Producer Roundtable: Judd Apatow, Jason Blum, Eric Fellner, Amy Pascal, Seth Rogen, Ridley Scott

Part of The Hollywood Reporter’s annual sit-downs with Hollywood players.

An excerpt from a THR roundtable with movie producers Judd Apatow, Jason Blum, Eric Fellner, Amy Pascal, Seth Rogen, and Ridley Scott

What inspires you? What makes you say, “I have to do this”?

SETH ROGEN A few things. One is some sort of idea that I heavily relate to in some way, ’cause it takes a long time to work on these things. Something that I have some emotional connection to, something that I would go see, that I’d probably be angry if I saw that someone else made and I was like, “Why didn’t I make that?”

RIDLEY SCOTT The jealousy factor. (Laughter.)

ROGEN We try to make things that have some element of risk — starring the type of person that you would normally not see in a movie, or with jokes that you couldn’t believe you would ever see in a movie. Those are the things I get most excited by, when people are watching something they’re surprised they’re seeing, and they’re surprised they’re liking it.

AMY PASCAL The studios are afraid to make certain kinds of movies so that stuff ends up on television, and everybody then makes things that are good for television and commercial for movie theaters. I don’t think we can let that happen.

JUDD APATOW Television and streaming television is a black hole of need for product. A lot of these services, they need so much stuff that they have to get out of the way. So they’re willing to take chances. And something has happened, which I’ve noticed just from being in TV for a long time, is that there is now a profit motive in taking a chance in television.

JASON BLUM And there isn’t in movies.

APATOW And the movies haven’t found a way to have that profit motive. (To Blum) Your movie is the example of, “We can do this at this price, and it can make this much money.” They need to place more bets that way. But their main bets are, does this work in China and Russia? And so that knocks out most of the movies that a lot of us want to make because a lot of great movies…

PASCAL They’re not built for that.

SCOTT Who decides that? Who predecides that and supersedes the creative instinct? The creative instinct constantly gets squashed unless you get into a position where you can argue, “I’m going to do this.” You’re inevitably going to be watered down by hierarchy.

BLUM But that’s why, to your point of making quality movies, I think — this is going to be maybe slightly controversial — but the way to combat that is to bring the cost of the movie down.

ROGEN I agree with that.

PASCAL I agree with that.

APATOW Wait, wait, how does that affect my fee? (Laughter.)

BLUM If you pull the price down of the movie, it doesn’t matter about Russia, it doesn’t matter who’s in the movie. We made Get Out for $4.5 million. Every movie we do is $5 million. It’s great that they’re profitable, but that’s not why we do it. We do it for all the reasons we’re talking about. How do you make edgy, different stuff and not have to cast so-and-so, not have to please so-and-so? The way we do it is by pushing the budget down.

APATOW The worst outcome of this is if Ridley agrees with you. (Laughter.)

BLUM I disagree.

APATOW He starts making $5 million movies.

ROGEN His $5 million movies would still be good. (Laughter.)

BLUM Ridley, they’d be incredible. Make a movie with us!

ROGEN We [Rogen and producing partner Evan Goldberg] make the exact type of movies everyone says they don’t make anymore, which are those midbudget, $20 million to $35 million movies. We essentially work backward from like, “What’s the number where you’ll leave us alone?” To us, the budget is as much a creative decision as anything else. We know if it’s this much, they’ll expect this; if it’s this much, they’ll expect this. As long as we keep it in this range, we’ll be able to do what we want, and we will have the resources that we need.

SCOTT There’s only one person at this table even qualified to answer this question (to Pascal) because you were head of a studio. And that’s the hardest single thing to do, because you’ve got to read God knows what from Friday till Monday, make decisions and decide to put your money on black. And you can be right or you can be wrong.

PASCAL Yes. And you’re wrong plenty. But if you’re afraid of people saying, “You were wrong, what an idiot, why did they do that?” then it’s a really rough job. You can’t be afraid of being wrong.

SCOTT You cannot be afraid of being wrong.

PASCAL You can’t be driven by that. You have to be driven by what you actually want to see.

BLUM But if the movies are low-budget, it’s easier to be wrong.

PASCAL Yeah. (Laughter.) But I’ve been wrong on every level, let me tell you. As a person who works at a studio, you don’t make the movies. What you do is believe in other people. And when you meet people who are good at what they do, you let them do it, that’s how it works. How it’s supposed to work.

ROGEN My favorite Amy story is, we had made Pineapple Express, and we had very little input from the studio, which was wonderful, and we were at a test screening for the movie, and it was playing really, really well. And Amy was sitting beside me, and she leaned over to me five minutes into the movie and goes, “Now I get this.” And I was like, “You let us make it!” She’s like, “I know and I’m glad because now I get it.” And I was like, “Wow, like, she let us get this far without getting it.” You would never have had any indication she didn’t get it; she just let us do it.

For the rest of the conversation, go here.