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A Method To Uwe Boll's Madness
grandfenwick writes "Ever wonder why Uwe Boll keeps getting bigger budgets and bigger-name actors for his awful film adaptations of videogames? Stuart Wood of Cinema Blend theorizes in an exposé on Boll's methods. His position? Thanks to a loophole in German tax laws, he and his investors actually make *more* money the more a movie tanks at the box office." From the article: "Boll's movies aren't being made out of a love for cinema. They are a shallow exercise in money-making greed and exploitation. Rich Germans getting richer by exploiting the stupidity of the Hollywood system and the naivety of critics like us, who never thought to question the true motives of why these horrible, horrible movies existed. Pure and unfiltered 21st century capitalism." Take with a grain of salt.
Something like The Producers?
..somebody has a case of "The Producers" to me.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Mel Brooks parodied a similar scam in his musical "The Producers". Where two guys created a scam by intentially coming up with the worst idea for a musical involving singing Nazis and other nonsense. The idea was to make the play so badly that it would quickly flop and get pulled after the first performance, the producers would then pocket the remaining investment money. Of course the plan was foiled when the fictional show became a smash hit.
What everyone is missing is that they don't pay taxes on the revenue from the movie until it turns a profit and that the entire expense of the movie is tax deductable, not just the loss from the movie.
So, if they make $50 million a year, that would be $27.5M after taxes if they didn't invest.
But if they did invest $20M in a movie, they would end up with $16.5M after taxes. Now, if the movie makes $12M (technically an $8M loss), they will still end up with $28.5M (a net gain of $1M vs not investing).
Yes the movie still had to make some money, but it can take a loss and still make the investor end up with more money vs not investing.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.