Blowing your wad, hollywood style

Anyone ever stop to think that maybe $200 million is too much for a single movie? I guess not:

At the Cato conference today, a movie industry attendee kept asking the copyleftists who favor the abolition of copyright the question: "If we cannot protect the product, then how can we invest $200 million in a movie like King Kong?"

I'm not going to debate whether or not they should be able to protect their product, but I find it ludicrous that in this day and age of cheap digital technology that a studio is paying $200 million for a movie. The Lord of the Rings trilogy cost $300 million to produce. Three movies that together brought in literally ten times the amount of money that it cost to produce them cost only ²/₃ of what it took to make King Kong.

Probably the bulk of the studios' problem is tied to their never ending quest to make the Most Expensive Movie Ever. They pay outrageous amounts of money to stars and almost use special effects as a crutch in a lot of cases. It would be nice to see them focus on bringing out more, newer talent that is willing to work cheaper on both of those fronts. One of the most important changes in the past five years or so is that it is now quite possible to make a movie using a standard PowerMac or a suped up Linux workstation instead of one of those ungodly expensive SGI workstations that they used to be so enamored of. Many of the big name movies of the past eight years were made in whole or in part with Linux. Something tells me that if they would put more effort into reducing production costs instead of wining and dining the big name actors and actresses that they would have fewer problems with costs.