Al Pacino in Ocean’s 13? There’s a reason the studio isn’t called “Warner Sisters”.

By now, everyone and their mother has reported that Al Pacino will be joining the cast of next year’s sequel Ocean’s 13 (we hear that, in order to keep Internet spies in the dark, Soderbergh will shoot the film under the decoy title International Playboys Who Also Occasionally Take Time Out to Steal Foolishly Vast Sums of Money With Little or No Narratively Believable Obstacles).

Now to some, the addition of Pacino to the cast might seem a bit suspect. After all, wasn’t it just recently that the film’s producer Jerry Weintraub, commenting on the departures of Julia Roberts and Catherine Zeta-Jones from the cast, claimed that the script “didn’t have a place to really use talent like theirs”? So does that mean that two A-list actresses = one Pacino is the new Hollywood budget accounting formula? Can we expect that Hollywood women’s groups will launch a protest, an investigation, a lawsuit and perhaps a public burning of George Clooney in effigy?

Of course not, and Burbanked is happy to explain why. Screenwriters and their elf-like Studio Story Development Executives have their work cut out for them when navigating the tricky waters of the Male Lead/Female Love Interest story dynamic. You’ve got to create chemistry, flirtatious banter, consummation, conflict, relationship obstacles, resolution – and, of course, Sizzle. That’s a boatload of work.

But put Pacino in your movie and all you really need to do is write lines like “I think I’ll take a bath now” and the man will work it for days. He’ll say that line so many different ways and at varying volumes that you’ll probably have enough coverage for two more sequels.

Ultimately, it’s very simple. Creating less story for the movie means less work for the writers. Less work for the writers means more money in the budget for the fraternity-like cast to cavort on luxury yachts. More cavorting on luxury yachts means more free tabloid publicity for the movie. And so on. See how easy it is to craft a successful Hollywood franchise once you’ve decided that having a dramatically sound story just isn’t all that important?