Word: film
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Dates: during 1970-1970
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...mandate is to bring moviemaking into the computerized, cost-controlled business world. The newest enthusiasm in Hollywood film making, therefore, is cutting budgets and cutting losses. Some of that $100 million debit was just a realistic write-off or write-down on properties in the works or even in the can that could never net as much as originally projected. In November, the last tycoon of old Hollywood, Jack Warner, retired from the studio bearing his name. But even before his formal send-off (on Sound Stage No. 7, where the "Great Hall" set from Camelot is still unstruck...
...flop percentage is the same for little movies as for blockbusters-about 70%. The Hollywood rule of thumb is that a picture must gross 2½ times its cost to break even. As Warner's President Ted Ashley puts it, "If you get hurt with the $15 million films, you get de-balled." Though his $20 million Hello, Dolly! may nose into the black eventually. Fox Board Chairman Darryl F. Zanuck confesses that he would be some kind of nut to launch such an extravagant film today. "Once you're over the $4,000,000 category," he figures...
...Star. That sort of economic discipline was thought impossible until last year, when the Peter Fonda-Dennis Hopper production, Easy Rider, hit Hollywood the way the Volkswagen hit Detroit. Shot on a starvation budget of $400,000, the film is expected to gross $30 million-a reminder that people 30 and under account for 75% of the U.S. box office...
...record of bringing pictures in late and overbudget. Blake Edwards, whose The Great Race came in at 100% over, and his wife Julie Andrews, no longer surefire box office since Star!, are reportedly being paid a $1,000,000 settlement by MGM not to shoot their previously committed film, She Loves...
...economy wave is also washing out stars' salaries. The studios were emboldened by the success of The Graduate, which, without a big box-office name, has become the third-highsst grosser ($43 million) in history; Dustin Hoffman's pay for that film was $20,000. On the other side of the coin, Mike Frankovich, a former production chief at Columbia, recalls how "Universal failed three times with Shirley MacLaine, yet still gave her $800,000 plus a percentage for Sweet Charity." Sweet Charity went sour, and Shirley has not been swamped with offers. Similarly, Peter Sellers...