It’s probably a little early in Getting To Greenlight’s lifecycle to put this out there, but I’m working on a post on this topic and I’m curious whether this group has a take.
The only right answer is “It depends,” obviously, but still: If you had to pick one approach over the other, what what you choose?
Avoiding misses is more important because it allows you to continue along producing more movies until one is a breakout success. One big miss can shut you down permanently or get you fired if you are the studio executive who was ultimately responsible.
Especially true for people at the beginning of their careers. An article my partner Greg Gertmenian published a few weeks ago about directors' batting averages illustrated that point: If your first movie flops, your chances of getting another at bat goes through the floor.
Also, from a studio/distributor perspective if you invest in a large number of lower budget movies you can sustain more that just cover the investment or even lose money as the one big one can make up for it all. This is why you see a lot of low budget horror movies the past several years. The counter to this argument is that the tent pole movies drive the flywheel effect and can ultimately generate more downstream revenue. But one big flop in one of those can ruin the year for a very large studio and bankrupt a smaller studio or investor. Better to have more times up at bat, especially if you are new talent that hasn’t established a reputation or brand yet. Just making a large number of average movies gets you noticed and proves you are built to do this work professionally and are a safe bet.
Right, so we’re sort of back to “It depends.” For some people at some times in their careers, a flop can be catastrophic. For others, not having a real hit isn’t a big deal as long as they have enough modest successes. And so on.
They're almost one and the same, so the question, I propose, is erroneous. Hear me out: you can do all you can to make something that meets your own satisfaction. You write the title on the top of a page, how that would look, and then free-flow the pictures and impressions of how that might look and feel. Once you've exhausted yourself, then ticked each item off -- which seen another way have all now become your requirements of satisfaction -- you've now done all you could to avoid a miss. literally trying to pick a hit based on, say, the market, is akin to predicting the future; what may or may not happen in the culture and can easily put you off course from what you, personally, would want to see (and chances are others would too.) Shooting for a result is also a little death to making honest from the soul art, in that, sure, it might be good, but it'll never be great. Whereas doing both together, ie. picking something you know, if done correctly, would be a hit, but done badly would be a miss, is the way.
In basketball? Avoiding misses. One bad contract ruins a team's future.
In movies? Picking hits. The top dev execs of the last few decades in filmmaking did the latter. That's the Feige/Frank G Wells/Lasseter playbook. They had the hits. Of course, this is from the studio side. My working theory is that most films (9 of 10) are flops anyways. But if you're hit rate--especially blockbuster rate--is 7 out of 10, you'll out produce everyone.
Producers and Talent could have different incentives, though arguably one big hit makes a career.
Avoiding misses is more important because it allows you to continue along producing more movies until one is a breakout success. One big miss can shut you down permanently or get you fired if you are the studio executive who was ultimately responsible.
Especially true for people at the beginning of their careers. An article my partner Greg Gertmenian published a few weeks ago about directors' batting averages illustrated that point: If your first movie flops, your chances of getting another at bat goes through the floor.
Also, from a studio/distributor perspective if you invest in a large number of lower budget movies you can sustain more that just cover the investment or even lose money as the one big one can make up for it all. This is why you see a lot of low budget horror movies the past several years. The counter to this argument is that the tent pole movies drive the flywheel effect and can ultimately generate more downstream revenue. But one big flop in one of those can ruin the year for a very large studio and bankrupt a smaller studio or investor. Better to have more times up at bat, especially if you are new talent that hasn’t established a reputation or brand yet. Just making a large number of average movies gets you noticed and proves you are built to do this work professionally and are a safe bet.
Right, so we’re sort of back to “It depends.” For some people at some times in their careers, a flop can be catastrophic. For others, not having a real hit isn’t a big deal as long as they have enough modest successes. And so on.
They're almost one and the same, so the question, I propose, is erroneous. Hear me out: you can do all you can to make something that meets your own satisfaction. You write the title on the top of a page, how that would look, and then free-flow the pictures and impressions of how that might look and feel. Once you've exhausted yourself, then ticked each item off -- which seen another way have all now become your requirements of satisfaction -- you've now done all you could to avoid a miss. literally trying to pick a hit based on, say, the market, is akin to predicting the future; what may or may not happen in the culture and can easily put you off course from what you, personally, would want to see (and chances are others would too.) Shooting for a result is also a little death to making honest from the soul art, in that, sure, it might be good, but it'll never be great. Whereas doing both together, ie. picking something you know, if done correctly, would be a hit, but done badly would be a miss, is the way.
In basketball? Avoiding misses. One bad contract ruins a team's future.
In movies? Picking hits. The top dev execs of the last few decades in filmmaking did the latter. That's the Feige/Frank G Wells/Lasseter playbook. They had the hits. Of course, this is from the studio side. My working theory is that most films (9 of 10) are flops anyways. But if you're hit rate--especially blockbuster rate--is 7 out of 10, you'll out produce everyone.
Producers and Talent could have different incentives, though arguably one big hit makes a career.