Martin Scorsese was critical of box office results during his recent appearance at New York Film Festival. (via IndieWire). The Oscar-winning filmmaker called the industry’s obsession with box office grosses both “repulsive”And “really insulting.”Scorsese spoke highly of the festival’s support for filmmaking during a time of great uncertainty. “cinema is devalued, demeaned, belittled from all sides, not necessarily the business side but certainly the art.”
“Since the ’80s, there’s been a focus on numbers. It’s kind of repulsive,”Scorsese stated. “The cost of a movie is one thing. Understand that a film costs a certain amount, they expect to at least get the amount back… The emphasis is now on numbers, cost, the opening weekend, how much it made in the U.S.A., how much it made in England, how much it made in Asia, how much it made in the entire world, how many viewers it got. As a filmmaker, and as a person who can’t imagine life without cinema, I always find it really insulting.”
Scorsese also added. “I’ve always known that such considerations have no place at the New York Film Festival, and here’s the key also with this: There are no awards here. You don’t have to compete. You just have to love cinema here.”
Edgar Wright, an outspoken Scorsese enthusiast, shared similar thoughts in his BBC Maestro course. Wright spoke about how his cult film was remembered. “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World” bombed over its opening weekend, and yet it’s hardly considered a disappointment all these years later.
“I’ve said this to other filmmakers since who’ve maybe had a similar initial reaction to a film like ‘Scott Pilgrim’ did, is that the three-day weekend is not the end of the story for any movie. People shouldn’t buy into that idea,”Wright stated. “Rating films by their box office is like the football fan equivalent to films. Most of my favorite films that are considered classics today were not considered hits in their time.”
Wright also said “You can point to hundreds of classic movies, whether it’s ‘Citizen Kane’ or ‘Blade Runner’ or ‘The Big Lebowski.’ So how a film does in its first three days is never the end of the story, and the further we get away from that discourse about box office numbers being the totality of a movie, the better.”
Scorsese currently works on his Western drama, worth $200 million. “Killers of the Flower Moon,”The film stars Robert De Niro as well as Leonardo DiCaprio. The film will be released theatrically and streamed on Apple TV+ in 2023.