Wealth & Money Quote by Peter Bart

“Running out of suckers” is the line that makes Peter Bart’s point land: it’s not an economic observation dressed up as neutral analysis, it’s a blunt moral diagnosis of a business model that survives on someone else’s optimism. Bart is talking about the modern studio finance stack where international pre-sales, foreign equity, and distribution guarantees can bankroll a film before a domestic audience ever shows up. That structure doesn’t just spread risk; it exports it.

The phrasing is editorially surgical. By calling overseas financiers “suckers,” Bart punctures the polite mythology that global money is simply savvy diversification. He implies an asymmetry of information and leverage: Hollywood knows which projects are vanity plays, overpackaged star vehicles, or marketing bets; outside investors often buy the sheen. The “as much as 70 percent” number isn’t there to impress, it’s there to indict: when the majority of a film’s backing comes from abroad, the industry’s center of gravity shifts from making movies to assembling deals.

Context matters: Bart’s career sits inside the trade-press ecosystem that watches cycles of boom and bust up close. His comment reads like a veteran’s warning after too many collapses of “easy” financing: once foreign capital stops playing along, the pipeline tightens, budgets shrink, and the town has to relearn discipline. Underneath the cynicism is a practical fear that Hollywood’s creative choices have been tethered to financial engineering - and that the engineering is hitting its limit.