Word: troy
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Despite Horn's sangfroid, there is no guarantee that Troy will be a hit. Summer blockbusters have become the riskiest investment in the film business. In his book Hollywood Economics, economist Arthur De Vany analyzed 2,015 movies to determine what succeeds and what fails. The answer, best summarized by screenwriter William Goldman, is that "nobody knows anything." What De Vany did learn is that moviegoers behave according to the principles of Bose-Einstein condensation--a fancy way of saying they are more likely to go to a movie if they receive an "authentic signal" that other people have enjoyed...
Horn insists Troy is a safe bet when home-video and foreign-box-office revenues are factored in, but even he admits there's risk. So why make such a sprawling hydra of a movie and throw it into Hollywood's most competitive season? In part because no one knows anything. Troy could be a monster hit. But for everyone from Petersen and Horn to the lowliest production assistant, the audacity of the enterprise is, in large part, the point. "As an actor [on a movie like this], you get to feel like you're an explorer," says Bana...
...unique way. "I have many favorite scenes in the movie," he says. "One, of course, is the scene with Priam and Achilles. In the whole huge movie, it's the smallest scene. Just two guys talking to each other. I also love when Achilles lands on the beach at Troy and calls to all the soldiers, 'Go get your immortality!' You get this sense that this is maybe a dark, kind of crazy guy, right? But he has enormous dreams...
Pitt can be laid back to the point of comatose, particularly when talking about acting. He hates the word craft and laughs at the preciousness of declaring any role his best work. To Pitt, it's all just work. "I felt the same going into Troy as I did about Snatch or True Romance, which was a two-day job," he says. "Prepare, show up on time, and be professional." Of course, True Romance required only that he sit on a couch and pretend to be high. For Troy, Pitt spent months training with a dialect coach to lose...
...yeah. The headline on Pitt at 40 is that he's still one of the world's most attractive people, and to his credit, he remains uncomfortable with the attention. "That's why I thought it was interesting that he took the role," says Troy director Wolfgang Petersen. "I knew he could play Achilles, but Achilles is the pop star of his day. And many times, like in Snatch or 12 Monkeys, Brad shies away from being the pretty...