Universal zeikt eigen films af
Ronald Meyer, het hoofd van Universal Studios, heeft zich tijdens het Savannah Film Festival uitgesproken over enkele films die de studio in het verleden heeft uitgebracht. Allereerst zei hij iets over de filmindustrie in het algemeen:
[A critical hit is] great when it happens. But we did A Beautiful Mind, and I don’t know that we’d do A Beautiful Mind again. That’s the sad part. It’s great to win awards and make films that you’re proud of and make money, but your first obligation is to make money and then worry about being proud of what you do.
Hij zag niet in hoe hij geld kon verdienen aan het inmiddels geschrapte The Dark Tower van Ron Howard en At the Mountains of Madness van Guillermo Del Toro. Hierover zegt Meyer het volgende:
They’re both good projects, they just were more expensive than made sense for us to spend. If I thought that we could get a better return and everybody was willing to cut their gross, I wasn’t afraid of the price — I was just afraid of the return.
Vervolgens gooide Meyer er nog een schepje bovenop door enkele films van Universal eens goed af te branden. De films die ervan langs krijgen zijn Cowboys & Aliens, Land of the Lost en The Wolfman.
We make a lot of shitty movies… Every one of them breaks my heart… We set out to make good ones. One of the worst movies we ever made was Wolfman.
Cowboys & Aliens wasn’t good enough. Forget all the smart people involved in it, it wasn’t good enough. All those little creatures bouncing around were crappy. I think it was a mediocre movie, and we all did a mediocre job with it.
Land of the Lost was just crap… I mean, there was no excuse for it. The best intentions all went wrong.
Scott Pilgrim, I think, was actually kind of a good movie. [Addressing a small section of the audience, cheering.] But none of you guys went! And you didn’t tell your friends to go! But, you know, it happens.
Cowboys & Aliens didn’t deserve better. Land of the Lost didn’t deserve better. Scott Pilgrim did deserve better, but it just didn’t capture enough of the imaginations of people, and it was one of those things where it didn’t cost a lot so it wasn’t a big loss. Cowboys & Aliens was a big loss, and Land of the Lost was a huge loss. We misfired. We were wrong. We did it badly, and I think we’re all guilty of it.
Over The Wolfman zei hij het volgende:
The script never got right… [the cast] was awful. The director was wrong. Benicio [del Toro] stunk. It all stunk.
Eerlijk duurt het langst, zeggen ze wel eens...
Bron : Filmtotaal.nl