i cannesn't even
i've never been, and i don't know if i will...
Contented Masses,
If you’re feeling as such, you can…
…and dunk on me with your friends!
Today, I've got a smorgasboard: F9, Fear Street, Box Office stuff, Cannes etc.
I may be a touch scattered. I got back from a couple weeks on the other coast and am greedily catching up on news I ignored.
I just saw the non-story that A24 “explored” a sale for $3B — a preposterous number given that their movies aren’t rebootable, and that there isn’t a way to scale a company that provoked this question. With that said, A24 is one of only two companies where I’ve ever hustled for an interview, and while I do think there’s an expiration date on its vibe, I’m not ready to see it get swallowed.
Anyway, while out of town, I did watch a couple movies, including Soderbergh's No Sudden Move -- a clever and admirably sincere noir I didn't love, even with Don Cheadle. I don't know why it didn't work for me, but I sense A.O. Scott felt the same -- both in that he didn't love it and in that he can't quite put his finger on why either. A screenwriter friend said he was baffled that it wasn't based on a novel, which I interpreted as a compliment, a snipe, and a little knot of meaning as cryptic as the movie itself.
No Sudden Move the only new release to meditate on the iconography of the American-made automobile...
Fast, Furious, & Fearful
I saw F9 in a theater, which I really shouldn't take for granted. I liked the flashbacks with a young Dom a.k.a. baby Vin Diesel. They did that trick where they mixed the young actor's voice with the older actor's. The thing is, a voice that's even 1% Diesel is 100% Diesel. It was ridiculous... but it was affecting anyway, in the way these movies sometimes can be.
The flashbacks took place at the "Baldwin Hills Speedway" -- shown in the present storyline as abandoned. I assumed it was a real place I'd find on Atlas Obscura. Turns out, it was filmed at the still-alive & lively Irwindale Speedway, re-named for a nearby neighborhood and dressed to look decrepit.
While F9 put the Fast franchise back on track (sorry), another franchise -- Netflix's Fear Street -- just took its first lap (sorry), and while the official times aren't in yet (sorry!!!), I hear it was a laggard. (That was my way of saying: Nobody watched Fear Street. Or rather, nobody watched the first of three Fear Street movies, the next two of which will be released on subsequent Fridays this month.)
This isn't entirely surprising to me given my understanding of Fear Street's genesis. They were developed & readied for greenlight at the peak of the YA franchise craze, when Twilight gave way to Hunger Games... and then to Divergent & Maze Runner. Back then, I was an assistant, and a couple bro-y Fox execs bragged to me they were eschewing the time-honored tradition of making a (one) movie. Instead, they were prepping three movies, to be shot in a row, all by a new young director. The bros were hatching an instant franchise.
Since then, Fox got swallowed by Disney, and the trilogy was off-loaded to Netflix. Netflix isn't thrilled with their purchase. I can't help but wonder if the underperformance is because the trailer felt too derivative of Stranger Things -- which, of course, could be the work of Netflix's overeager marketers forcing a connection to their most beloved original work. Or maybe there's a shared spirit between them: I just learned the movies' (yes, plural) director is married to one of the show's creators.
Meanwhile, the first Fast movie was directed by the guy who had just made The Skulls, and it has all the scope and imitation-slickness of a USC thesis. Not coincidentally: It still bangs!
Cannes, Marvel etc.
Black Widow made real money -- not as much as it would've pre-rona, but the numbers are big.
Nonetheless, it's an outlier. The box office is still anemic. This was the first weekend to reach 2019 levels. Basically every other movie is underperforming. That means people aren't going to the movies just to get out of the house and picking from what's available. The ones who are showing up are franchise fans. That part of the business is fine. Their fans will follow them anywhere.
In grasping for the broader future of movies in the coming years, the news from Cannes is more telling: so far, there are scarily few deals.
Historically, Cannes was a hub for deals for cast-and-director-driven movies outside the studio system-- for flashy, arty movies I might like. These deals were to finance productions (often schlockier fare at the market) or acquire finished movies (higher-brow premieres). But this year has been quiet. Way, way too quiet.
And it makes sense if you look at things from the perspectives the people who might feasibly finance the movies (let alone from the perspectives of the theatrical distributors who might acquire the finished ones but have skeleton staffs & reduced capacities etc. etc.).
So... imagine you're looking at financing a Cannes package. Notable European director, couple well-known actors, $10MM budget. Well, how might you make your money back on the movie?
What about theatrically? Once you've financed the movie, you'd sell it to a studio that distributes in theaters or another theatrical distributor. But unless you have a huge franchise, there's no recent history to give you confidence that any of them would buy it for much. You assume their appetites for acquisition and marketing are diminished. You have the script in one tab, and a list of buyers in the other...
You know that the two remaining specialty divisions of big studios, Searchlight and Focus, only acquire so many movies, and that both are swimming against the currents even within the conglomerates that own them. You should know whether or not the movie is cool enough for A24, and it probably isn't (although you, money man, very well may be delusional). Same for Neon, which only distributes in the U.S. anyway -- never enough to recoup, unless you've got a tiny movie. You do have every right to be curious about the Neon-Hulu partnership that paid $17MM for Palm Springs though. And you're crossing your fingers that Mike DeLuca is permitted to continue buying movies at MGM, but your movie is probably a touch small, even if he survives. All of a sudden, you're taking a hard look at Bleecker Street. And you're wondering why you're paying a sales agent.
What about selling the movie to one of the big streamers? It's possible! But you know that the streamers are moving away from acquiring finished films. They want to finance everything on their services so they own the rights forever. You could think about committing half the budget and trying to get one of them to co-finance, even though that's not really their main model. Plus, they aren't financing anything that isn't laser-targeted to 8-year-olds in populous-but-untapped foreign markets.
But they do still acquire movies, right, even if it's not the core business? And you're looking hard at this package, with an auteur whose movies have decent grosses theatrically & a cast of known names who meant something to theatrical distributors around the world... but you know that doesn't mean shit to a Big Tech algorithm at Netflix -- even if the algo approves something like Pieces of a Woman twice a year seemingly at random.
And going down the list of streamers... this package probably isn't brand-safe or A-list-y enough for Apple. So you'd be crossing your fingers for Amazon, which got rid of their filmmaker-friendly exec, and you're praying for HBO Max... which is about to get swallowed by the Discovery Channel. So, no, you probably won't get a big streaming sale either.
If you invested in this movie, how else might you get your money back? Knowing that there's no clear path to digital monetization without a rare sale to a big streamer? Is there any other way?
I really wish I knew.
Instead, you -- hypothetical investor in the wilds of independent film -- will blow enough money at Cannes on the hotel & the yacht to finance a dozen Blair Witches, but you sure as shit aren't doing any deals this year.
And that's why the financing of independent movies feels extraordinarily speculative, and thus why there are fewer deals at Cannes... and why we don't even know what kind of moviemaking ecosystem -- outside of the streamers hastily greenlighting B-pictures that suck -- could possibly emerge.
So, if you're trying to get a movie made right now that doesn't have Gal Gadot and you aren't succeeding, know that it's not on you. At all.
You should keep pushing. And because you're capable of doing a few things at once, you can get a couple TV pitches ready for the fall.
Hollywood Forever Y'all,
Max
P.S. If you do manage to get a movie financed, I'd suggest you don't follow the example of the producers of an in-production indie: use COVID as a pre-text for keeping the financiers from set... then, one steamy night, go so far into past scheduled wrap that you start paying your union crew "golden time" wages (4x hourly rates)... but then not tell your financier! Relationships aside, that's how you have to cut whole chunks out of your already-pared-down script.