their own money.
Here’s my comparison: a group of 10 investors come out and announce they’re spending a billion dollars to develop a new luxury car. They drum it up as being the next big thing. Then, when it comes out, it’s about as nice and luxurious as a base model Toyota Camry. Fine, but not “a billion dollars” fine. Immediately, everyone would be wondering where the hell that money went? There’s definitely a chance it was just squandered, but you have to wonder. When you have a group of private investors with executive power over the project, what goes on behind closed doors?
For all we know, they’re literally just passing massive checks in a circle to one another to say “yes, it says right here in our bank records that we spent a combined $100,000,000”, meanwhile only 25% actually goes into the production, and they pocket the rest. Then, when the flock of people have to come and check out the new megaproject, all they need to recoup is a few million more than they spent (far less than the perceived budget), and they can run for the hills.
Anywho, crackpot theory time over. But think about it, if my simple brain can think this stuff up, why can’t the hollywood bigwigs, who actually have the capital to make it happen?
BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world 3 months ago
It gets better, because all the money they “lost” on a movie they can also write off. Oops, we didn’t make any money this year because we put out 10 billion dollar movies and only made 10 million at the box office. Tax break please!
bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world 3 months ago
This specifically is a bit of an open secret afaik. There are a few semi prominent examples of big studios pouring a bunch of money into junk, not advertising it or just skipping theatres entirely, then watching it sink.