Fox Honcho Downplays Budget Reports for 'Avatar'

It was just the other day that we half-jokingly referenced the ballooning budget numbers (if not the ballooning budget) for James Cameron's Avatar. A lot of numbers have been thrown around, all of them enormous, but there's no real answer on exactly how much it's going to cost to change history. That's what Fox hopes it does, at any rate. But a recent Reuters report echoed the earlier New York Times figure estimating that Avatar might equal a stack of money $500 million big, once the marketing and promotion is thrown in. Not so, according to studio brass. "That's a ridiculous number," insisted Fox chairman Jim Gianopulos. "It has no relationship to the actual cost of the movie. People keep repeating a number, which was as if you added the cost of building the studio 80 years ago to the cost of Avatar." OK. Nice fuming. But what did it cost? "The movie was quite expensive, there is no question about that," Gianopulos admitted without ever mentioning a price. "But viewed now, from the perspective of its completion and having seen it, it's a formidable work and money well spent." He went on to add that Avatar will be a success, although it's not terribly encouraging that his reason for saying so was the number of theaters that would eventually house the movie. Absurdly, that sounds like an argument for why the Titanic wouldn't sink.

Comments

[Will]

Man, this is looking like the sequel Ishtar (On the business end that is)...