Released 6 years ago, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon cost around $15m to make. In the USA alone it grossed $128m. That's $100m profit.
ASFAIK, in Hollywood it was co-distribution deal, meaning the profits were spread around.
Naturally the director got another chance. He made .. Hulk. It's budget was $120m. In the USA alone it ended up grossing $130m. Not a huge money maker, but a pretty good result for a disappointing, arty-type monster movie.
Among the director's earlier movies was Sense and Sensibility, a big moneymaker.
Ask yourself this - let's assume Ang Lee is liked, a good guy. We know he made pots of money for Hollywood. What do you do if you run Paramount and this director shows up with a well-crafted script about gay cowboys, two major stars have signed on and .. the budget is only $14m?
Answer - you don't run Paramount, you're reading this.
Seriously, if you did run a movie studio you would agree to finance the movie. Every time you would agree to this. Every single time. It is called 'business'. And guess what? ... So far the gay cowboy movie has grossed $42m.
What do you now?
Answer - you promote the movie for an award because that's free publicity.
There is no gay agenda in Hollywood. I am not gay myself but in reality 6-10% of the world is. Yet a far smaller percentage of movies Hollywood makes feature gay characters. It has got to be less than 1 tenth of 1 percent. From this statistic alone is easy to see Hollywood does not have a gay agenda.
The fallacy is that this movie is lauded because it's gay. I haven't seen it but a gay movie is never going to be made unless the script is superior to other scripts in the first place. And the big stars the studio demanded would not have agreed to do it unless they saw it as Oscar material.
An equal fallacy is the one about how so many of the best American movies over the last few decades involve gangsters and/or torture. This does not mean the USA is a gangster nation. Does it mean we're a torturing culture? Does it mean Hollywood likes to see people's ears cut off, or horse's heads cut off? No it does not. That is also a fallacy for similar reasons.
The secret is not giving a crap about hype. Too much hype .. turn off the TV.
