David Cameron: Make more commercial films

I don't have any numbers but It was in cinemas for months doing great business with old folks who haven't been to see a film since George VI was on the throne!

Ralph Finnes' directed Shakespear adaptation, a Singapore animation, Shame, The Artist and a collection of slapstick comedy shorts.

If there were a theater here that was playing that line-up I'd be in heaven. The nearest theater to me that would consider playing any of that stuff is about 100 miles away. I've got one screen playing The Artist right now and one screen playing The Iron Lady and that's as arthouse as it usually gets around here. I'm kinda surprised they're playing The Artist. I'll have to go see it, as I didn't think it would play...

Also, I think in the case of The King's Speech, a lot of the perceived 'smallness' of that movie here has probably more to do with the weird way they rolled it out. It started on a couple dozen screens, then rolled into a hundred or so, then rolled onto a few hundred, etc. There was an article here about how they were thinking about cutting it down to a PG-13 because they were disappointed at the returns they were seeing on it.

The problem with that was that it was, at that time, being played on about 800 screens and was currently in 3rd on the weekend charts. It was making more than the #1 and #2 movies per theater combined, and they thought people weren't going to see it because of the rating. If they had opened it on a couple thousand screens in the beginning, they probably would have made a hell of a lot more money than they did. I don't think they ever had it playing on more than 1500 screens at once, tho, and by that time it had been out for almost two months.

It was, for the first month of release, the only film on the charts that was consistently going up at least a couple spots every weekend. It started out at #14 or something and after a month was sitting at #2 or 3. You don't often see that, and it was particularly weird in this case due to the fairly large amount of buzz surrounding it prior to it's release.

Last edited by Squiggly_P (2012-01-24 02:43:22)

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2012/jan/1 … ry-funding

that's what the guardian say but they're probably a bit bias as well, I tried finding a daily mail article for you but they just seem angry that anyone is getting money

It's all well and good saying make less arty stuff and more commercial stuff but if anyone knew what that meant we wouldn't have flops like Happy Feet 2.

I'd be happy with the UK making a solid series of small budget comedies and dramas like The Full Monty, Waking Ned Divine, Trainspotting, Secrets and Lies, Shaun of the Dead, and sensual coming of age films set in girls boarding schools.