Quote Originally Posted by Bigkahuna View Post
Any guy running around with a longbow and a broadsword in WW2 is something I would pay to see.
That makes you an audience of one... Hollywood, and by Hollywood I mean the entire film industry, is driven by numbers. And the PRIME NUMBER is the number of tickets sold. If a million people each bought a ticket for $10, that would represent a Box Office gross of ten million dollars. Of that ten million 50% is retained by the cinema owner. Of the $5 million left, a minimum of one million goes for prints of the film and advertising (and that's a tiny P&A budget). The distributor takes between 30-50% of the remaining $4 million, which leaves the studio $2 million. Now if the movie cost $5 million to produce (about one third of the average cost of a film) the studio loss is $3 million.

Carl Stucke was head of the story department at Warner Brothers back in the 60's. On his desk were two signs. One said, "So many good books, so few good movies" and the other one said, "The bucks start here".