Daily Inspiration Quote by David R. Ellis

"They do think it is a big summer movie and that's why they want to give it a great chance, but they don't want to go up against Spider-Man 2 or some of the other big movies, the $100 million films that are coming up"

David R. Ellis, Director

About this Quote

Ellis is letting the industry’s polite fiction slip: release dates aren’t chosen because a film “belongs” to a season, but because studios are terrified of being publicly measured. Calling something a “big summer movie” is less a creative identity than a marketing tier, a signal to exhibitors and audiences that this is supposed to be an event. The subtext is anxious and transactional: they want the glow of summer prestige without the risk of a direct fight with the true heavyweights.

The quote’s quiet comedy is in the corporate doublethink. “Give it a great chance” sounds like confidence, but it really means strategic avoidance. In Hollywood math, quality is secondary to matchup. Ellis names “Spider-Man 2” not as a film, but as a weather system - the kind of brand-driven juggernaut that sucks up screens, press, and casual viewers. When he adds “the $100 million films,” he’s translating status into budget as shorthand for inevitability: money buys spectacle, marketing saturation, and therefore cultural oxygen.

As a director, Ellis is also revealing the weirdly diminished authorship of studio filmmaking. He’s close enough to the process to hear the language of aspiration (“big summer movie”) and the language of fear (don’t “go up against”). The intent is practical - explaining scheduling - but the context is a broader hierarchy where even supposedly major films are positioned as counterprogramming to franchises, not competitors. Release strategy becomes a confession of what the studio really believes the movie is worth.

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David R. Ellis (September 8, 1952 - January 7, 2013) was a Director from USA.

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