by Clifford F. Thies

The L.A. Times - not really Ayn Rand's BFF - is out with a item on Atlas Shrugged ... John Aglialoro hurt by the bad reviews and disappointed with the box office, so he's going Galt, dropping out, not going to follow up with Parts 2 and 3, instead he's going to produce some routine drivel of a movie concerned with the Las Vegas poker scene.

Again, according to the L.A. Times, Aglialoro says that, although the movie has not yet recovered its cost (which it tabs at $20 million, up from the $10 million number that was being bandied about just one week ago), it will eventually break-even because of DVDs and the sale of ancillaries.

Not without Parts 2 and 3!

This wasn't an interview. It was a set-up. Who's going to so much as go to Part 1 once the word gets out that Parts 2 and 3 aren't going to be made in the foreseeable, no less buy the movie or a coffee mug?

Besides, the actual production cost of a movie is often very different from the numbers that are quoted. Big budget movies make enormous amounts of money for as many production services as the studio thinks it can get away with. Actual production costs are often much lower than what is quoted. In terms of hard dollars, I'd venture to say that the two sequels, if made together, might cost $5 or 6 million, which would mean that they're sure to make money given the box office figures already attained. Production of the sequels may even be bankable.

Plus, this project has enduring quality, meaning that it could be re-broadcast for decades by a cable channel looking to fill a schedule; and, people who have not yet been born will be buying the DVD or whatever is the media on which movies are made in the future.

Of course the critics panned the movie. What else did expect them to do? Have a come to Jesus moment? Their intellectual forebearers denigrated the book, and its been a best seller for now more than fifty years.

If there is any truth in this L.A. Times story, I am sorry that John Aglialoro didn't read my hard-nosed calculations based on the first week's box office. I didn't go all crazy about this movie being a blockbuster. I was conservative and yet confident that the box office would justify production of the sequels.

As for translating the first week's numbers into a successful run, this involved manipulating expectations, setting the bar low enough so that you can be sure to clear it, not getting sucked into unrealistic possibilities that make even modest successes seem like failures. In Hollywood as in politics, there's a lot of facade. Maybe even more so.

Anybody can churn out brainless movies like "Rio" that parents feel they have to bring their children to see, or teenage horror movies like Friday the 13th Part 87. Real cinema is art and - while real money is involved - what it expresses is a choice.

Dr. Thies is a professor of economics at Shenandoah Univ. in Virginia, a Hayekian/Milton Friedman devotee and a self-described "Christian Randist."