The cast a black man because Idris Elba is awesome and generally the best thing in any movie or TV show. And really the color of the character doesn’t matter, the important part was the grittiness, the ability to imitate young Eastwood. And Elba did that for 2 1/2 years on The Wire and he’s a better actor now.
The biggest problem the studios are having is they don’t do the math. They’re addicted to blockbusters even though the ROI on them isn’t actually very good. Even a big hit blockbuster, because of the budget, is going to be lucky to pull any better than a 2::1. They’d be much better off focusing on small budget small success movies. A $6 million budget $30 million revenue movie is a much better investment than a $160 million budget $300 million revenue movie. But they love love love those $300 million revenue line entries. So they do the big budget movies, then they’re terrified they’ll fail, so the make them follow the Beat Book slavishly, which is why all those movies feel the same, which makes their big budget movies feel smaller since you’ve basically seen that movie 3 times already this year.
You can go blind trying to figure out Hollywood accounting, but I imagine the addiction to the $300 million film is that the $300 million is only a percentage of the revenue.
I was just in Disney’s Animal Kingdom, and the new ‘world’ they created is based around Pandora from Avatar - the movie everyone saw and nobody liked. It’s seriously the most amazing Theme Park experience I’ve ever had. And I HATED that movie.
Because of that, I spent $100 on merchandise related to a movie that came out 8 years ago and that I did not like. (My kids wanted the stuff).
You can’t do that with, say, Spotlight.