I kind of suspect that merely making it onto Sy-Fy as one of their primetime movies probably recoups most of the cost of those movies anyway.
I mean, what’s the post Sy-Fy market for “Mansquito” or “Ice Spiders” or “SS Doomtrooper”? They get replayed periodically on that network, but I can’t imagine there are more than a tiny handful of people out there buying them on DVD or Blu-Ray. And they’re not the kind of thing you’ll see on a local UHF station on a Sunday afternoon in April either.
I’m sure that’s the case. Those things will sell overseas and have some residual sales/rental value as a package deal, but SyFy will make some money from commercials every time they run them so it’s worth for them for 2 hours of content they can use over and over again. If you’re not picky about quality it doesn’t cost much to make a movie. Ed Wood figured that out a long time ago, too bad he didn’t have SyFy channel to show his movies on.
That makes sense, after all, they’re also shown over here in Germany; I guess somebody’s paying for that to happen…
Add on top of that you can license them as filler for Netflix and similar streaming services to get money for an almost zero expenditure.
I think actors can tell if the dialogue is stupid and unnatural. And maybe they can tell if it’s a good script. But other than that, how could they know? They are filming multiple takes of a bunch of scenes out of order. They won’t see the finished product with all the editing, sound, and visual effects until much later.
They will also know about the business and hear about the other aspects of the process. But you’re right, as far as their own role goes all they know about is the script, the other actors they work with, and the director, and just for their scenes. A lot of times actors are producers also, but even when they take an active role they may avoid that when they’re actually acting.
What the man said about fishing, “A bad day fishing is better than a good day working.” It’s not completely true, but close. And you keep hoping…“Maybe, it’s better than it seems.” and then “They’ll probably clean it up in editing.” And then you run through your head all the stories about how disasters turned out to be great shows. There is a feeling, but you refuse to believe it, because you don’t want to believe it. Finally…you are working, and that is something and maybe someone might just catch your scene and see what you did, and that might lead to… Hope springs eternal…
There have been movies that had me wondering if anyone actually watched it before it was released. However, there are people who LIKE those kind of movies; I used to hang out with someone like that. Without going into more details, she wasn’t my friend (let’s not go there) and she was also one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. :smack: I told another friend that she told me, “You don’t go to movies to be educated” and my friend replied, “You don’t go to be insulted either.”
As for the “Sharknado” series, those were deliberately bad movies that to everyone’s surprise have turned out to be runaway hits. My favorite moment to date? ZZ Top as extras in “Sharknado 2”; they’re running around on a subway. 
To be fair, even studio heads believed it. Gary Kurtz, who produced Star Wars, mentioned that:
(Bolding mine.) Had there been successful science fiction? Yes. But people were nonetheless skeptical that Star Wars would be a hit, because they did not have a recent science fiction blockbuster to point to.
All the examples you give have kind of an asterisk next to them, as in “successful for a science fiction movie.” All the grosses I can find online for 2001 include money made during multiple subsequent re-releases (Not uncommon for movies made before 1977), but I see no indication it made back its budget within a decade, unlike other 1968 movies like Yours, Mine and Ours, Bullitt and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Artistically, it was a great success.
People who invest in movies might define “successful” differently from you or me.
From IMDB:
Budget:
$10,500,000 (estimated)
Gross:
$21,500,000 (USA) (31 December 1970)
So the return was twice the investment 2 1/2 years after the release.
Also from IMDB. Compare to:
Yours, Mine and Ours (1968)
Budget
$2,500,000 (estimated)
Gross
$17,000,000 (USA) ( January 1970)
$25,912,624 (USA)
Bullitt (1968)
Budget
$5,500,000 (estimated)
Gross
$42,300,873 (USA)
Again, it was a wonderful movie, it looked great, and it was pretty successful for a SF movie made before Star Wars. It was not, by Hollywood metrics, particularly successful.
I remember the big Time magazine spread on Star Wars the summer it came out, after it became such a hit. Indeed, everyone involved in the film seemed positively gobsmacked that it hadn’t disappeared into obscurity.
Charlton Heston in an interview in “Penthouse” (late 1970s) said they thought “The Agony and the Ecstasy” would be a great film (it wasn’t) while “El Cid” turned out a whole lot better than he thought it when filming it.
Ok, but it was definitely not a bomb. It would have been cited as a successful SF movie. By 1977 it had grossed $56,715,371, that was known when Star Wars was produced, and far more than Yours, Mine, and Ours had produced in it’s whole life. 2001 was recognized as an important film immediately, fully expected to keep generating revenue. If you’re looking for the biggest movie of the decade to be pre-Stars Wars SF you won’t find anything, but 2001 was the kind of success that makes producers happy.
Cracked did a thing on this. Don’t have time to track it down, but it was really interesting.
Hollywood’s defining trait is its willingness to jump on bandwagons–Westerns, Technicolor, road movies, what have you. Star Wars is the movie that made people who decide these things that science fiction was a bandwagon worth jumping on. it was immediately followed by Close Encounters, Star Trek the Motion Picture, E.T. and a metric crapload of Star Wars and Star Trek sequels. 2001 was followed by a handful of shitty Charlton Heston SF movies and sequels with ape costumes. It’s clear to me which wave Tinseltown’s heart was really vested in.
If you’re referring to Planet of the Apes, it was released at about the same time as 2001: A Space Odyssey, so there was no bandwagon jumping going on.
The Omega Man (1971) and Soylent Green (1973) are the movies they felt emboldened to make in the wake of 2001’s success.
You really think any of those were taken seriously other than 2001? Also, how many sci fi features were blockbusters?
Skepticism about A budget sci fi films was very real, though it was breaking down during the 1970s. And yes, the consensus was that Star Wars would be a godawful film. Harrison Ford once said to Lucas: “George, you can type this shit, but you sure has hell can’t say it.” When industry pros assembled to see Lucas’ rushes (which not incidentally lacked special effects) they thought the film was embarrassingly bad. “Hey George, why does Princess Leia have honey buns on her ears?” Admittedly, Spielberg saw it differently: he thought audiences would respond to Lucas’ innocence.
Cite: Old New Yorker article.