Toronto Drama
Oh… they finally figured it out… two car wreck Sundances and two car wreck Cannes and NOW “they” realize that the indie market is dead? NOW?!?!?
Seriously.
The enormous irony of this is that Toronto has always been a major press festival and NOT a great sales fest. Yes, there have always been a few high profile movies sold there each year – nothing of that size this year – and a bunch of foreign language and doc pick-ups – which will still happen – but TIFF was not where people went looking for their sales.
What changed dramatically this year is that the American Indie business is a walking corpse, financially, and has been for a couple of years already. The ONLY American indie for sale at TIFF this year that has the potential to crack the $10m box office mark was Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans… and in theory, it wasn’t in need of distribution (First Look would surely be happy to find a bigger company to market and distribute this epic guilty pleasure).
Get Low? Life During Wartime? Are you KIDDING?!?! IFC, here you come. This doesn’t make them “bad movies.” But Bill Murray’s last two indies did less than $3m domestic between them and City of Ember shut down a studio division. And even the best reviews of a mixed lot are not comparing Aaron Schneider to Wes Anderson or even Jim Jarmusch. The Solondz? Happiness is a serious indie classic… and didn’t gross $3 million, even with an indie all-star cast. Here, its Ciaran Hinds, Allison Janney, and Ally Sheedy with a lot less flame, though the film has its beautiful and funny moments. Bzzt!
So what did that leave? A lot of accents. There was a heavy UK presence at the fest this year, much of it with big UK names. Sir Michael Caine and Emily Mortimer in Harry Brown, Colin Farrell in Neil Jordan’s Ondine, Danis Tanovic’s Triage (and SPC’s pre-fest purchase, The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus), Cillian Murphy and Brendan Gleeson in Perrier’s Bounty, Paul Bettany in Creation, Brenda Blethyn in London River, and Bill Nighy and Julie Christie in Glorious 39 (note the correct spelling of “glorious”).
Those are seven titles that would have been locks for distribution just a year or two ago… and now… not so much. Neil Jordan has not had a single one of his films go without US distribution in his 27 year career. Ondine, a lovely, mystic romantic quirk that would have been a lock for a Weinstein @ Miramax or SPC or Searchlight buy in the past may be the first… or settle for a VOD berth with a few screens on the coasts.
A movie like Chloe would have sold by now a year ago. But coarsely looking past the artistry of all involved, let’s get down to the marketing… if you can only open Megan Fox threatening nudity and Diablo Cody’s cleve-ah dialogue to $6.7m, who is paying to see the lovely and talented Amanda Seyfried flash a little or to see the brilliant and lovely Julianne Moore naked again? No one. So the film’s audience is adults who go for the artistry I previously disregarded and are happy to get a Viagra-kick from the film as a benefit. Now you are waiting on critics to drive the film… no matter how ridiculous that notion has long proven to be. Mixed reviews. Oh well.
This is the kind of movie that you would be comfortable expecting to do a bit over $5 million domestic – double that if it heated up – and to sell 1 or 2 million units in DVD a couple of years ago. No longer.
If $5 million ends up being spent for the American distribution of ALL the titles bought out of Toronto (including the $1 million buy of A Single Man, which was inflated by gossips c/o those who lost in the bidding to try to make shit out of Shinola), I will be surprised.
But it’s not a new situation.
The winner in this will be the US distributor or the foreign sales rep who comes up with a new formula that increases the upside on a US sale while, essentially, giving the US distribution on these films away for nothing.
The ongoing problem in the US is the massive cost of marketing, which precludes a real hard push with the true indies (see: Bright Star this weekend) and at the same time scares the studios, their dependents, and even the big indies like Lionsgate, Overture, and Summit from investing in a film that could lose them money, but which likely, even if they win the battle. will not create a huge amount of revenue.
You know, the two biggest indie grossers of this year so far are Sunshine Cleaning and The Hurt Locker. Sunshine sat around for months after Sundance before Overture picked it up for a song. They rode Amy Adams to $12 million. Summit was the only serious bidder for The Hurt Locker at TIFF last year, in spite of strong reviews and the argument that it was more an action movie than an Iraq War piece. $12.4 million domestic… a much bigger price tag…. a lot more money thrown at the effort… an Oscar push to consider funding…
Bottom Line: Overture made more on the crap film that had the more marketable element. (I will withhold a dissection of the Summit strategy on THL.)
One Last Note: Something else happened to Indie on the way to TIFF this year… TIFF killed Indie, not only with the previously discussed frontload of the fest, but by allowing the fest to be dominated by films WITH distribution.
On the other hand, as this entry started, TIFF has never been a big sales fest. Until no fest was a big sales fest. Now every fest where people gather is a potential breakout sales fest. And TIFF took the bait, even sending out press releases about what a great sales fest it might be this year, leading to anticipatory stories, leading to disappointment.
Indie is the canary in the coal mine, folks. The ENTIRE film business is shrinking be at least a third… yes, even at the big, dumb studios. The media is steps behind the realities at studios, occasionally getting a signal clear enough to write a story. But it’s a seismic change… no joke. And it is worse for indie and will be worse for the unions that gave up too many goodies over the last 18 months. (They were too distracted by the internet to realize what they were really giving up.)
Of course, the media that covers film festivals is mostly either criticism oriented or trade chummy. The cries of pain at TIFF were loud. In this period, the media needs to learn to think like people who have to risk real money in the game, not the people who have already risked or the artists who we all want to support.
The reality of the game hasn’t changed. But the risk/reward has been eviscerated by the rise in marketing costs, the DVD drop-off, and the frontloading of box office. God bless IFC and Magnolia and SPC for still being in that business. But we haven’t met the Next Great Model yet. And I am pretty sure that it won’t be about new technology so much as it is about the next way to mine the audience that exists for all of these films, however soft.
I might quibble with you, David, over the breakout potential of Get Low, especially if Murray and Duvall can gain traction as Oscar contenders. But as for the rest of your post, well…
I wonder how much the indie audience decline can be directly attributed to the decline of film critics at newspapers in major and secondary markets? Yes, I know: the papers still run wire service reviews. But that’s not the same thing as running commentary by someone readers have come to know, if not always trust. And it’s definitely not the same thing as having someone on staff who will champion certain films, intreview indie filmmakers, and convince editors that, every so often, a review of an indie movie should be the lead review in the Friday paper.
No one under 50 is reading newspapers, Joe.
And Get Low doesn’t have a distributor, much less an Oscar campaign for actors – the hardest categories – that launches in under 2 months with two actors who don’t much like to work for awards. And it was not universally loved… not by a long shot.
“No one under 50 is reading newspapers, Joe.”
I think that’s a bit hyperbolic, David. And it’s certainly not a sentiment shared by many, if not most, of the publicists and producer reps I deal with.
Hey I read the paper! But, no, I agree with Poland mostly. It’s marketing, marketing, marketing. Something has to be done about marketing costs.
Look at Winged Creatures. A mediocre film, yeah, but this flick had Forest Whitaker, Kate Beckinsale, Jennifer Hudson, Guy Pearce, Dakota Fanning, Jackie Earle Haley..and the distributor thought it would be too much money to release it theatrically and dumped it direct to DVD. Marketing costs are becoming a crisis.
Yes, people are starting to realize that baby boomers are the audiences for these films. They are retiring/sitting at home and Gen X/Y is not interested . We don’t need a “model” or even an “audience” so much as filmmakers who are actually making films for able-bodied people who leave the house. Every year I look at the festival selections and think, okay, my mom would go see that. But my friends? My colleagues?…
Yes, people are starting to realize that baby boomers are the audiences for these films. They are retiring/sitting at home and Gen X/Y is not interested . We don’t need a “model” or even an “audience” so much as filmmakers who are actually making films for able-bodied people who leave the house. Every year I look at the festival selections and think, okay, my mom would go see that. But my friends? My colleagues?…
you’re not wrong, but the way you wrote the piece sounds like the equivilent of yelling FIRST! in a talkback.
Very succinctly put, Dave.
And I agree with Joe’s comments, too. Especially the stuff about newspapers, and why it’s important that print reviews be written by “someone readers have come to know.” Such a quaint, old-fashioned notion; sob.
Before closing the book on TIFF ’09 (I posted my Toronto wrap-up piece on the “Nine” blog expressly for Leah), I’d like to throw out a few more critical huzzahs for “Mother and Child” and “Love and Other Impossible Pursuits.”
I simply refuse to believe that movies that good won’t eventually make their way into U.S. theaters.
While watching Harmony Korine’s “TrashHumpers” the other day, I had this wonderfully perverse fantasy of Universal (or some other major studio, but Uni seems perfect) acquiring American distribution rights, spending $30-$40-milion on a blitzkrieg marketing campaign (“The new word in horror: ‘TrashHumpers!’!), opening it on 4,000+ screens and seeing the WTF reaction from multiplex grazers once they realize that they’ve been punked. It would be the ultimate in Dadaist provocations. But like I said, it’s just a silly, delicious fantasy.
I’m with Studly. These films are for people of a certain age, that rarely go to the theatre outside of OSCAR TIME. IF AT ALL. So, really, the people need to work on a model to get those films to people who stay at home, that some how generates more than .14 cents. Seriously, there has to be a way to do this. If not, get ready for more DTV releases! WOOO!!!
Oh yeah, fuck that marketing cost bullshit. If one stopped it. The rest would stop it. It’s nothing more than GROUP THINK SYNDROME. If one of the studios works it out. The rest will follow.
every studio is so paralyzed with fear of doing anything differently. at some point someone is going to say “we’re spending too much” and change the dynamic. but until they do, everyone else will continue to throw money at problems.
You’re going to have to spell this one out for me David – you think the guilds should have demanded MORE from studios who are going to be downsizing due to rising costs?
You don’t think that will just exacerbate the problem?
The problem with the economics of film and television have almost NOTHING to do with union talent.
Scratch that. They have NOTHING to do with the union talent.
The failure of the economic system, pure and simple, was the DVD bubble, which led to increased costs in every step of film, from development to production to distribution to home ent and other ancillaries. Union payments were and are a tiny percentage of costs.
Another 2 percent on DVD would have not changed much for the studios.
A reasonable balance of increases in minimums and internet residuals would have changed very little for the studios.
Studios are bleeding because low-complexity comedies that used to cost $30 million are costing $60 million – $90 million.
Studios are bleeding because $150 million productions became normal and $200 million-plus productions less and less rare… which limits the big upside on even strong grossers to all but 2 or 3 movies a year.
Studios are bleeding because marketing – until recent cutbacks – had grown into a $40 million or bust nightmare for every single studio release, flooding the market with tv ad space buyers, pushing rates up and availability down for any distributor trying to make some TV buys but to make creative mixes of efforts.
Studios are bleeding because they got caught up in $20 million-plus marketing campaigns for DVD releases.
Studios are bleeding because “show runners” and stars on series took so much of the DVD revenue that what once were very healthy margins started to look as crappy as film margins… which led to the cutback on pilots… which leads to less possibilities in a narrowed field.
Actors and writers, etc, who are fighting to make a living are not a problem for the studios… except in as much as the studios will – as it is their business to – take every kind of advantage they can because every 1% or .5% counts in Bean Counter Land.
But absolutely, yes… SAG is now a dead union. AFTRA is in charge. And not only will many formerly working actors be driven out of the business by the elimination of reruns and the lack of any money or reasonable money from web reruns, but AFTRA is quite willing to bend once sacred rules to convenience producers so they can take a bigger part of the pie.
Now… it is fair to consider that once AFTRA owns a majority of the TV landscape, its leadership will – as always happens – start to get more conservative and start to try to make steps for its SAG minority to improve things. But too little too late.
SAG is where I see the most damage coming out of the labor negotiations of the last 2 years. But all the guilds are connected, whether they like it or not. Once WGA lowered its bar, led by DGA, with AFTRA acting in a predatory way, there was no chance for SAG to do anything other than give in to AMPTP.
Anyway… I don’t blame private planes or even $20 million talent for where we are. There is a degree of spread that happens when an industry gets fat. And the film business was as fat as it could be about 5 years ago. That was when you really couldn’t lose money on movies, except in the rarest of circumstances.
When they are suddenly put on a starvation diet, people panic. And this is not a business where a single new product can change the game or in which the studios can stop doing business in order to make a big adjustment. They are creating individual items that need to be sold and they are making them more than a year before release, minimally.
The pressure to keep things going, no matter what is happening to the bottom line, is real. Fear of bad publicity is a major factor in how things are done. Plus, there is a lot of pressure from powerful talent to keep up with The Joneses.
You will recall the amount of drama and outrage that comes every time a studio puts an overly expensive film with big name talent into turnaround. The situation with Nikki… the drama within studios because that idiot screeches absurdly without any real insight is completely real. She makes them crazy.
But it’s all absurd. “they” all know they are overpaid and overpampered. But “they” don’t want to get off of the supertrain/private plane.
And actors who get paid double scale or less… writers who get paid under $250,000 for a 6-week rewrite, etc, are minor budget lines in a fat industrial production game.
Costs rose because studios chose to spend more. They were not raised by the course of nature.
The unions are meant to protect its members who are not living high on the hog. And they failed miserably in that effort in these last negotiations.
Summit paid about $1.2 million to acquire “The Hurt Locker”, so the film sould be profitable for Summit.
http://www.variety.com/index.asp?layout=festivals&jump=story&id=1061&articleid=VR1117992012
Based on many “Chloe” reviews I read…. If even “Orphan” could become a sleeper hit at US box office, then “Chloe” may has chance to make some money in a modest wide release. Maybe Sony can buy “Chloe” and open it in about 800 theaters through Apparition. (BTW, Megan Fox doesn’t get naked in “Jennifer’s Body”; many of its target audience have already knew about it.)
Umm… 2 percent on grosses is actually pretty big – once you filter it through the retailer cut, the distributor cut, the studio cut, the hedge fund manager cut back to the 401k investors who actually put up the funds that bankrolled the whole thing.
2% may not sound like much, but when you’re talking about the industry providing the funds in lot of cases thinking 9% is outperforming the market – yeah, it’s a lot. Are there other areas which dominate the budget? Sure. But economics “…have nothing to do with union talent”? You should have stuck with “almost” instead of resorting to hyperbole.
I should note that this has no bearing on whether I think unions deserve that 2% or not – just that portraying it as an issue of no consequence is pretty absurd.
Ethan, that movie is such a strange case. They couldn’t even make a cent here in Australia where the film got a theatrical release because of its high profile (here, at least) director (Rowan Woods, The Boys, Little Fish).
Gosh, that headline on the Movie City News page — you know, the one that mentions that SPC has picked up Lebanon — it fails to mention that SPC also picked up Get Low. Gosh. Wonder if SPC has time to launch, well, you know, an Oscar campaign for Robert Duvall? And Bill Murray?
Ssshhh Joe! That would never happen! David said so!