Wealth & Money Quote by Robin Tunney

Tunney’s line lands with the weary clarity of someone who’s watched Hollywood’s romance with “the movies” get replaced by a spreadsheet relationship with “the release.” As an actress, she isn’t lamenting art so much as naming the hidden tollbooth between a finished film and an actual audience: distribution isn’t just prints and shipping anymore; it’s marketing, platform fees, ad buys, trailer placement, influencer campaigns, and the brute-force cost of being seen in an attention economy designed to ignore you.

The intent is bluntly pragmatic. She’s reframing the theater experience as something that has to be purchased twice: once in production, then again in persuasion. The subtext is harsher: “quality” is no longer the main gatekeeper. Visibility is. If you can’t afford the megaphone, your film doesn’t fail on merit; it fails on reach. That’s a quietly radical thing to say in an industry that loves to attribute box-office outcomes to storytelling, star power, or “what audiences want,” as if audiences are freely choosing rather than being herded by saturation advertising.

Context matters here: rising distribution and marketing costs have run parallel with consolidation (fewer companies controlling more screens), the dominance of franchise IP, and the streaming era’s recalibration of risk. Tunney’s quote works because it punctures the myth of the level playing field. It reads like an economic diagnosis disguised as a casual observation: the theatrical marketplace isn’t a neutral arena; it’s pay-to-compete.