Hollywood Babble On & On #572: Perception Can Be Expensive

Welcome to the show folks...

Today I'm going to talk a little about perception and how perception can cost you more than it should. This is especially true in the movie biz, which is 99% perception and 1% actual truth.

PERCEPTION #1: THE SELF FULFILLING IDIOCY AT WORK

NBC-Universal has reportedly settled the lawsuit filed by actor Jack Klugman over profits from the show Quincy M.E., which he produced and starred in from 1976-1983. Universal claimed that despite a 7 year run with consistently solid ratings, and $242 million in revenues, and decades of reruns in both syndication and cable, the show had somehow lost $66.4million. Between 1998 and 2006 the show, according to NBC-Universal, generated $40.8 million in revenue, but still somehow lost $16.5 million.

According to Universal they spent $57.3 million on a show that stopped production in 1983.

Doesn't that sound a twee bit fishy?

NBC-U knows it sounds fishier than a fish market on the waterfront of Atlantis, so they settled as soon as they realized that Klugman wasn't going to die in time for them to weasel out of the suit.

Now the folks who run Universal TV think they were clever by trying to screw Klugman out of his share of the show, and then settling out of court for spare change on the dollar to keep the fact that the company's accounting makes the Central States Teamster Pension Fund of the 1960s look clean.

They weren't being smart though. In fact, they were being really stupid.

This is a classic case of what I call the Self-Fulfilling Idiocy. It's like a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, only more stupid. It begins with someone, who thinks they're being smart, imagines an ordinary part of business, like paying residuals, as a problem. Being so clever they decide to "make extra money" by denying that person of their fair share, and then paying out a token amount if they raise a big enough stink.

But these self-proclaimed clever people are being really stupid. Sure, they can grab some extra cash, and then weasel out of paying out the full amount, but doing that is more expensive than they think.

This is where perception comes in.

People now perceive studios as monetary black holes when it comes to royalties, residuals, and profit shares. So they demand all their money up front, and squeeze as much as they can depending on the clout they wield. This is why the costs of making a film have an inflation rate somewhere between Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany when new technology should be making it cheaper. They are literally pricing themselves out of viability.

PERCEPTION #2: CAESAR'S WIFE

Construction magnate Ron Tutor & Co.'s purchase of Miramax is pretty much a done deal. But some folks like The Hollywood Reporter are wondering who would be willing to do business with the new Miramax, and how long that will take.

Why are they asking this question?

Well, there's that old bugbear perception again.

You see Ron Tutor entered the battle for Miramax with indie producer David Bergstein as the public face.

That was a mistake.

You see Bergstein is currently being sued by.... um.... how do I put it?..... EVERYONE!

Almost every person, bank, firm, guild, or company David Bergstein's done business with is suing him for unpaid bills.

Independent film-making is already a wildly uncertain business, and you don't want to go into that business with a Bergstein shaped cloud hanging over your endeavor. Tutor is saying that Bergstein was only involved in the initial negotiations, and will not run the company, but it will take time, and a lot of money to prove that to the satisfaction of the Hollywood community.

Perception is everything in Hollywood, and like everything else in Hollywood, it can be very expensive.

Saturday Silliness Cinema: Look Around You 3

Welcome to the show folks...

It's Saturday, time for me to take my usual break from ranting and raving about business and have a wee laugh. I'm still trying to improve you readers of mine, so here's another educational film for your intellectual uplift:

Slow News Alert

Welcome to not much of a show today folks...

Three reasons why I haven't posted anything tonight.

1. Slow news day.

2. I'm very tired.

3. It's way to hot to expend any effort.

So those of you who have the luxury of air conditioning, feel free to scroll down and read all the stuff I've posted this past week. Hopefully something interesting will pop up before Monday.

Hollywood Babble On & On #571: Money, Movies, Media

Welcome to the show folks...

CRUISE GETS SCALY?

Reports are buzzing around that Paramount wants Tom Cruise to make Mission: Impossible 4, but they want him to work for a combination of 'scale' and a healthy back end payout from the 'break even' point, and that Cruise has reportedly agreed.

For those not hep to the lingo 'scale' is the bare minimum weekly salary & perks package as allowed by the Screen Actors Guild. The 'back end payment' means that if the box office revenues reach a certain point, Cruise will get a piece of that money. Now you're probably wondering why someone of Tom Cruise's stature is getting such a deal, well, it's simple.

1. Tom Cruise has made Paramount a lot of money. He's also made a lot of money for himself, through some pretty hard-core deals made when he was at the peak of his star-power.

2. The last Mission: Impossible movie sold a lot of tickets, but lost a truckload of money mostly because of Tom Cruise's hard-core contract.

3. It's been a while since Tom Cruise carried a major hit, and his last film Knight & Day didn't even last a night and a day at the box office.

4. For some reason, I don't know why, Paramount is convinced that only Tom Cruise can carry a movie based on a TV show that changed its star without so much as a blip.

5. Paramount wants Tom Cruise, they just don't want to pay full price for Tom Cruise.

This is why they make a deal where they hope they can make M:I4 for a price that box office can bear. It's a partial step toward some sort of fiscal sanity in Hollywood.

SPEAKING OF COSTS...

George Lucas took some time off giving away half his wealth in penance for the prequels has let slip that the long sought for live action TV series set in the Star Wars universe has been benched on account of the high costs.

Apparently they thought too big, aiming to make a big bombastic epic instead of using the small screen for what it does best. A TV series is a more intimate medium than a big 2+ hour movie. It allows for fuller character development and more intimate stories to be told over a longer period of time. While the occasional big bombastic battle is allowed, it's not really what you need to do every day.

So why didn't Lucas look for a show set in the underbelly of the Empire. The show could have followed characters who didn't deal with the fate of the galaxy on a weekly basis, but a scruffy band of outsiders trying to deal with the fate of their next meal on a weekly basis. Then you don't need big battles, armies of extras, or too many special effects. You just need good characters and decent stories.

Then again, maybe I'm asking for too much.

TV TIDBIT TIME

After decades where Spring and Summer are dominated by a made frenzy of pitching and pilot making the major American broadcast networks there's a bit of a drought going on. The nets need scripted shows to attract audiences and please advertisers, but there aren't many producers pitching at them.

There are some reasons for this...

The experts say that the last few years were particularly intense, starting with a mad dash to avoid a strike in 2007, and a lot of people are exhausted from the insanity of it all for such little reward.

I'm not so sure about this. I think it might have more to do with the bogus theory of corporate 'synergy' that's dominated the thinking of networks for the past decade. They demanded more and more, from a steadily shrinking pool of talent, all in the name of keeping production and profits 'in house.' Now that they need the independents to come back, they're not coming. That means a lot of the independents just aren't interested in the hassle of dealing with the networks anymore because they were mostly blocked from dealing with the networks for the past decade.

They're all busy trying to get on AMC, HBO, Showtime, FX and any of the other cable nets that are a tad more open minded.

SPEAKING OF TV PRODUCERS

Fox TV Studios honcho Emiliano Calemzuk, who turned the production division from a money loser, to a money maker with shows like White Collar and Burn Notice has jumped his Murdoch, so to speak.

He's left Rupert Murdoch's News Corp to work for run Reveille, the US production arm of Elisabeth Murdoch's Shine Group.

Now I predict that this is just the beginning. Shine Group's modus operandi is to absorb independent TV producers with a sweet deal: They get the clout of being part of a big company, but without the bureaucracy and meddling of being part of one of the major studios.

So I expect 2 things:

1. Reveille will have an aggressive growth spurt. In the next couple of years it will try to put as many shows on as many TV channels as it can.

2. Expect other independent American TV producers to join up with Shine Group / Reveille conglomeration. Watch the major producers of sitcoms, reality shows, and dramas to start signing up one by one. It worked for Shine in England, and with the networks needing more independent material, it can work for Shine in America.

So don't forget to drop what you think in the comments.

Hollywood Babble On & On #570: Should Have Seen That Coming

Welcome to the show folks...

Today, we're going to look at things that people should have seen coming. First up...

3D MEANS DOWN DOWN DOWN

This is one of those things that I saw coming and wondered why others didn't. It seems the sales of tickets to 3D movies are going down with every 3D film released, despite the higher prices, and the claims of the studios that it was the unstoppable wave of the future.

Now there are those who say that this downturn is just temporary, because there aren't enough 3D screens, and too many 3D movies out at once. I beg to differ, there are several reasons for this downturn, and why I think it's permanent:

1. The Price. It was really expensive to rig a theater to play 3D movies. So the theaters jacked up the price to 3D movies. Naturally. Then they jack the price up again, and will no doubt do it again and again, long after the conversions have been paid for. Why? Because they think they can get away with it. Except the rule of prices state that when people start feeling like they're getting screwed, stay away.

2. The Goggles. They wore them during Avatar, and thought "They feel uncomfortable, but I'll get used to them soon enough." Then they went to Alice In Wonderland and they were still uncomfortable, then came The Last Airbender, and they thought "Still uncomfortable and the picture's so damn dark," so by the time Cat & Dogs in came out in 3D, they decided to watch Inception in 2D again instead.

3. The Movies. Many of the recent 3D movies were strong on visuals and special effects, but weak in the story department. A lot of people say that audiences want a thrill ride, but I suspect that they are increasingly craving a real story to go with the thrills. Now when they see the commercials scream 3D at the top of their lungs, the average audience member thinks to themselves, "I'm not falling for that trap again."

4. The Hype. Audiences are getting increasingly jaded. So when a corporation starts demanding that they spend more of their hard earned money to wear uncomfortable glasses in order to watch a dark picture and a weak story.

That's what I think, what do you think?

SUSPICIOUS MINDS

Okay, here's the story.

Last year Amber Benson and Adam Busch co-directed a film written by comedy writers Acker & Blacker called Drones. The plot for this micro-budget comedy was the story of an office worker who finds out the company he works for is staffed with aliens disguised as humans. It premiered at Slamdance, got a small distribution deal, and the film's trailer premiered on the website of the SyFy (formerl Sci-Fi) Channel.

This week SyFy announced their upcoming shows, and among them is a new sit-com called Human Relations. The premise is that an office worker discovers that the company they work for is staffed with aliens disguised as humans.

Sound familiar?

The makers of Drones certainly think so.

Now there are two possible reasons for this event to happen in the way it has happened. They are Stupidity or Malice.

Stupidity allows for the possibility of the creation of Human Relations as a coincidence. Somebody, somewhere came up with the same idea as the Drones hive and ran with it without any prior knowledge of the little indie comedy.

Here is where the stupidity comes in. Someone at SyFy should have realized that this isn't your usual Science Fiction trope. It's not common like the 'crew of a space ship explores the galaxy' premise. So someone should have done the due diligence and at least did a Google search, especially in this litigious age.

Now SyFy's defense is that they are a division of the NBC-Universal cluster-frack and that screwing up such standard operating procedures is their standard operating procedure. Otherwise, they'd have seen the similarities, made some sort of deal to avoid litigation and bad press, and moved on.

Then there's the possibility of malice.

Malice means that someone at SyFy remembered the trailer they debuted on their web-site and mentioned it higher up the food chain in relation to this new show. Then one or more of those higher ups said: "Away with you lowly minion! These indie filmmakers are nothing to us powerful cable channel types for we will bury them with our mighty corporate power! Now bow and scrape for my amusement! Bwah-hah-hah!"

This means that stupidity is involved too, because these executives don't really know who is watching SyFy and would watch a show like Human Relations. Most of the the target audience for Human Relations are the sort of people who watched Amber Benson on Buffy The Vampire Slayer, who follow her tweets, and who will avoid a show that they believe screwed over one of their favorites.

So either way, SyFy has screwed over their own show by either not doing their jobs, or by being the embodiment of everything wrong with business in Hollywood.

What's next, will SyFy start a new sitcom about gamers called The Fellowship with a redheaded actress in the lead?

Hollywood Babble On & On #569: Has MGM Gone Beyond The Outer Limits

Welcome to the show folks...

The once mighty MGM, which used to brag that they had "more stars than the sky" is in a bit of a pickle. They can't get James Bond, their most vital franchise, off the ground, their production of The Hobbit is lost somewhere in darkest Mordor. They're also billions in debt, Spyglass Entertainment wants to gut them into just another production company, and if they didn't have bad luck, they'd have no luck at all.

But they say that they're not totally out of the game.

MGM is reportedly hoping that an Outer Limits movie is their ticket back to the big time.

Okay, maybe not the big time, but at least solvency.

Let's look at the facts.

1. The Outer Limits, for those who don't know their history, was a TV series from the 1960s and a Canadian made cable TV revival in the 1990s. It was similar to The Twilight Zone, in that it was a science fiction anthology series that features new stories, some with twist endings, every week.

2. Doing an anthology movie, imitating Twilight Zone The Movie, where a bunch of smaller stories are packed together is risky these days of razor thin margins and exploding costs. The chances of them pulling off such a portmanteau film as cheaply as TZTM are pretty damn slim.

3. They could just adapt a single past Outer Limits episode into a feature film. The problem with that idea is that its two best known, and most feature film worthy stories, Soldier, and Demon With A Glass Hand, both written by SF legend Harlan Ellison, were already made into a feature film, called The Terminator.

4. MGM is even broker than me, and that's saying something. I'm at least out of debt. It's unlikely they could muster the funding for the sort of big budget mega-extravaganza they're probably expected to make.

So is this a bad idea?

I could be, but it also be turned into a good idea.

You see Inception shows that there is a market for intelligent science fiction films that aren't part of a comic book or pre-existing franchise. There's a way MGM can use The Outer Limits, that they already own, but not as a remake, but as a brand.

MGM as a brand is good at selling old movies, but sadly most of their old flicks are now owned by Warner Bros., it's bad at selling something new, and worse at selling science fiction. Here's where The Outer Limits brand could be used.

So here's my advice:

Forget doing a movie, create an Outer Limits Presents imprint for intelligent, well written, modest budgeted, science fiction films that have enough novelty and adventure to sell well. It's vaguely familiar, dwelling the backs of the minds of folks who watched the reruns on cable TV, yet not weighed down by pre-existing characters and continuity. Marketing people like that. Plus it lets them put some distance between the films and the dead weight of the MGM name.

Now the tricky part is getting the money together for these films. Which is why I'm advising MGM aim low for these films budget-wise, but aim high in the quality of story and film craftsmanship. Look for filmmakers passionate about a particular novel or short story that they really want to adapt, and are willing to do it on a reasonable budget.

Then you might get somewhere without fumbling into the annoying, 'let's do a remake' trap.

Hollywood Babble On & On #568: If You Gotta Go Super...

Welcome to the show folks...

The other day I wrote about my concerns about NBC's upcoming superhero drama The Cape, and I mentioned that I might write something about how to do a superhero TV show, or any sort of superhero story, right. Well, I'm going to try it now.

So imagine that you're a TV producer and you have a deal for a guaranteed prime time slot. The trick is that your show has to be about superheroes.

Don't panic, you have two options.

1. You can buy a pre-existing character and adapt the characters and story to your show.

2. You can make up your own superhero character and build a show around that.

So what do you do after that.

Well, if you pick option #1, you need to follow the:

RULES FOR ADAPTING A SUPERHERO

1. DON'T PISS OFF THE GEEKS. Remember, these are the core fans of your source material. But, and this is a huge but, they are also horrendous nitpickers who will carve your show the proverbial new one if they think you're jerking them around. You don't have to be 100% faithful, because that's really an impossibility. But that's not a license to run roughshod over their beloved characters. You need a fresh angle, and a way to incorporate the existing mythology in the most satisfactory way. The best way is to...

2. UNDERSTAND THE CORE THEMES. The comic book character that show real legs in the long term are ones that have major themes at their core. With Batman its the line between justice and revenge, as well as loss. Superman is all about an immigrant trying to help his new home in the best way he knows how. Wonder Woman is about looking good in a fancy bustier & short shorts feminine power in a male dominated world. Understand the themes of your character, and you should be relatively safe.

3. DON'T FORGET THE VILLAINS. One of the things that bugged the crap out of me when Spider-Man was adapted for TV in the late 1970s was that they forgot all the villains. (They also made J. Jonah Jameson into a kindly uncle-figure instead of the raving, cowardly, and blatantly biased media mogul he was in the comics.) I understood that Doctor Octopus was probably impossible to do on a 70s TV budget, but the show pretty much went from street thugs, to hippies, and the occasional mad scientist. The TV version of The Incredible Hulk got away with it, but I don't think the fans will let anyone get away with it now. Remember this lesson because it will pop up again: Heroes are judged by the villains they face.

4. DON'T DUMB DOWN. Most executives think superhero, they think kids. Most kids don't read comics anymore. Which is a shame. I taught myself to read on Denny O'Neill & Neal Adams Batman stories before I even went to school because I wanted to know what my older brothers were into. But I digress. The main comic book fans now are adults who crave adventure and action wrapped up in a decent story.

Okay, let's say that your attempt at buying a superhero has failed because the people who own the characters actually read the contract you gave them. Don't worry because you can create your own if you follow the...

RULES FOR CREATING AN ORIGINAL SUPERHERO TV SHOW

1. HAVE A VERSATILE PREMISE. This means that your character has to have powers, abilities, or gadgets that can handle a variety of problems. Making them telepathic and only able to handle cases involving other telepaths is extremely limiting. Making them the sole protector of Lake Michigan and all who sail and swim on it, is even more limiting. They have to be able to battle evil anywhere it pops up, whether it's on the highest rooftop or the deepest, slimiest sewer. Once you have that you must have...

2. THE RULES. You can't just make your hero god-like with powers popping up at convenient times. As Spider-Man's Uncle Ben would say while serving a heaping bowl of rice, with great power comes great responsibility, and when you're writing a superhero they must have limitations. If your character doesn't have limitations, there will be no drama when they face the bad guys, because some new power will just plop out of your keyboard and save the day for them. Once you have your rules established, you must stick to them like the constitution.

3. HAVE DECENT VILLAINS. As I said before, heroes are judged by the villains they face, and shows where the superhero just beats up seriously outmatched gangsters doesn't really deliver the thrills. You need villains that each have a unique personality and style as well as be a viable threat to your hero. They must each have a back-story that makes them and their fantastical nature exist within the show's realm of possibility. They can't see themselves as villains, but see themselves as the heroes of their own story, that this idiot in a costume keeps ruining. You also need a lot of them.

Because you can't end your pilot episode with the hero saying: "I've a feeling we'll be seeing him again, each and every week," like Chief Wiggum in a Simpsons sketch. They can pop up again from time to time, but don't flog it.

4. DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD. Every hero has that villain that is just too bad-ass to deal with in one simple episode. A villain for whom other villains obey, a supreme villain. Plan out for a seven year run. While each episode can be a stand alone story, you can also drop hints to a larger final evil to be faced in a big season finale cliffhanger. Then plan a bigger villain for the next season, and so on, until you reach the seventh season, which I think is a solid run for an SF/Fantasy series before you start flogging the dead horse, and have a real whopper of a grand finale. It requires planning, and if the series doesn't last that long, you can always license the characters and those plans to an indie comic publisher for your own core fans if you have them.

5. KNOW WHEN TO END IT. As I said in the last rule, seven seasons for a superhero/SF/Fantasy based show is a solid run. It's not a hard and fast rule, it's just my personal preference for creating a properly epic saga that doesn't get bogged down in its own mythology and continuity. You could go on longer if you have a solid enough premise, and the ability to rewrite history and change aging actors like Doctor Who. But you should still go in with a plan for how it will all end and when you should end it.

So, do you think these rules are helpful in any way?

Hollywood Babble On & On #567: NBC Dons The Cape

Welcome to the show folks...

The once venerable, now barely functional, National Broadcasting Corporation has been making some big moves recently. They're being bought out by cable giant Comcast, and are pledging to stop the race to the bottom in both budgets and quality philosophy that has dominated NBC during the reign of current honcho Jeff Zucker.

The network is hoping to reassert its dominance and hopefully win back some viewers from the cable channels by backing away from cheap quickie reality shows, and spending serious moolah developing new scripted programs.

One of those new scripted programs is a superhero action-adventure series called The Cape. The premise is pretty straightforward, an honest cop in a crooked town finds himself framed, disgraced, and declared dead. He then trains to become a martial artist/vigilante with the help of some circus folk, and goes out to fight bad guys dressed as his son's favorite comic book character.

Now the makers of the show know that they are going to be compared to NBC's last superhero themed show Heroes. If you're like a lot of people and you forgot Heroes after they saved the cheerleader and saved the world, I'll recap what happened for you. The show had a huge first season, was the talk of the town, so to speak, and got renewed for a second season.

That's when the trouble started.

You see the people behind Heroes didn't really have a clue what to do after the first season. They pretty much shot all their creative ammo during that first season, which lead to firing, hiring, and a lot of lame plot-lines pulled out of the collective asses of a writing staff who didn't know where they were going, what they were going to do when they got there, or if someone else was going to have their job next week. That showed in both the quality of the show and the ratings, which got steadily worse even by NBC standards.

The folks behind The Cape say that they're going to avoid that trap by following a more mystery/procedural formula. Basically instead of long involved plots with little clues being dropped every episode, they're going to stick with one and done weekly story-lines for the most part.

Good luck with that.

But I'm not exactly holding out much hope for this show making it to a second season.

Here's why:

1. The superhero has that damn permanent 5 o'clock stubble thing that bugs the living shit out of me. That does not scream righteous justice, that mewls a phony tough guy pose decided by a focus group of dull eyed Burbank dwellers addled with faint memories of Miami Vice. Either shave, or grow the damn beard, that's what Batman would do.

2. The superhero itself. This sounds a lot like one of those things whipped up by committee at some network or studio office:

NBC BOSS: Superheroes are hot at the movies, we need to get some of that on this network that won't suck like Heroes.

MINION #1: We could adapt a popular book as a series.

NBC BOSS: Are you high!?! Then we have to deal with the creator, and the publisher and give them a share of the profits. We need to make up our own superhero.

MINION #2: I got one, Super-Man.

NBC BOSS: Hmmm... I like it.

SECRETARY: Warner Bros. on line 1, to tell you that they'll sue if you do Superman.

NBC BOSS: How did they know? Okay, forget Super-man. What makes superheroes special?

MINION #1: Super powers?

NBC BOSS: Super powers mean special effects and those kinds of special effects cost too much.

MINION #2: The wear masks.

NBC BOSS: We'll call him The Mask!

SECRETARY: Dark Horse Entertainment on line 2 to tell you that they're going to sue you.

NBC BOSS: Fine, we'll find something else to call him.

MINION #1: A lot of them wear capes...

NBC BOSS: That's brilliant! He will be The Cape. Make sure he has some manly stubble to make sure viewers don't mistake us for Glee, and we have a hit.

3. The premise that The Cape is inspired by a kid's favorite comic book character. The average comic book reader is somewhere between 18-45. Kids don't read anything longer than a text message. That sort of shows either a certain lack of knowledge of the nature of comics and comic readers, or they're willfully ignoring it as an excuse to toss in a cute kid.

4. I worry about the villains. A superhero is only as good as the villains he faces. They have to be diverse, colorful and interesting all on their own. I have a bad feeling that this show will turn into a 'gangster of the week,' rotating among the various ethnic mobs, to biker gangs, the occasional ill tempered scientist, and back again. One of the chief problem with Heroes that they had one villain that anyone actually remembered, and kept going back to him, over and over.

Are there any positives to this show?

The show has given Summer Glau some work, which is a good thing to me. I enjoy ogling her, but there's a caveat I must add.

I first noticed her on Firefly, one of the unfairly canceled show in recent history. That set a standard for me that has to be met in order to set my geeky fanboy heart aflutter.

Is it possible to make a good superhero show?

I think so. Maybe I'll talk about what makes a good superhero show another day.

Saturday Silliness Cinema: Look Around You 2

Welcome to the show folks...

Since you loved last week's educational segment so much I'm doing it again. This time the good folks at Look Around You explain the world of mathematics. Enjoy, and learn something...

Hollywood Babble On & On #566: Billionaire Boys Club

Welcome to the show folks...

The fat cats are strutting their stuff this week, so to speak. Two billionaires, Ron Tutor, and Richard Branson are both jumping head first into the movie business this week. Ron Tutor finalized his purchase of Miramax from Disney, costing around $600 million and having his picture stitched onto a voodoo doll in Harvey Weinstein's basement. Richard Branson has opened a new production company called Virgin Produced , and has tapped former child star turned producer Justin Berfield and his business partner Jason Felts to run it.

They're not the first. Clothing magnate Sidney Kimmel's been in the racket for years backing indie darlings like Lars & the Real Girl.

Ah, to have a few billion to toss around. Now you're probably wondering why would these normally shrewd businessmen get involved in a business as crazy as the movies.

Well, there are several reasons.

1. Glamor. There's rich, and then there's MOVIE RICH. Being rich and in the movie business adds a whole other dimension to the ego stroking a rich man gets. The most beautiful people in the world will line up to kiss your ass, sometimes literally, and that's a hell of a lot more exciting than sitting in a room full of accountants, engineers and lawyers discussing oil leases, or shipping schedules for your widget vendors.

2. Money. Despite the risks, which are great, the potential for rewards are greater too if you nail a few big hits. This appeals to those who love...

3. Excitement. The movie biz is a feast or famine roller coaster ride. It's the ultimate thrill for those with a gambler's soul. Big risks, big rewards, and a chance to play the artist.

Okay, now we know the reasons why they would get involved, what should they know if they get involved?

That's a good question, if I say so myself. Well there are many things they should know:

1. If you want loyalty in Hollywood, get a dog. The great philosopher Confucius once told me during a poker game that when it comes to Hollywood and money, you should trust no one farther than you can throw them. Confucius then cleaned me out with a straight flush.

But my old friend makes a good point.

A common mistake of the billionaire turned movie-maker is that they usually partner themselves with a large, major studio to handle their distribution and marketing. That's not healthy. Because a lot of the major studios see a billionaire and they see a sucker. The majors can easily trap a self-financed producer who spent tens of millions of dollars to make their movie into a situation where they either have to eat the studio's dirt and accept a smaller piece of the profits, if any, or spend tens of millions of dollars more of their own money to get what they think is their fair share.

Most just make a couple of movies, get frustrated and walk away, bitter at how they were treated and muttering that Hollywood is not run like a proper business.

Branson however is doing his deal in partnership with Relativity Media and their Rogue Pictures imprint, most likely to be distributed through their recent purchase of the Overture Films marketing and distribution department. In this partnership Branson is the alpha dog, able to crush his partners out of sheer bulk if push comes to shove. Or as my pal Confucius would say: He can throw Relativity pretty far if he has too. In fact, with reports that Relativity is going to go public, Branson's Virgin Empire could own a sizable chunk of Relativity as well.

2. Watch your spending. When you're a billionaire playing movie mogul there are going to be forces trying to get you to spend your money wildly. That's because you'll be spending that money on them, their clients, and their buddies. They'll stroke your ego, and any other part they can get their hands on, promising you riches, awards, critical praise, or just a snog with that hot starlet you met at Sundance. Don't let that happen. When it comes to making movies, be penny wise and pound wise. Learn what your money can really get you.

Maximize your company's potential by minimizing overhead. Only have the staff you absolutely need. Only offer the salaries and perks you need to keep them. And remember, you don't need the biggest office in Hollywood, or the biggest yacht at Cannes. That's your ego talking and messing with you. You just need the best movies that make the best profits.

3. Stars don't shine the way they used to. Stars are famous, glamorous, and sexy. They also don't sell tickets like they used to. Check the top moneymaking movies of the past 40 years and you'll find that a bulk of the record breakers made stars instead of being carried by stars. Look into what any 'name' actor can bring in at the box office and the home video market before you blindly sign a check for more than they can deliver.

4. Be passionate about movies. If you're a billionaire getting into movies, you need to love what you do. You must love the hustle, the histrionics, the hype and the hysteria. If you don't have this passion for the game, you might as well be selling widgets to the other billionaires. Because if you don't love what you're doing, it will drive you mad. If you love it, it might still drive you mad, but at least you'll be enjoying the ride.

5. Trust your gut. When you're a billionaire in the movie biz, there are going to be dozens, if not hundreds, of people who will present themselves as experts on the movie biz. They will offer their advice, and their guidance whether you want it or not. Well here are the simple facts about that kind of expert advice:

A. At best it's no better than your own gut instinct. There are no hard and fast scientific rules guiding success in Hollywood. Most of the time success is based on instinct, that chill down the back of your neck that tells you that this is the sort of movie you want to pay money to make just so you can see the finished product.

B. At worst such advice is dictated by agendas that center around the giver's own attitudes, prejudices, ego, or schemes, rather than the success or failure of the advice receiver. Remember, if it doesn't feel right, it isn't right, and move onto to something that does.

6. Don't let them get to you. That's pretty self explanatory.

If any billionaires are reading this, and if it helps them navigate the tricky waters of Hollywood, I require 5% of all the profits they make fas a result of this advice. I'm not greedy, and I need the work. I applied to replace both Simon Cowell and Ellen Degeneres as the main judge on American Idol. I told Fox TV I was viciously acid tongued and horrendously unqualified, and they turned me down.