The Seven Secrets of Highly Effective Studios (That You Might Not Want to Hear)
It’s the end of the summer, which of course means it is time to start the post-game coverage. But what lessons were there to be learned in this year’s summertime slugfest? What truisms were re-learned? Here are seven secrets to running a movie studio that many of you may not want to hear. After all, the truth isn’t always pretty.
1) Underestimate the intelligence of your audience. There’s an old saying that goes “You know how stupid the average guy is? Well, mathematically speaking, half of them are dumber than that.” This is never truer than in sales. And this summer backed that law up in a big way. The year’s biggest hit, by far, is a film that was being made before they could even write a script for it. Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen was made from a treatment that Michael Bay later (post-WGA strike) brought the writers back in on to help it make some kind of sense. They failed. But the box office was epic. $400 million epic. I don’t care what the eggheads say — anyone willing to put trucknutz on their Ford F250 will also laugh at robots with testicles. And they’ll pay to do so.
