



Take CATS for example. It was an award-winning Broadway play, beloved for decades with a passionate and rabid fanbase. They put the Oscar-winning director of The King's Speech and Les Miserables at the helm of the project, casted it with every bit of star power you could imagine (Idris Elba, Taylor Swift, Judi Dench, Rebel Wilson, Ian McKellan, the list goes on & on), and even had Steven Spielberg's name attached to it as a producer. This is a recipe for success in Hollywood: a well-established property + trusted director + beloved stars + big money producer = guaranteed hit. Even if it's a totally vapid stinker, it'll make its money back. It's following the Kardashian-model of money making. They've proven that you don't have to be smart, honest, or talented to be successful in today's society; you just have to be famous. And this movie IS famous, it also just happens to be deliriously fucking creepy.





And there it is; they did everything "right". They followed the formula. Yet, they failed. The movie still hasn't earned even 75% of its production budget and will never earn back its immense marketing budget. Its director has zero projects on the horizon right now. Zilch, nada. He's a phenomenal director and deserves more opportunities (he's been successful for more than 20 years); but there's a chance that his career was tanked by this one failure. So, there you have it... THIS is why Hollywood is notoriously risk-averse. One mis-step, and your career is over.





It happened to Stephen Norrington. He made BLADE and was on the ascent as one of the hottest young directors in town, until he made the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. A movie so bad that it made Sean Connery retire. Sean Connery's career wasn't even slowed down by fucking ZARDOZ.

Movies are expensive to make, and there's no guarantee they'll ever earn a dime. Hollywood's best and brightest producers, writers, directors, and actors can all work together on a passion project only to see it fail upon release and be ridiculed by the unwashed masses.