As simple as that?

I was only criticising Matt Damon as an actor earlier this week, but now he has turned up on my Twitter feed with a simple, plausible explanation for why movie studios are so risk averse in the type of film they make now:

 

The example he gave was a movie that might cost $25 million to make (a very modest one, then) will have a publicity and distribution budget of another $25 million, so $50 million all up, and revenue has to be shared with the cinemas, so it needs to make more than $100 million to turn a profit.   

The only thing I continue to be puzzled about is that I thought that digital projection was going to save heaps of money in terms of physical distribution.   Why hasn't that translated into making smaller, riskier films worth trying?   

Anyway, I should add that Damon doesn't appear to be in any way dislikeable in real life:  my only problem with him is I don't find him a very convincing actor.