Making High-Quality Movies

As you proceed through The Movies' tycoon mode, you'll find yourself making better and better movies just as a result of star experience, better technology, and better scripts. Still, if you want to maximize the star rankings of your films, then it helps to know exactly what factors go into determining these rankings. Note that you don't need to necessarily emphasize all of these factors to reach a five-star film, but you'll certainly want to try and emphasize as many of them as possible if you want your stars to be of consistent quality.

This list goes from biggest factors to smallest ones, but is in a very, very rough order, so feel free to play to your strengths. All of the factors have an effect on your film.

Script Quality: The better your Script Office, the better the scripts that your writers will produce. This isn't set in stone; a First Class Script office will produce scripts worth between 3.75 and 4.25 stars, on average. This variance seems to be impacted a bit by the relative interest in the genre of the script itself.

Even a sub-par script can be turned into a classic, if everything else goes right.

Film Length: This seems to be tied into the quality of the script; scrips with a higher star rating will automatically have longer lengths. Anyway, longer films will rank more highly than shorter ones will.

Star Mood: The happier your star is, the better their performance or directing will be. It does seem to get easier to fulfill these moods as time goes on, as you'll have better trailers, Cosmetic Surgery, Publicity Offices, and a few other buildings that'll let you greatly increase their satisfaction with themselves.

Star Experience: The more experienced your stars are in the genre you're filming, the better they'll be.

Star Rankings: The higher your star power, the more likely it is that people will want to see your film.

Genre Popularity: You can right-click on your scriptwriting office to learn about which genres are popular when you start to write a new script. This is actually calculated when you release your film, though. Unfortunately, the process of making a film eventually becomes so long that it's difficult to anticipate what will be popular when the movie's done; it's best to just focus on one or two genres and get your stars well-versed in that genre. You should be able to counteract a low-popularity genre in this way.

Star Relationships: If the big stars of your film are Friends or better, then they'll deliver better performances and the entire film will be better off for it.

Genre Fit: Each of your stars is ranked according to their fitness towards the genre that they're working in. Finding specific information for each genre is difficult, but in general, most of the genres are better off if your characters are young, good-looking, and physically fit. Comedy seems to be the exception to this; for that genre, you can use older actors. Overall, though, genre experience will usually counteract a poor genre fit. Don't forget that you can send your stars off to cosmetic surgery if you want them to look younger or more physically fit.

Even a crusty old actor can still turn in appealing performances, if he's experienced in a genre and in a good mood.

Technology: If you get your researchers to unlock new technology in the Laboratory, you'll be able to get stuff like CGI effects, pyrotechnics, and better film stock well before they'd normally be available to you. Getting this ahead of time can increase the wow factor of your films.

Crew Experience: Your movie crews will gain experience over time, but very, very slowly. The only way to increase experience is to have them make more movies.

Novelty: As you use sets in multiple films, their novelty value will fade away. Using fresh sets that have just been unlocked and built will increase this factor.

Public Awareness: The more PR you have for a film, the better the rating will eventually be. Be sure to match its PR with an appropriate budget, or your critics will accuse you of advertising it too heavily.

Set Repair: The maintenance quality of the sets that you're working on also affects the quality of a film. If you notice that a film is going to be shooting on a specific set for a while, drag a builder over to it and repair it so that it appears in good repair for the rest of the shoot.

Number of Leads: The more lead actors you have in a film, the better it'll wind up being. Higher-level scripts automatically have more actor slots.

Number of Extras: Again, higher-level films will usually automatically have a larger number of extras.

Costume Changes: The more costume changes a film has, the more highly-ranked it'll be. Keep this in mind when writing custom scripts. Computer-generated scripts will have a few costume changes inserted automatically.