“Good Will Hunting,” “Saving Private Ryan” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” are classic hits, each starring Hollywood icon Matt Damon.
But with the modern movie industry increasingly dominated by superhero flicks and reboots, fewer films are having long lasting cultural impacts compared to their pre-Marvel cinematic universe counterparts.
According to Far Out Magazine, Damon thinks the death of the DVD business has left little room for error when it comes to budgeting Hollywood blockbusters these days.
During an appearance on the hit series “Hot Ones,” Damon offered his thoughts on why films are so different now.
Back in 2021, Damon sat down with “Hot Ones” host Sean Evans to promote the Tom McCarthy-directed crime drama “Stillwater.” After facing the “wings of death” in the interview series featuring hot questions and even hotter wings, Damon offered some candid insight into the modern world of filmmaking.
During the interview, Evans asked Damon how movie production has changed since the ‘90s, claiming that many viewers think “They’re not making movies for me anymore.”
“So what happened was the DVD was a huge part of our business, of our revenue stream,” Damon said. “Technology has just made that obsolete, and so the movies that we used to make you could afford to not make all of your money when it played in the theatre because you knew you had the DVD coming behind the release.”
The Academy Award-winning actor offered some context, using his own 2013 Steven Soderbergh release “Behind the Candelabra” as an example.
“I talked to a studio executive who explained it was a 25 million dollar movie,” Damon said. “I would have to put that much into print and advertising (P&A) to market it… so I’d have to put that in P&A, so now I’m in 50 million dollars. I have to split everything I get with the exhibitor, right, the people who own the movie theatres, so I would have to make a hundred million dollars before I got into profit, and the idea of making a hundred million dollars on a story about this love affair between these two people … that’s suddenly a massive gamble.”
As first reported by The Hollywood Reporter, Damon is set to play Lt. Gen. Leslie Groves alongside Robert Downey Jr. and Cillian Murphy in Christopher Nolan’s upcoming “Oppenheimer.” The film is expected to release July 21, 2023.
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