Eric Fellner Quotes

I think it would be a good thing in the creative community if there was less embarrassment of this word 'commercial' because that's how you make a business.

'Billy Elliot' prides itself on being a family show, and it made sense to specifically cater to a family audience with an earlier evening curtain time.

My theory is, I don't know how long it's going to be, five or ten years, there will be only two ways to see a movie, and that will either be on your computer through your TV screen or in the cinema, end of story. There will be no DVD; that's it - simple.

You can't develop a great car and sell it as an independent. You can develop a great car and make a deal with Mercedes.

For us in England, the relative value of the pound against the dollar, that has a huge impact on how easy it is to get our films made in the U.K.

The problem with Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead is that they worked brilliantly in the UK, the US, and Australia; internationally they haven't worked so well because people don't know the films as well as in the English speaking languages. So when it comes to putting the budgets together it's quite challenging. So those are the problems you have.

When you watch a Coen brothers movie, it is always so certain about what it is trying to portray. That is their strength. The minute they write a word, they know how it will look on-screen. They are very purposeful, with no kind of mistakes.

The dream was to not only make a good-looking film that engaged, but also had the DNA of the show so the fans would love it and also as important had the opportunity to cross over out of the fans because of the price-point. You make a film that's 60 million dollars you can't just appeal to musical theater fans.

You can get swept away by a musical, but real tears are rare.

The more you keep costs down, the more freedom you have creatively.

I love all my Wrights and it would be impossible to say which one I love more, but if you really pushed me, it would be Joe.

Mike Leigh and Ken Loach are the people I look up to. They are quality film-makers making interesting, controversial, ground-breaking movies with very little eye on the marketplace.

It might sound a small thing, but if you want to get Tom Cruise into your movie, without a track record or without those agents knowing you, it's almost impossible. Now I can get through to pretty much anyone I want. Of course, 90 per cent of the time they still say no.

If there's a British film in the marketplace that is successful on a worldwide basis - whether it's 'A Room with a View,' 'Four Weddings' or 'The Full Monty' - money follows, and everyone tries to emulate that success.

Making movies is like herding cats.

I have always thought we should think less about the British film industry as an entity, and more about getting British talent working.

The idea that the Tony committee and the New York theater community as a whole have embraced 'Billy Elliot' is very, very exciting.

Do we have good writers, producers and actors in the U.K.? Yes we do.

In terms of putting the cast together, no problems. You know, the only problem always is just price-point. Our ambitions as we get older, all of us, is to try and do more.

With 'Anna Karenina,' I just think it's a stunning visual tour de force for a director who is at the top of his game.

I think Cannes is usually pretty fair in choosing what will play well to the home festival crowd.

There's always that possibility. But, it would take a hell of a lot of work. Because unlike a movie where you just have to do a little ADR and then some mixing, we've actually got to bring the orchestra back because there is music, as you probably noticed, right the way through the film so you have to orchestrate all of that extra time.

Oh, IMDB, yeah; there's a few things on there that are TV, they're not film, some things they think we did that we didn't. There's a few inaccuracies in there. It's terrifying though, isn't it?

That middle ground of films used to be 70, 80, 90, 100; now it's like anything over 20 or under 140, the middle ground has become this huge area where they don't really want to be.

Then something fails and they're all out again, but DVD revenue is disappearing, you know, it's not disappearing but it's going off a cliff and what that's done is it's polarized the industry in a way that I've never seen before where studios are making less, they're bifurcating their choices where they're either going very, very big or they're just picking up a few rights on an acquisition basis or making really small things.

For me, I can't tell you if the film is good or bad, all I can say is for me the film is way better than I had expectation of us being able to make. So for me that's the most important thing. Have we exceeded our dream in terms of what it could be?

The shifts happen on a regular basis, but it's like a cycle. So things come in and out of vogue and then five years later they're back in vogue. Or there seems to be a theory that this is the way the industry will go and everybody goes over that way and then something happens to the country and you're back again at the place you were.

Film is not a national business. It's international. And its centre will always be Hollywood.

The U.K. needs more first class studio space to encourage the growth of the film and TV sector.