Martin Grove Quotations

This summer is off to a fabulous start. People thought it was going to be dominated exclusively by 'Star Wars.' It turns out there are a number of hits in the marketplace. The marketplace expanded, Star Wars is doing great, but there are a lot of other hits that are playing in theaters now.

Crash provided jobs for actors and other LA-based workers, who are increasingly frustrated by runaway productions that travel to far-flung locations. Moreover, because Crash was a story dealing with complex racial relations in Los Angeles, it was something that LA-based Academy members could easily relate to.

It hasn't been a great year so far for Universal -- that's no surprise at this point. But the fourth quarter has a number of major releases that the studio is very hopeful about.

On TV, where you have the miniseries form which allows a long time to develop and deal with a story that's complicated, perhaps the material is better served by that form.

As a result you may see studios open fewer movies in the coming weeks, just because it's very difficult to market them.

What's especially important is that it comes on a non-summer, non-holiday, non-weekend day. It's a plain-old Wednesday in mid-May -- that's not bad business.

I think in troubled times, we're going to see the same genre that worked during the depression -- comedy. People need to escape, they need to laugh, they need to forget the grim realities of the world. Comedies are going to become king at the box office.

could see these pictures go to $100 million or more worldwide.

When they're breaking for basketball games, ... you know that it's not (going) too, too badly.

Bottom line: Hollywood is worried. Nobody wants to see this really healthy industry ... just put flat on its back.