Will It Work

Will It Work?

Executive Decision Making

Intuitive evaluation: “You can read a script, see a movie, and intuitively feel that, based on your judgment based on your experience, based on your knowledge of the marketplace, this is a movie that people will want to see”
Risk timeline: “Of course you still have the risk factor of not knowing whether you were right until three years later, and along the way, the world can change”

No Guarantees

“Nothing in the motion picture business is a no-brainer”

Financial Evaluation Process

Profit and Loss Analysis

Content caliber assessment: “We do a profit and loss sort of evaluation of, is this content theatrical caliber, and that is our bread and butter, is theatrical distribution”
Market appeal factors:

International appeal
Domestic appeal
Age appeal (family, young, adult)
“All of those play a factor in the budget”

Production Capacity

Animation limitations: “In animation, our capacity is really two theatrical movies a year”
Risk correlation: “Risk is fundamentally associated with the cost of a movie”

Budget Reality: The $250M Investment

“So, if you look, for example, at a movie that cost $100 million to make, on a worldwide basis for theatrical exhibition, that movie is going to cost an additional $150 million to distribute. So, a $100 million movie is really a $250 million investment”

The Mitchells Example

Conservative approach: “Mitchells is a good example, and when it started, it was smaller, you know, it was unproven, it was a new idea”
Risk assessment: “So they’re like, this is not the Spider-Verse, this is a little riskier, how do we budget this film?”
Budget consequence: “So, it was more conservative, the budget was lower, and that comes down to, like, the studio’s input on what they feel it will do in the marketplace when it eventually does come out”

Animation Industry Characteristics

Collaborative vs. Star-Driven

Industry nature: “Animation is intensely collaborative and less star-driven”
Voice actor impact: “They do bring some cachet to the project, but ultimately, sometimes you’re probably sitting in a movie, you’re like, wait a minute, I recognize the voice, but I have no idea who that is until the end credit”

Creative Executive Balance

What the creative team is looking to accomplish

Creative Freedom with Guidance

Studio approach: “We love to give our creatives full freedom to just really think about what they’re trying to say in the movie”
Executive intervention: “And we just sort of need to be there to remind them along the way, hey, we might steer you in this direction”

Success Indicators

No-Brainer Concepts

Executive perspective: “I do believe that there’s ideas, scripts that you can feel that are no-brainers in the sense of, this is a popular subject matter, it’s something that people like”
Personal validation: “As an executive, it’s something that you want to see, and hopefully, based on your experience and judgment, that translates into something that a mass audience wants to see”

Spider-Verse Success Story

Exceeded expectations: “The first Spider-verse movie, I think, played out even beyond our expectations in terms of its artistic excellence and its difference in comparison to other films that were in the marketplace, its acceptance by the audience”
Franchise potential: “And then, in being new and different, establishing the basis to make a sequel, which is something that we always hoped for”

Quiz Question: If the production budget of an animated feature film is $100M, why do studio executives think the total budget would be $250M?

Answer Options:

They are calculating marketing and distribution costs related to the film ✓
They are estimating the legal fees needed to defend the film’s IP
They are estimating the costs of making a sequel if the film is successful
They are calculating the costs associated with making goods like toys and apparel that use the film’s IP

Studio executives balance creative vision with financial reality, evaluating market potential across multiple demographics while managing substantial distribution costs that often exceed production budgets. Animation’s collaborative nature and capacity limitations require careful project selection based on audience appeal and risk assessment, with no guaranteed outcomes despite experienced judgment.