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But those aren't the only obstacles for mid-range movies. Mid-range films are also competing in a changed movie market. Where 20 years ago "summer" meant a mere handful of blockbusters hitting in May and June, now the paradigm is a new one practically every Friday from the beginning of April to late August, with a second wave from early November until Christmas. With the budget for a superhero film or an Apes, Godzilla or Transformers sequel hovering around the $200m mark, studios are letting the minnows – even the tuna – go in favour of chasing the whales. After all, if you're spending $30m marketing your $30m dollar movie and if cinema chains take about half your ticket price, you need to make $120m at the box-office to turn a profit in cinemas – and that means you need a few weeks where you won't be squished by a giant lizard. Easier to just recruit the giant lizard yourself and dream bigger.
But despite Gilroy's protestations, mid-budget studio films do still exist, albeit in smaller numbers. So who is making them? The answer is a shift in the filmmaking structure that's likely to stretch into the future. Independent production companies are financing $20m to $60m pictures and then either selling them to a studio for distribution or hammering out an indie distribution deal alone. As Oldman notes, "Everybody's shooting in these places where they get tax rebates, and really they want to go into profit before the film is made." Thanks to those tax-breaks and sales to international markets where affordable stars still guarantee a certain box-office return, that is an achievable goal.
"It's now a case of, 'If you build it, they will come'," director David Twohy explained to Empire on the set of the $40m Riddick. "We got our own financing and then the studio was like, 'Okay, but can we release it now please?' They didn't want to finance it initially, because they were scared that we spent too much money last time, and we didn't want to slash our budget and do a PG-13. We [found] outside money, sold it internationally first, and then the studios came to play." Universal stepped up, for an eventual worldwide gross of $90m: modest, but not bad once you factor in home entertainment, streaming and so on.
Some production houses have become mini-studios in their own right: see Annapurna for an example that's chasing awards glory, or Luc Besson's EuropaCorp, whose factory line of mid-cost, high-concept actioners has churned out Takens and Transporters, and occasionally given us a Lucy. Often the process is a long one of international pre-sales and financial wheeler dealing, but they do get films made.
"Each project is now its own single-purpose company," explains Legendary Pictures' Jon Jashni. It's no coincidence that we hear much more about the American Film Market (AFM), the European Film Marker (EFM) and the deals cut on the festival circuit than in years gone by. Deals are being made, and just not in the traditional way that we used to understand. With so much activity now happening outside Hollywood, and so little actually being shot there, it's getting to the point where we might question what 'Hollywood' actually even means anymore.
While this trend appeared initially to be one of decline, in fact the studio's reluctance has been seized as an opportunity by other filmmakers. "Making these kinds of [mid-budget] films is not currently part of the big studios' business plan," UTA Independent Film Group's Rena Ronson told Variety. "It's opened up the market for indies [and] created an enormous opportunity for the sector." Randall Emmett of production company Emmett/Furla (End Of Watch, Broken City) agrees that he and his colleagues are actually "seeing more fresh equity coming into the marketplace when the economy isn't doing that well". Ben Weiss of financing group Paradigm even bemoans that he currently has "more financiers than projects" and desperately needs more scripts (or "packages").
The future then, especially when you factor in multiple platforms like VOD and home media and the continuing room for great long-form drama on TV, might yet prove pleasingly diverse, with indies stepping up to resettle ground that was once studio heartland. Commercial considerations will obviously be a factor – nobody's going to put money into a movie they think won't sell, nor pay stars like Julia Roberts without compelling evidence that they need a huge name – but the indies have developed ways to finance these films and make them profitable that seem to elude the big studios. And while screenwriters like Shane Black and Joe Eszterhas are unlikely to land the seven-figure sums they earned in the '90s, there's evidence that the spec script is making a comeback too, following years of neglect in favour of recognisable properties. So we're talking about original mid-budget films as well, and not just adaptations of books or sequels to existing films.
"If you have a great script", says producer Graham King, who made the mid-budget Affleck winners Argo and The Town, "you'll get your film made". Let's hope that that always remains the case.
http://www.empireonline.com/features/independent-movie
But despite Gilroy's protestations, mid-budget studio films do still exist, albeit in smaller numbers. So who is making them? The answer is a shift in the filmmaking structure that's likely to stretch into the future. Independent production companies are financing $20m to $60m pictures and then either selling them to a studio for distribution or hammering out an indie distribution deal alone. As Oldman notes, "Everybody's shooting in these places where they get tax rebates, and really they want to go into profit before the film is made." Thanks to those tax-breaks and sales to international markets where affordable stars still guarantee a certain box-office return, that is an achievable goal.
"It's now a case of, 'If you build it, they will come'," director David Twohy explained to Empire on the set of the $40m Riddick. "We got our own financing and then the studio was like, 'Okay, but can we release it now please?' They didn't want to finance it initially, because they were scared that we spent too much money last time, and we didn't want to slash our budget and do a PG-13. We [found] outside money, sold it internationally first, and then the studios came to play." Universal stepped up, for an eventual worldwide gross of $90m: modest, but not bad once you factor in home entertainment, streaming and so on.
Some production houses have become mini-studios in their own right: see Annapurna for an example that's chasing awards glory, or Luc Besson's EuropaCorp, whose factory line of mid-cost, high-concept actioners has churned out Takens and Transporters, and occasionally given us a Lucy. Often the process is a long one of international pre-sales and financial wheeler dealing, but they do get films made.
"ONE OF THE ARGUMENTS I MADE TO WARNER BROS. DURING MAGIC MIKE WAS, 'LOOK AT ALL THE FUCKING INTERNET BUZZ ABOUT THIS MOVIE THAT WE'RE GETTING, DOESN'T THAT MEAN WE CAN PULL BACK ON THE SPEND?' AND THEY SAID, 'WE REALLY DON'T WANT TO DO THAT. WE WANT TO GO WITH A FULL-ON SPEND.'"
STEVEN SODERBERGH
STEVEN SODERBERGH
"Each project is now its own single-purpose company," explains Legendary Pictures' Jon Jashni. It's no coincidence that we hear much more about the American Film Market (AFM), the European Film Marker (EFM) and the deals cut on the festival circuit than in years gone by. Deals are being made, and just not in the traditional way that we used to understand. With so much activity now happening outside Hollywood, and so little actually being shot there, it's getting to the point where we might question what 'Hollywood' actually even means anymore.
While this trend appeared initially to be one of decline, in fact the studio's reluctance has been seized as an opportunity by other filmmakers. "Making these kinds of [mid-budget] films is not currently part of the big studios' business plan," UTA Independent Film Group's Rena Ronson told Variety. "It's opened up the market for indies [and] created an enormous opportunity for the sector." Randall Emmett of production company Emmett/Furla (End Of Watch, Broken City) agrees that he and his colleagues are actually "seeing more fresh equity coming into the marketplace when the economy isn't doing that well". Ben Weiss of financing group Paradigm even bemoans that he currently has "more financiers than projects" and desperately needs more scripts (or "packages").
The future then, especially when you factor in multiple platforms like VOD and home media and the continuing room for great long-form drama on TV, might yet prove pleasingly diverse, with indies stepping up to resettle ground that was once studio heartland. Commercial considerations will obviously be a factor – nobody's going to put money into a movie they think won't sell, nor pay stars like Julia Roberts without compelling evidence that they need a huge name – but the indies have developed ways to finance these films and make them profitable that seem to elude the big studios. And while screenwriters like Shane Black and Joe Eszterhas are unlikely to land the seven-figure sums they earned in the '90s, there's evidence that the spec script is making a comeback too, following years of neglect in favour of recognisable properties. So we're talking about original mid-budget films as well, and not just adaptations of books or sequels to existing films.
"If you have a great script", says producer Graham King, who made the mid-budget Affleck winners Argo and The Town, "you'll get your film made". Let's hope that that always remains the case.
http://www.empireonline.com/features/independent-movie
