The current financing woes of United Artists and MGM chief Harry Sloan serve to remind us of the principle that it's seldom a good strategy to sort of be in the feature film business.

With all due respect to Oscar, indie films, and the wonderful people out there in the dark, movie production and distribution is ultimately a volume game.

In a business where it's so easy to have a failure (or five), the studio execs and the investors who fund their slates have to count on the occasional good news from a through-the-roof profitable release. But MGM and U.A., despite some distribution deals to stir the pot, have put forth homegrown product at a snail's pace.

That's why there's a real circularity to the back and forth between the media--notably Business Week's Ron Grover, who broke the story that Sloan was seeking help from Goldman Sachs to replenish his debt-ridden company--and MGM itself.

You need movies out there to make money. And to make those movies you need--yeah, more money.

The irony is that Sloan knows the principle as well as anybody. During a panel he shared at a convention last year with Lions Gate chief Jon Feltheimer, he admitted that his studio's key 4,000-title library that threw off $558 million in revenue last year was subject to a flattening of sales.

But, referencing one of the studio's rare successes, he said he had a plan "to first revive the big franchises, but I don't think that's enough. I think you need volume as well. And out of the volume, something good can come up, such as Rocky Balboa."

The key reason for the abrupt departure this month of U.A. C.E.O. Paula Wagner was a purported stall in the production pipeline. (As has often been repeated, including on this blog, her partnership with longtime ally Tom Cruise produced one miss, and the low prospect of earning back a reported $130 million investment in the troubled December release Valkyrie.)

That story had barely boiled away when Grover's piece lit up a new front-burner Hollywood object lesson by reporting that Goldman Sachs was helping shop MGM, which a consortium of investors had acquired in 2005 for $5 billion, for a supposed price tag of $5.2 billion.

Soon a related story from the New York Post detailed a case of nerves being suffered by Merrill Lynch as that currently challenged firm sought to reframe its $500 million production fund for United Artists.

That story brought into the light what's been a tug of war in which Sloan purportedly tries to shift the capital raised for Wagner and Cruise's projects at U.A. into the coffers available to new MGM production chief Mary Parent.

There was some speculation that the studio could go the route of an initial public offering, but its deflated value and current market conditions make that option unlikely.

There was even a reported $3 billion offer from billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, who's owned the company several times and sold it to the current private-equity ownership in 2004. That offer was apparently rejected.

But the company categorically denied the most damaging speculation as framed by Grover.

"There is no 'asking price' for the company," the studio said. "MGM's existing financing arrangements are sufficient to meet its needs. Goldman Sachs has been retained to explore enhancements to MGM's long-term capital structure."

Sloan has managed an upbeat demeanor in confessing to the New York Times recently that the company lost $400 million in its most recent fiscal year ending in March.

But with an annual debt service of an estimated $300 million against the company's $3.7 billion debt, they've had understandable problems seeking fresh capital. Word is the key would-be savior, Royal Bank of Scotland, has had little success attracting institutional investors to provide the desired $500 million credit line.

Short of an offer from the kind of investors who specialize in turning massively debt-ridden enterprises around, MGM may just have to tough it out and hope for a change of fortune.