Picking movie winners?

I listen a lot to Radio 3, the classical music channel, especially first thing in the morning. This inevitably involves listening to BBC news bulletins, which can be quite an ordeal. This morning, as my brain surfaced into consciousness, I heard a strange item, about how the government intends to switch the subsidies it gives to the British movie industry towards more popular movies, presumably away from whatever unpopular movies government subsidies had hitherto been encouraging.

Two questions immediately present themselves.

First, how does the government expect to be able to foretell which films will be popular, before they are made? Many very highly paid, very clever people routinely fail in this task, despite such people entirely concentrating (in extreme contrast to people run governments) on trying to be right about such things. What makes our government suppose that it can do any better than such persons?

And second, are not "popular" movies the exact sort of movies as would be encouraged in a totally free market? So what is the point of such subsidies? Would it not be more sensible simply to get rid of them altogether?

This seems to be the story that my half-awake mind latched onto this morning. For once, I agree with Ken Loach, who appears briefly in the video report. This is indeed typical Tory crassness. Many "mainstream" movies, or at any rate movies intended to be maintream, fail. But, and here I presumably do not agree with Ken Loach, all other government movie subsidies are also crass.