Such an uncomplicated plot was miraculously filmed by the director for more than 3 hours. William Wheeler's $15 million saving from MGM is the real purpose of the film. How well the film is directed is secondary.
Give you 15 million, let you shoot a masterpiece that makes all the mediocre people applaud, how would you shoot it?
Best-selling screenplay + big-name star + big-name director + epic production + super long time
For Americans who regard time as money, it is natural that the longer the time, the better the ticket price.
If you think the Ben-Hur script is based on history, you'd be wrong. It's actually a bestseller in the 1960s, "Ben-Hur. The Story of Christ." The book was written in 1880, and its author, Lewis Wallace, knew nothing about God and Jesus Christ before writing this book, and before that, Mr. Write a book about Jesus. The subsequent impressive sales of this book proved that Mr. Wallace did a good job. "Ben-Hur" sold more than 2 million copies before his death, and until now, this book is still in reprint.
With a huge number of best-selling fans as a box office guarantee, the risk of burning money was minimized. As expected, the 70 million revenue was enough to make MGM proud of the film industry. This kind of Hollywood money-burning system is aimed at the audience's wallet, and don't expect much connotation in it. If you want to know the real history, look at Herodotus or the Bible is much more useful than the movies
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