Никто ничего не знает.

Мир вокруг нас меняют такие же люди как и мы. Но и это еще не всё — эти люди так же идут на ощупь, как и все остальные. Кто-то знает чуть больше, кто-то чуть меньше.

Вон например цитаты из книги “Adventures in the Screen Trade” William Goldman (автор Принцессы-невесты, известный голливудский сценарист)

The “go” decision is the ultimate importance of the studio executive. They are responsible for what gets up there on the silver screen. Compounding their problem of no job security in the decision-making process is the single most important fact, perhaps, of the entire movie industry:
NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.

…

Again, for emphasis —
NOBODY KNOWS ANYTHING.
Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess — and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.
They don’t know when the movie is finished

…

They don’t know when the movie is starting to shoot either. David Brown, Zanuck’s partner, has said, “We didn’t know whether Jaws would work, but we didn’t have any doubts about The Island. It had to be a smash. Everything worked. The screenplay worked. Every actor we sent it to said yes. I didn’t know until a few days after we opened and I was in a bookstore and I ran into Lew Wasserman and said ‘How’re we doing?’ and he said, ‘David, they don’t want to see the picture.’”
They don’t want to see the picture — maybe the most chilling phrase in the industry.
Now, if the best people around don’t know at sneaks, and they don’t know during shooting, you better believe that executives don’t know when they’re trying to give a thumbs-up or-down; they’re trying to predict public taste three years ahead and it’s just not possible.
Obviously, I’m asking you to take my word on this and there’s no reason really that you should, because pictures such as Raiders of the Lost Ark probably come to mind. Which, I grant, was an unusual film.
Raiders is the number-four film in history as this is being written. I don’t remember any movie that had such power going in. It was more or less the brainchild of George Lucas and was directed by Steven Spielberg, the two unquestioned wunderkinder of show business (Star Wars, Jaws, etc.). Probably you all knew that. But did you know that Raiders of the Lost Ark was offered to every single studio in town—
— and they all turned it down?
All except Paramount.
Why did Paramount say yes? Because nobody knows anything. And why did all the other studios say no? Because nobody knows anything. And why did Universal, the mightiest studio of all, pass on Star Wars, a decision that just may cost them, when all the sequels and spinoffs and toy money and book money and video-game money are totaled, over a billion dollars? Because nobody, nobody — not now, not ever—knows the least goddam thing about what is or isn’t going to work at the box office.

Этим, кстати, можно объяснить и засилье фильмов в уже существующих “вселенных”. Когда ты не знаешь, что сработает — фильм по уже успешному материалу имеет бóльшие шансы выстрелить Посмотрите например на фильмы с самыми большими бюджетами. В 30 самых дорогих фильмах только три с полностью оригинальной историей. Два не стали коммерческим успехом (Waterworld и Wild Wild West), третий стал мега-успехом: Avatar.

Если никто ничего не знает это не значит, что можно делать что угодно. Разумеется надо уменьшать процент неудач, собирая как можно больше информации перед решением.

Но это разрешение делать, если не знаешь, что и как делать. Да, ты не знаешь — ну никто не знает на самом деле до конца. Поэтому лучший способ узнать — сделать с минимальными затратами и посмотреть.