Politics & Power Quote by Dino De Laurentiis

De Laurentiis turns math into spin, and the punchline is that he expects you to let him. Calling a review "fantastic" while immediately conceding that 40% of the coverage is anything but is the producer-director’s instinct distilled: shape the narrative, don’t litigate the facts. The numbers give him a veneer of candor, as if he’s reporting polling data rather than massaging perception. But the rhetoric is pure showmanship: lead with triumph, quantify the noise, move on.

The specific intent feels less like defending a single film than defending a whole way of operating in American media. Reviews are reframed as a marketplace, not a verdict. Sixty percent "sensational" becomes the only percentage that matters; the remaining 20% mixed and 20% "not so good" are treated like weather, not critique. It’s a quiet admission that consensus is negotiable if you can keep the conversation anchored to the headline number.

The subtext is also cultural: a European titan working the American publicity machine, where confidence often outruns nuance and where repetition can launder exaggeration into common knowledge. De Laurentiis doesn’t argue with critics; he outpaces them. The quote plays like a miniature trailer voiceover for himself: brisk, bullish, and strategically selective. In the end, it’s not about whether the reviews are good. It’s about who gets to define what “good” even means.