Films about anything involving the high seas have long been a bane to the studios and producers. The sheer expense of making any sea-themed film usually gets any such project sent to the bottom of the production heap. Aside from the problems of the highly changeable environment of the sea making it very difficult to match shots in camera, the lack of sufficient actual vessels to match the period of the story means either you've got to build from scratch some sort of replica that can withstand the elements or you have to use CGI to flesh out the scenes, and really decent, believable CGI is really, really expensive, meaning either you've got to have a blockbuster project with big name stars, directors, etc. (Master and Commander leaps to mind) or you've got to be willing to take a long bet on a project that most likely will not be profitable and Hollywood is all about the profit. U-571 had a production budget of about US $62 million and grossed about US $127 million worldwide; the general rule of thumb is a film has to gross at least twice its cost in order to show any profit, so U-571, for all intents and purposes, just barely broke even. It should be noted the US $62 million budget figure was a projected budget; studios and producers rarely, if ever make public the exact final costs of a production, so the final cost could very well be considerably higher; also, the budget figure was given in year 2000 dollars and inflation will have reduced the actual value of the earnings...
<O>
__________________
__________________________________________________ __
|