Economic times have made it hard to get films made without an A-list Actor attached to the project. It is even harder to get a project made when there are more minorities in the main cast. Tyler Perry is a spoken advocate of this trend that is happening in Hollywood. Tyler Perry is know for his multi-talented skills and has made a name for himself self-financing his own work. More recently George Lucas has been affected by this Hollywood stereotype and had to self-finance the movie "Red Tails" as he could not find a major studio to back his film. George Lucas put up $100 million dollars for this film with his own money. It is shocking to hear that Mr. Star Wars can’t get funding for a film having a large black cast. It just goes to show that some places in the world have not changed their view on who will go to watch these type of movies.
On the other hand, Mel Gibson had the same problem with the movie “Passion of the Christ.” He decided to finance the movie himself at $30 million and the movie generated more than $370 million dollars in domestic sales. Even though Mel Gibson’s movie was a different type of genre it still did not fit the traditional Hollywood mold of a big blockbuster action packed movie, therefore no major studio would fund it. It is hard to imagine these three big producers not getting backed by studios, but they did not. All three of them used their own money and took a risk on projects they believed in and they wanted people to watch. Luckily they all paid off and even if they didn’t they took the risk to make something they valued.
The lesson from this blog is if you’re passionate about something and your not being supported, just do it yourself. Your passion will show through your work and people will want to support you because you took that risk.
Sources
Blauvelt, Christian. (2012, January 23). ‘Red Tails’: Will George Lucas’ $100 million gamble pay off? Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved from
http://insidemovies.ew.com/2012/01/23/red-tails-george-lucas-100-million-dollar-gamble/
Perry, Tyler. (2012) The problem with al-star African American Casts. Tyler Perry. Retrieved from http://www.tylerperry.com/messages/problem-all-star-african-american-casts/
Rich, Frank. (2010, July 17). The Good News About Mel Gibson. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/18/opinion/18rich.html
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