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Update - I departed from my experiment to open a new studio - Cinema West - with one goal: determine what a 5* Western budget looks like. I made seven of them (full budgets and the audience ratings of the budgets are in the file), before I bit the bullet and made a big-budget Western, pumping more money into that sucker that I put into most of my Action Adventure films. Result: It topped the $1 billion mark in domestic and foreign box office receipts. See for yourself: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This genre run was pretty funky - I had never made a Western before, so this was more of an experiment than any of my previous movie-making forays. Only three real losers in the bunch, mitigated by three films topping the $200 million mark in net profit. This is also the first time I relied so heavily upon the studio backlot, figuring it was either that or ante up for remote filming locations - and I tried to mind my pennies this time around. Despite this being a better run than Dramarama and That's Amore!, I'm not very comfortable making Westerns. Every budget (even my Spaghetti Western!) received two stars from the audience, so I'm actually eager to engage in a longer Western-focused film run, fiddling with figures until I come up with a ratio that the HM audience actually approves. |
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This run was great in terms of the talent offered - lots of 5* directors, actresses and actors to choose from, so if the audience didn't react very well to one, I always had another on hand to try out on the next film. Oddly, Oliver Stone ended up being my prize talent - he produced and directed my studio to nine Best Picture and seven Best Director nominations, willing one apiece for my final film. Yahoo for me - I finally won that damn BP Mogie, the first one out of the 26 (!!) nominations I've had during this entire experiment. Also during this run, I had gads of fun intro'ing Russell Crowe in "The Quick and the Dead", using him in every film thereafter, and beaming as he won the Best Actor Mogie twice. In deference to this being the Lenten season, I have a confession to make. I cheated heinously to make "The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly" profitable. Due to some kind of glitch, my GBU script went from 5* to no stars on the final polishing, even though all areas were brought up to 5*. To my dismay, the Top 15 Talent I cast demanded full price for their participation, but I was still hopeful that the HM audience wouldn't treat this the same as any other poorly-scripted stinker. Then it tanked at the box office, losing upwards of $175 million dollars. I was robbed, damnit. Since I had saved the game at an earlier point, I reverted to the saved position, put GBU into turnaround, and released "Trailblazers" in its stead...and I could hear Carey DeVuono cackling as "Trailblazers" suffered the exact same dismal performance. So I reverted to the saved position again, killed "Trailblazers", and budgeted GBU as a classically cheesy Spaghetti Western, sans Clint.. This time, it made a $24 million profit . MWA-HA-HA! Miscellaneous Tidbits:
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