If you could make 1 big movie that pays out a lot (enough to cover the "duds"), then why not just drop the "duds" and keep making those big movies?

the current status quo is a natural evolution of the prior status quo. That's why i think you have to have a new status quo by finding an alternative funding model.

I think potential crowd funding is possible - a movie is crowd funded with no expectation of profit from the funders (they only get a ticket/copy of the movie for their backing dollar).

I don't like a state-sponsored funding model, mainly due to the ability for the state then to manipulate the movie against the artistic vision. This can't happen with a crowd funding model, since the crowd cannot directly manipulate the director (after all, the money is already paid, the director would not need to acquiesce to anyone but his own artistic direction!).

Whether these funding models can out-compete a studio big budget funding model remains to be seen. I'm not holding my breath tho.

> the current status quo is a natural evolution of the prior status quo.

Indeed, unfortunately.

> I think potential crowd funding is possible - a movie is crowd funded with no expectation of profit from the funders (they only get a ticket/copy of the movie for their backing dollar).

This is a pipe dream. A few amateur movies managed to get funding this way, but that's about as far as you can go. Movies cost a lot. And even if the cast agrees to work for no money, there's still equipment, and sets, and all the people responsible for those, and editing, and music, and about a million other things.

> I don't like a state-sponsored funding model, mainly due to the ability for the state then to manipulate the movie against the artistic vision.

There's also corruption and lack of transparency. France and Russia both subsidise movies heavily, and the results are ... mixed. In Russia award-winning directors and producers are still looking for sponsors to fund their movies because state money goes to some truly awful shit.