I assume you will be quitting your magic career and selling your services to the hollywood studios since you suggest you have completely cracked the code of what does and does not make a film a success?
Do you have any proof at all (other than your own thoughts and awards from people equally lacking any experience in the matter) that your claim that non-US audiences were not put off at all by the huge errors in portrayal of the performance venues?
Just to keep this thread vaguely educational - the venues where magicians performed in the time period of this film looked like
https://d3s3zh7icgjwgd.cloudfront.net/A ... 1_Main.gifWhereas this is what The Prestige thinks is an accurate representation
http://www.losangelestheatre.com/img/lo ... um-004.jpg The places where jobbing stage magicians (and all variety performers performed) were the music hall circuit - bars & public houses with a large hall bolted on the back, they were rowdy places with straw on the floor and the audience at stalls level (Orchestra level in American terminology) were sat on stools around tables; as much interested in the alcohol they were drinking and the prostitutes plying their trade around the sides of the hall as they were the entertainment on stage - from memory there's one scene in the film that hits of such a performing venue but portrays it as an exception and failure for a performer when in actual fact that WAS the main performance circuit. For the time period this film in set in they were also on the decline as the "variety circuit" took over using what was essentially a more "posh" version of the music halls; but still the stalls were stalls where the lowest class sat and drank, the audience were on benches & bawdy, the venues were physically small with 4 balconies being the common configuration with an audience virtually on top of the stage. One doesn't need to be a theatre or variety historian to know this because these venues exist today and are usually the "main" theatre in any European city; even modern built venues tend to follow this layout template and any European shown a picture of an American theatre and a European theatre could easily spot the difference because the size, layout, configurations are all so wildly different. It is EXACTLY as jarring and inauthentic (note my deliberate use of that word) as filming a western in the Swiss alps and arguing with any American viewer bought up on traditional westerns that they are completely wrong because sticking hats and ranch signs on everything makes it look close enough and is entirely believable in the world of the film.
For anyone interested in the British "music hall" world I heartily recommend Michael Grade's "the story of the music hall"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU2rRyc0X8Q and his follow up "The story of Variety" they are both exceptionally well researched documentaries with access to some remarkable venues and historians.
Whereas in the UK the music hall style directly evolved into the variety circuit in most of Europe the two industries actually ran in parallel; early European music hall venues survived the invention of variety circuit and evolved into the cabaret venues that still exist today - From the famous ones like Les Follies Bergere & Moulin Rouges, to the less well known but equally opulent cabaret showrooms that exist in towns and cities across Europe to this day.
...can you tell I've spent most of lockdown researching for a music hall show?