In all honesty, you can make a decent film for $80m, but don’t expect any A-List celebrities to be involved, unless they worked for scale (minimum wage as approved by the various trade unions).
Yes we are in a recession, but Hollywood hasn’t slowed down in making content for either the silver screen or television. I would imagine that “Their Finest Hour” is trying to work beyond their own capabilities. It’s one thing to sell a few gifts (Books/DVDs/Models) at a few airshows, but for someone with limited experience in cinema film production to go to Hollywood with an idea and begging bowl isn’t going to succeed.
In all honesty, making a feature film can be an easy and affordable process, but you have to choose your subject matter very carefully. The Blair Witch Project was made for $22,000 and grossed $248,639,099. So it can be done. CGI and Digital Cinema (goodbye 35mm) means you can make films more cheaply.
The cheaper the film is to make the easier it is to secure funding from distributors, DVD labels and TV sales. I would not get involve with this or any film as a private investor.
If they could make a film for less than £6m, which is doable using CGI and digital photography, they might be lucky enough to make a decent TV drama, but you would have to reduce the narrative from the whole BoB to just one single event, that might involve a few static aircraft. Take for example the recent BBC4 film The First Men in the Moon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_First_Men_in_the_Moon_(2010_film)). That film cost less than £2m, I believe. Not an Oscar-winning film, but I would be happy to have my name associated with it.
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