Box Office Quotes

Do not set out to write with your eyes on the box office. It can't be done. ~ Ayn Rand

Especially for people who are unknown, it's easier to get a TV show because you don't have to put a certain amount of people in movie theaters for a box office weekend. It's really difficult to get a great lead role in some big film, if nobody knows you. ~ Eve Hewson

Conversations about films are always funny. I would say a majority of people want to talk about what were the more obvious successes; the big box office films. Other people wanting to be more sensitive to you want to talk about the ones that maybe didn't make a lot of money, but they think you might have a special feeling about. And then other people sometimes want to help you by suggesting that you should have done this or that in the movie, that that would have helped you a great deal in whatever capacity. ~ Walter Hill

but was this funny? was this funny? was this funny? why was this funny? why was Sugar Kane funny? why were men dressed as women funny? why were men made up as women funny? why were men staggering in high heels funny? why was Sugar Kane funny, was Sugar Kane the supreme female impersonator? was this funny? why was this funny? why is female funny? why were people going to laugh at Sugar Kane & fall in love with Sugar Kane? why, another time? why would Sugar Kane Kovalchick girl ukulelist be such a box office success in America? why dazzling-blond girl ukulelist alcoholic Sugar Kane Kovalchick a success? why Some Like It Hot a masterpiece? why Monroe's masterpiece? why Monroe's most commercial movie? why did they love her? why when her life was in shreds like clawed silk? why when her life was in pieces like smashed glass? why when her insides had bled out? why when her insides had been scooped out? why when she carried poison in her womb? why when her head was ringing with pain? her mouth stinging with red ants? why when everybody on the set of the film hated her? resented her? feared her? why when she was drowning before their eyes? I wanna be loved by you boop boopie do! why was Sugar Kane Kovalchick of Sweet Sue's Society Syncopaters so seductive? I wanna be kissed by nobody else but you I wanna! I wanna! I wanna be loved by you alone but why? why was Marilyn so funny? why did the world adore Marilyn? who despised herself? was that why? why did the world love Marilyn? wh ~ Joyce Carol Oates

They thought in terms of: whatever you had that started you at the box office, this was it. ~ Jackie Cooper

The standard entertainment industry reaction to Hollywood's box office slump reveals the same shallow, materialistic mindset that helped create the problem in the first place. ~ Michael Medved

I think that the entertainment industry itself has a history of chasing success. Any time a hit product comes out, all the other companies start chasing after that success and trying to recreate it by putting out similar products. ~ Shigeru Miyamoto

... . Query: How contrive not to waste one's time?
Answer: By being fully aware of it all the while.
Ways in which this can be done: By spending one's days on an uneasy chair in a dentist's waiting-room; by remaining on one's balcony all of a Sunday afternoon; by listening to lectures in a language on doesn't know; by traveling by the longest and least-convenient train routes, and of course standing all the way; by lining up at the box-office of theaters and then not buying a seat; and so forth. ~ Albert Camus

I'm overweight, despise change, and rarely, if ever, initiate anything. Unlike my friends, I've had no drama in my life which might qualify as box office material. If a little more drama came my way, however, I would probably need to purchase some courage in order to withstand it. Oh well, if a bit of change equals a bit of drama, I'm willing to risk it. ~ J.C. Patrick

Unnamed entertainment industry moguls are now telling the New York Times that they intend never to work with Mel Gibson again. After all, how dare Mel Gibson challenge the public by producing a film that spurs public discussion, that pushes the envelope, that takes an old story to a new level. How dare Mel Gibson follow his own passion as a filmmaker. How dare he make $20 million on the opening day box office! ~ Laura Ingraham

It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn't the number-one box office star in America, because every straight girl I know would see her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker. ~ Chuck Klosterman

The thing we call critics are not really reviewers, they are not really critics. They don't have the discipline to write what we would term as critique - it's really just reviewers. They have a common man kind of taste. If you watch them overall, they are not different from the box-office. That's my view. ~ Ang Lee

I remember I had lunch with John Travolta when he was in the doldrums. I mean, he was, as they say, box office poison. He said to me something so great. He said, "I wasn't that good, and I'm not this bad. ~ Rob Reiner

However, James and Aamir did not discuss their astounding box office grosses or formulas for success.Instead, they exchanged notes on the process of film-making; how ideas, even seemingly crazy ones that require developing a unique camera, as James did for Avatar, become a reality; how stories and not special effects are the heartbeat of movies. ~ Anupama Chopra

I find that it's a very odd thing to think of competition when you're talking about what I still think of as art. I don't think of competing with actors or filmmakers at all. You do compete, in a way, at the box office, but we're far enough apart when both films are coming out that I'm not concerned with that either. ~ George Clooney

The populist zeal to seek revenge on those who make a lot of money is targeted almost exclusively at corporations. I haven't heard outcries about Hollywood actors who make millions per film, even when those movies are a bust at the box office and the talent at issue has none. There's no outrage over athletes like New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez's $33 million salary or Celtic power forward Kevin Garnett's $25 million. Nor should there be. These are exceptionally talented individuals whose teams' owners think they're worth every penny. ~ Linda Chavez

JB's friends were poets and performance artists and academics and modern dancers and philosophers
he had, Malcolm once observed, befriended everyone at their college who was least likely to make money
and their lives were grants and residencies and fellowships and awards. Success, among JB's Hood Hall assortment, wasn't defined by your box-office numbers (as it was for his agent and manager) or your costars or your reviews (as it was by his grad-school classmates): it was defined simply and only by how good your work was, and whether you were proud of it. ~ Hanya Yanagihara

Star Wars film is breaking all previous box office records. (Why might we want to revisit those characters, that narrative, those jokes and tropes again, in this way, right now? I wonder what it will turn out to reveal about the economics and politics of this moment.) ~ Laura Mullen

I would say that Jesus Christ and his followers were a cult, Buddha and his followers were a cult and Mohammed and his followers were a cult. Every religion starts out as a cult and if it becomes 'box office', it is accepted. ~ Frederick Lenz

The audience that storms the box-office of the theater to gain entrance to a sensational show is small and sleepy compared with the throng that crashes the courthouse door when something concerning real life and death is to be laid bare to the public. ~ Clarence Darrow

After the second Die Hard , Bruce Willis stated he would never do another. He should have stayed firm in his resolve. If quality is any indication (and it may be, with all the available blockbusters), box office returns will be disappointing this time around and, if nothing else, that will do to John McClane what dozens of assorted bad guys couldn't manage: kill him. ~ James Berardinelli

As far as a Latin explosion, I'm sorry, I'm the only Latino who's going to say it, but there is no Latin explosion. I'm sorry. Four or five top box office people do not make it an explosion, and it's disgusting to me that people will perceive it that way. ~ Rosie Perez

People will say a movie bombed at the box office but I couldn't care less. ~ Johnny Depp

The idea is to work and to experiment. Some things will be creatively successful, some things will succeed at the box office, and some things will only - which is the biggest only - teach you things that see the future. And they're probably as valuable as any of your successes. ~ Harold Prince

I hate how box-office failures are blamed on an actress, yet I don't see a box-office failure blamed on men. ~ Ellen Page

Alan Ladd was a marvelous person in his simplicity. In so many ways we were kindred spirits. We both were professionally conceived through Hollywood's search for box office and the types to insure the box office. And we were both little people. Alan wasn't as short as most people believe. It was true that in certain films Alan would climb a small platform or the girl worked in a slit trench. We had no such problems together. ~ Veronica Lake

Right after 'The Wackness' came out, it was a really exciting time, and then it was a bit disappointing when it came out. Even though not that many people saw it, I was still getting offered some movies. I was thinking that people would just stop calling me since it didn't do very well at the box office. ~ Jonathan Levine

What counts in Hollywood is box office. It doesn't really matter what people think of you as an actor because, as long as you have been in a movie that has made money, you will always get another job. ~ Diane Kruger

Markets work best when there's lots of information available and a historical track record to go on; they excel at predicting things like horse races, election outcomes, and box-office results. But they're bad at predicting things like who will be the next Supreme Court nominee, as that depends on the whim of the president. ~ James Surowiecki

I was never strategic really, but back when I was starting out no one cared. In the acting community, box office didn't matter. I really think it was a mistake when they started paying people like $20 million to do a movie because now it's all people think about. Is she worth it? Is he worth it? ~ Winona Ryder

I'll be working the rest of my life because I'm a character actor and don't have to worry about box office. ~ Vincent D'Onofrio

If I could, I want to take a page from the George Clooney-like actors of the world. They do things that are relevant, things that don't necessarily have huge box office appeal, but they matter. ~ Alona Tal

Films have been my only passion in life. I have always been proud of making films and will continue taking pride in all my films. I have never made a movie I have not believed in. However, though I love all my films, one tends to get attached to films that do well. But I do not have any regrets about making films that did not really do well at the box office. ~ Yash Chopra

Movies were America's way of softening up the rest of the world, Hollywood relentlessly assaulting the mental defenses of audiences with the hit, the smash, the spectacle, the blockbuster, and, yes, even the box office bomb. It mattered not what story these audiences watched. The point was that it was the American story they watched and loved, up until the day that they themselves might be bombed by the planes they had seen in American movies. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

The drama's altar isn't on the stage: it is candle-sticked and flowered in the box office. There is the gold, though there be no frankincense or myrrh; and the gospel for the day always The Play will Run for a Year. The Dove of Inspiration, of the desire for inspiration, has flown away from it; and on it's roof, now, the commonplace crow caws candidly. ~ Sean O'Casey

In 1995, when Steve Jobs was trying to convince us that we should go public, one of his key arguments was that we would eventually make a film that failed at the box office, and we needed to be prepared, financially, for that day. Going public would give us the capital to fund our own projects and, thus, to have more say about where we were headed, but it would also give us a buffer that could sustain us through failure. Steve's feeling was that Pixar's survival could not depend solely on the performance of each and every movie. The underlying logic of his reasoning shook me: We were going to screw up, it was inevitable. And we didn't know when or how. We had to prepare, then, for an unknown problem - a hidden problem. From that day on, I resolved to bring as many hidden problems as possible to light, a process that would require what might seem like an uncommon commitment to self-assessment. ~ Ed Catmull

I didn't know box office was a thing you could possess but I don't have it. I go up for lovely roles and people with this nebulous thing called box office get them so there isn't much I can do about that unless you know where I can get some box-office myself! ~ Olivia Williams

Hollywood is not known as a culture of grace. Dog-eat-dog is more like it. People love you one day and hate you the next. Personal value is very much attached to box office revenues and the unpredictable and often cruel winds of fashion. ~ Tullian Tchividjian

94 was a good year to be twelve. Star Wars still had two more years as Box Office King, cartoons were still hand-drawn, and the Disney "D" still looked like a backwards "G." Words like "Columbine," "Al Qaeda" and "Y2K" were not synonymous with "terror," and 9-1-1 was an emergency number instead of a date. At twelve years old, summer still mattered. Monarch caterpillars still crawled beneath every milkweed leaf. Dandelions (or "wishes" as Mara called them) were flowers instead of pests. And divorce was still considered a tragedy. Before Mara, carnivals didn't make me sick. ~ Jake Vander Ark

But the community knew Blade, and everybody but us was shocked at the box office, and subsequently the DVD. That was the beginning of the DVD revolution, and Blade was just like wildfire. ~ Avi Arad

As a rule, Germans shouldn't do comedy. Their last box office comedy was Nosferatu. ~ Stephen Colbert

Jay Carney told the reporters at his morning briefing that he hoped they would watch the new movie about Obama's first term 'many times.' They might. Look how well 'Titanic' did at the box office. ~ Fred Thompson

I don't make movies thinking: 'Oh, this is going to be a huge box-office hit.' ~ Diane Kruger

I've never had a career of that kind of box office power. I've always learned the hard way. ~ Holly Hunter

Frankly, Pedro Almodóvar's recent box office hit, Volver, is the first movie I've seen in which a young woman's retaliation against sexual violence doesn't ultimately boomerang around to destroy her ~ Sarah Stillman

With Hollywood you're yesterday's news if you get a flop at the box office. So you might as well be braced to have something else to do that's interesting. Have something lined up to keep your stories fulfilled, and your ideas, because if you're just cranking out movies three times a year. ~ David Gordon Green

A gay murder movie is never going to be, like, breaking box office records. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

The studio didn't ask them to learn their trade, they just worked them, and when that personality or that gimmick or whatever they had ran dry at the box office, they were dropped and out. ~ Jackie Cooper

Movies like 'Chef' are not really box-office monsters in the summertime and don't really fit into Hollywood's business model any longer. Even if 'Chef' is successful, it will be successful in the context of what it is. There's a limited upside to a film that's so small, but there's also limited exposure for the people who backed me. ~ Jon Favreau

Then that did very well at the box office, so before you knew it, we were in a string of feature motion pictures. Then they announced that they were going to do some spinoffs of us. ~ George Takei

People can criticise all day long, I think I've proven myself, I think I deliver. And I agree, box office does not mean a movie's good, but I feel like I'm making good movies and I'm delivering in box office. ~ Brett Ratner

I think everybody involved in a movie thinks about the box office. It's the 'biz' part of showbiz. ~ Ryan Reynolds

Now, DVD can represent more income than the box office-and typically does. ~ Michael Nesmith

'Election' made zero money at the box office, but it started my career. ~ Chris Klein

I'd love to make a sequel to 'The Rocketeer.' The film didn't do as well at the box office as we all hoped, but it has endured and generated a following. ~ Joe Johnston

The most important thing to having a long career, as an actor, is diversity and being able to play different types of characters in different types of movies. I want to keep acting, all my life. In order to do that, I think it is important to go and do the bigger tentpole box office movies, and then also do more character roles. ~ Josh Hutcherson

Lana Turner was adorable and funny. Jimmy Stewart was such a nice person. I quickly realized that if you're not a nice person, you're not going to last in this business. I mean, once your box office starts to drop off, like Veronica Lake, they'll get rid of you fast. ~ Robert Osborne

I never thought of myself as any kind of a film star, as many films as I've made - and I've made some really fun movies with good people. I've always been paired with someone because I'm not really box office, in that carrying-a-picture sense. I've always been busy, but not in the spotlight. ~ Lily Tomlin

I have no illusions of being the big box office draw. But I would like to have some choices. ~ Tim Daly

If I or any other black can deliver at the box office, I'll get a lot of work. Too many young actors, regardless of their color, try to play an attitude on camera and fail to remember their job is to fit into an entertainment. ~ Mario Van Peebles

I have got to the point in my life when a lot of people I know have died or are dying, so I realise that somewhere outside the pearly gates is a queue, shuffling nearer and nearer to the celestial box office. ~ Barry Humphries

l'after-shave, le badge, le barbeque, le best-seller, le blue-jean, le blues, le bluff, le box-office, le break, le bridge, le bulldozer, le business, le cake, la call-girl, le cashflow, le check-in, le chewing-gum, le club, le cocktail, la cover-girl, le cover-story, le dancing, le design, le discount, le do-it-yourself, le doping, le fan, le fast-food, le feedback, le freezer, le gadget, le gangster, le gay, le hall, le handicap, le hold-up, le jogging, l'interview, le joker, le kidnapping, le kit, le knock-out, le label, le leader, le look, le manager, le marketing, le must, les news, le parking, le pickpocket, le pipeline, le planning, le playboy, le prime time, le pub, le puzzle, se relaxer, le self-service, le software, le snack, le slogan, le steak, le stress, le sweatshirt, le toaster and le week-end. ~ Alexis Munier

People get distracted by box-office figures and take jobs because they think it will advance their careers. ~ Andrew Scott

General admission for groundlings - those who stood in the open around the stage - was a penny. Those who wished to sit paid a penny more, and those who desired a cushion paid another penny on top of that - all this at a time when a day's wage was 1 shilling (12 pence) or less a day. The money was dropped into a box, which was taken to a special room for safekeeping - the box office. ~ Bill Bryson

I've never been someone who's been given work because of the way I look or because I have some box office appeal. I get work because people know I'm swinging as hard as I can, trying to connect, giving it my level best. I have a face for radio, but here I am doing what I do. ~ John C. Reilly

I was slightly disheartened when three of my films didn't work at the box-office. But the silver lining is that people did appreciate my work in those films. Had my performance gone unnoticed, I would've been in big trouble then. ~ John Abraham

A friend of mine rang the box office to collect a ticket I'd reserved for her, and the girl said, 'Who's Lesley Manville?' ~ Lesley Manville

As an artist, you are always striving toward an ultimate achievement but never seem to reach it. You shoot a film, and the result could have always been better. You try again, and fail once more. In some ways I find it enjoyable. You never lose sight of your goal. I don't do my job to make money or to break box office records, I simply try things out. What would happen if I were to achieve perfection at some point? What would I do then? ~ Woody Allen

[The USA in the '70s] The country's cinematic output was appropriately bleak, reflecting the moroseness and self-hatred that riddled the national psyche. Anti-heroes such as Bonnie and Clyde, Travis Bickle, Popeye Doyle and the Corleones dominated the box office and the public wallowed in a morass of guilty introspection. There was never a country in more desperate need of a blow job than the United States of America: enter George Lucas. ~ Simon Pegg

The top two movies at the box office this weekend were 'High School Musical 3' and 'Saw V.'
One movie features gruesome onscreen torture that is difficult to watch and the other is about a guy with a saw. ~ Conan O'Brien

If you look at who drives the box office numbers at these films, it's men. ~ Judd Apatow

American commercial cinema has long been dominated by men, but I don't think there has ever been another time when women have been as underrepresented on screen as they are now. The biggest problem isn't genuinely independent cinema, where lower budgets mean more opportunities for women in front of and behind the camera. The problem is the six major studios that dominate the box office, the entertainment chatter and the popular imagination. Their refusal to hire more female directors is immoral, maybe illegal, and has helped create and sustain a representational ghetto for women. ~ Manohla Dargis

Male actors get into production, share profit, and they don't take money at times but are involved in some capacity which is economical and resourceful. These things suit them; as they have made a place for themselves, they have command over the box office. ~ Kangana Ranaut

Prior to 'Pirates of the Caribbean' - the first one in 2003 - I had been essentially known within the confines of Hollywood as box office poison, you know what I'm saying? You know, I basically had built a career on 20 years of failures. ~ Johnny Depp

I like to think of myself as the Chris Benoit of the movie industry, capable of taking any picture and carrying it to box-office success. Take Garden State, without me that would have just been two hours of Portman doging. ~ Zach Braff

I don't really make movies because I want to see my face on a billboard or because I want to get good reviews or have a big box office. That doesn't really matter to me at all. ~ Joaquin Phoenix

So what 'Twilight' does is show how women/girls can drive box office and they can support a tent pole movie. They're an extremely passionate fan base. This coincided with the 13 year old boys starting to stay home and play video games and work on their home media stuff. They're no longer going to theaters in droves. ~ Melissa Rosenberg

I guess in the independent market, I'd be getting offers, but in terms of big studio films, I still have to audition. I don't think my name is that well-known, I don't have much of a following to guarantee box office success yet. ~ Michael Fassbender

I'm really excited that 'The Other Woman' did so well at the box office, and I hope that will keep encouraging people to make movies about women, starring women, about female friendships. More. Please. ~ Gillian Jacobs

I ran spotlight. Swept up. Did box office. Ran the lighting board. But acting was the most fun. ~ Tim Robbins

Die Hard 2 was okay. It was a little outside the template but it was okay, a hard movie to make technically. Did well at the box office. Successful. ~ Bruce Willis

I believe in my privacy. I always have, and I always will. I don't think that my private life needs to be on display for me to get a better response at the box office or for me to get a better choice of movies. ~ Kajol

Films must all have the same structure. All of this to guarantee box office bonanza, which of course it never does, but that's another discussion entirely. ~ Dirk Benedict

To the extent that movies get released, they are generally not big box-office generators. Hollywood is clearly focusing on their holiday releases coming up and those will either make or break the year. ~ Tom Arnold

I wanted to make a film about my dad, a sort of love letter, and explain what I understood of his cinema, which was so utopian. I also wanted to give the sense of his cinema, because they have never been very big box-office, but they were very influential. ~ Isabella Rossellini

Fortunately for me, I don't come from the school where you only measure success by how much money something makes or whether it has a big box-office weekend. I measure it by how much people actually participate in the process. ~ Kevin Spacey

Success has nothing to do with box office as far as I'm concerned. Success has to do with achieving your goals, your internal goals, and growing as a person. It would have been nice to have been connected with a couple more box office hits, but in the long run, I don't think it makes you happier. ~ Alan Arkin

Sometimes I know a film might not pull the audience to the theatres and have a great collection at the box office. But I need to do these films for creative satisfaction and give something different to the audience. ~ Emraan Hashmi

I wish, to be honest with you, for African American films that we could get a few more theaters. They only open them in 1500 to 2000 for an opening weekend, and how do you expect us to compete. How can we go to certain box office levels if they don't give us more theaters? ~ Vivica A. Fox

The positive thing is that today we can realize that a Mexican film it is positioned in the top 5 of the box office during more than one month and that Mexicans are taking into consideration that Mexican films can be enjoyed with the family, instead of going to see Transformers and that our films looks like something that are necessary to support. ~ Alfonso Herrera

I got to make 'Trishakti' with Arshad Warsi, who was a newcomer at that time. The movie took three years to complete and became dated by the time it was released. The movie did not even get a proper release and bombed at the box office. It was a very bad patch of my life and a big disaster for my career. ~ Madhur Bhandarkar

Live Free or Die Hard may work better for an audience that doesn't know much about the series is than it will for Die Hard die hards, who will be wondering who that impersonator is and what he did with the real John McClane. The original Die Hard came out of nowhere to blitz the 1988 summer box office. The fourth installment arrives with a weight of expectations that Atlas would have trouble shouldering and, when the dust settles in September, it's unlikely that Live Free or Die Hard will be one of this year's big success stories. ~ James Berardinelli

I think the success of a film is very important to an actor. It depends on how many people go to watch your movies; the more the merrier. Nobody wants to do a film for five people. You work so hard that millions of people watch the movie; this is directly related to box office success. ~ Rani Mukerji

Something's happened in our society which I don't think is beneficial, and that's that you see the public being fed box-office news. Newscasts now, every local station - I've been traveling around the country a lot, and you see the local news, and they give box-office reports. ~ Bryan Cranston

The box office has become global. I think that factors in to the question of how to portray different ethnicities and cultures. ~ Faran Tahir

I always thought there was some place I was going, that there was some success or some achievement or some box-office number that was going to fill the hole. And what I realize is that life is a hole. It's a process of continually trying to find and reinvent myself. ~ Will Smith

Don't believe the hype. I don't care how many number ones you have at the box office, I don't care how much they say you're great, don't believe it. Just stay in your lane and do what you're supposed to do. ~ Tyler Perry

And yes, it is harder to make movies because budgets are getting smaller, and the companies stocks are down. The only good news on the horizon is that box office has been up by something like 23% from last year, which is great for us. It's still the cheapest form of entertainment. ~ Jerry Bruckheimer

You know how many movies it took Tom Cruise before he was making 5, 6 million dollars? It probably took a billion dollars in box office. ~ Jason Patric

Over the years, with all the experience, I've become more mature about the subjects I pick. I have a better understanding of what works at the box office. Once the story is finalised, I surrender to the director and follow him. After that, my performances speak for themselves. ~ Mahesh Babu