Jack Neo Says It’s “Really Difficult” To Make Money From Movies, Explains Why His Films Are Filled With Product Placements

"I’ve always had the same problem — we don’t think too much [before making a movie],” the director recounted. “At that time, I just told the people in my talent agency that we should make a movie regardless of how it does in the box office. We were so happy to see our faces on the big screen and we weren’t calculative over anything else.”

Sharing that he found it challenging to secure funding when he first started making movies, Jack added that things only got better after he proved himself in the box office with his first few films.

“ABTM was a huge production —MINDEF supported us so guns, cannons and the like were from them,” he continued. “It was the 45th anniversary of National Service (NS) so MINDEF approached me to turn a YouTube [documentary] named Every Singaporean Son into a movie. I told them that it would be difficult to edit a movie based on the footage they had, and suggested that we produce it from scratch.”

Jack mused, “I told them that I would get the funding but they had to provide the equipment (…) I was in the army for six years so I have a pretty good understanding of how things work in there, and I believe that they also trusted me because of my experience.”

Jack signed on with the army at the age of 17 and once served as the platoon commander of the 1st Battalion Singapore Infantry Regiment's Charlie Company at Guillemard Camp before transferring to the Music & Drama Company. He left the army in 1986 as a lieutenant.

Even with MINDEF’s backing, making ABTM wasn’t a walk in the park as Jack had to work with a limited budget.

The first and second installments in ABTM were shot with a S$1.5mil budget each, which Jack said was “very little”, and ABTM 3: Frogmen proved more challenging as it was “even more complex” to make.

“Honestly, it’s really difficult to make money from movies,” he said. “If you spend S$1mil on production, you need S$3mil to break even, and you only start earning from that point onwards. That’s why the chances of making money from movies is very low, and that’s why many productions are supported by the government.”

“That’s why we also tend to have more product placements. Where else would the production budget come from if not from sponsors? They’re the ones that balance things out, or we’d never be able to make [movies].”

Catch the rest of Jack's interview on Hear U Out on meWATCH. Click here to watch Part 1 and here to watch Part 2.

Here's the video for Part 1 of Jack's interview on Hear U Out:
And here's Part 2:

Photos: Jack Neo/Facebook, Mediacorp, mm2 Productions