Hollywood has always been hard-hearted – but now more than ever, it needs to remember that films are more than just profit-generating ‘content’
Gamblers and other types of investor are aware of the overwhelming need to avoid the “sunk cost fallacy”, to reject the irrational belief that even if a long-planned course of action is now clearly unworkable, you just have to keep on because you have sunk so much money and sweat into it. Ruthlessly cutting your losses is how executives demonstrate their virility. It’s what Rupert Murdoch did by closing the News of the World and it’s what Wayne Enterprises did in the DC Comics world by discarding the old merchant branches of its business in the 19th century.
But does that – should that – apply to movies?
