By Lee Pfeiffer
Variety's Peter Bart's column tells a cautionary tale of how major studios are obsessed with gambling the the entire ranch on mega-budget films rather than finance smaller, more intimate movies that would showcase new talent. James Cameron's
Avatar cost between $300-$400 million. It's a sign of the insanity in Hollywood that $100 million is tossed around as though it's an inconsequential figure. Fox is rolling the dice in the hopes that the maverick director who spends lavishly (with other people's money, of course) will be able to recapture
Titanic fever with his futuristic sci-fi epic that is supposed to break new ground in 3-D effects. Maybe it will, but to Bart's point, it would be far safer to finance a wide range of films that paid off modestly. Fox executives never learned that he who ignores history is condemned to repeat it. After all, in 1963 studio execs took a similar gamble with
Cleopatra (then the most expensive movie ever made.) Despite decent reviews, a slew of Oscar nominations and long lines at cinemas, it still brought Fox to the brink of bankruptcy. We'll know shortly whether history is due to repeat itself once again.
Click here to read Bart's column