Looking at both our 2008 movie lists (10 Movies to Look Forward to in 2008, 15 Potentially Successful Movies in 2008), as well as all the listings of all the other movies coming out in 2008, it would seem that movie studios cast their net wide. The bigger studios obviously have more capital and put out more movies each year than a smaller studio.

But maybe they never expect every movie they release to be a big hit. Do one or two big hits in a given year pay for all the other flubs? Book publishers operate on this principal. For every Stephen King and J.K. Rowling, there are hundreds or thousands of writers that don’t sell out their first run. It’s a gamble, but it seems to pay off (not necessarily for writers but for publishers).

I’m willing to bet that movie studios do the same thing, that they hold no illusion that they’ll have a ton of hits in a given year even if they were to release twenty movies. That means latching on to trends, including using hot actors and directors while they’re still hot, before they get put into Hollywood’s Most Overpaid Actors sorts of lists.