Word: troys
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...Paris, a Trojan prince, settles a dispute among three goddesses and is rewarded with Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. The goddesses neglect to inform Paris that Helen is married, and Agamemnon, brother of Helen's husband and king of the Greeks, sends 1,000 ships to Troy to get her back. Paris--a lover not a fighter--asks his noble brother Hector to defend him and the rest of Troy while the Greeks rally behind the demigod Achilles, the world's greatest warrior...
...stunt coordinator Simon Crane (Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan). But a few days before the fight, Pitt damaged his Achilles tendon--an irony he can laugh about now, though only a little. A few days later, Hurricane Marty, the second hurricane to hit the production, blew down the walls of Troy. The walls were rebuilt, and Pitt's leg healed, but shooting was suspended for three months, during which both actors had to stay in peak physical shape. "You could say it was just another one of the challenges," Bana says wryly...
Warner Bros. president and COO Alan Horn insists that none of the chaos or overruns worried him. "We can plan a budget in advance," says Horn, "but it's a little tricky, you know? We're sacking Troy. I had complete faith in Wolfgang. I wouldn't have him do Miss Congeniality, but with this, I was not concerned...
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...