Saying that the film industry is guilty of “euthanasia,” in reference to dropping films that aren't instantaneous hits, Dustin Hoffman slammed them for their short-term thinking.
“If the film doesn’t make money over that first weekend of its release, they will bury it,” said Hoffman. “Euthanasia is legal in Hollywood. They just kill the film if it doesn’t succeed immediately.”
Hoffman has a couple of points he makes that are contradictory.
First, he's right when he mention that the film industry is "obsessed with looking almost hourly at the box-office takings of a film in its first few days of release ... if the movie doesn’t make money it must therefore be a bad work.”
I agree with Hoffman that movies must be given a chance to catch on with the moviegoers, but his other statement doesn't make any sense. From a business standpoint, a movie is a product; it must make money - that's its purpose. The issue isn't whether something is a bad work or not, but whether it's what the public wants to watch.
Investors are demanding more financial responsibility from producers and directors; they expect a return on their investment.
Secondly, Hoffman than goes on to talk about how it's easier to get funding for larger film productions than it is with smaller ones. The reason he gives is because studios only want to work in big-money projects. I can't agree with him on that statement. Studios have already begun to cut back on bigger projects and are starting to realize that success in the future will be with smaller projects, on the average.
There will be occasional large projects, but for the most part that has changed. Overall, I'm glad to see Hoffman at least talk about these things and get a conversation going concerning them.
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