The Hot Blog Archive for August, 2009
More Paramount Weirdness Today
An urgent request from the studio went out across the internet just a few minutes ago requesting that clips from The Goods – the Green Band trailer, the Red Band trailer, and the
10 Comments »Shutter Island Shutters For The Year
ADD, 3:30p – Paramount has confirmed that the film will also be held internationally until February.
=========
Thanks for the publicity work, Rob Moore! Nikki’s besty called her first to tell her about Shutter Island being pushed to next year.
What he didn’t tell her is that they had the marketing budget meetings for the film yesterday, as they had to lock in budgets for the film.
He also failed to mention the emergence of Up In The Air as the studio’s Oscar movie of choice.
And of course, the best lie of all… that this is all about the hope that the DVD business will spike up in four months. Oy! The hair on those cajones!
She was closer to the reality when she talked about paying for the release. It’s not just paying for a release. It is another four months of paying for an Oscar campaign for a movie they know may well be able to be pushed into a list of 10 (another way the expansion has screwed a major studio) when it was never expected to make it into a list of 5. Cash flow is tough at Paramount, but releasing a movie in October is not a lot different in cost than releasing in February. What is more expensive is holding it in theaters and in Oscar voters’ minds beyond those first 4 weeks of heavy release. (Also very expensive would be pushing it into December, the most expensive month to release a movie in the year.)
There is also this… Shutter Island is the ONLY Paramount-made film on the schedule between now and next June. Here is the ENTIRE schedule, as of right now:
The Lovely Bones – Dec ’09 (DW)
Up In The Air – Dec ’09 (DW)
Shutter Island – Feb ’02
She’s Out of My League – Mar ’10 (DW)
How to Train Your Dragon – March ’10 (DWA)
Iron Man 2 – May ’10 (Marvel)
Shrek Forever After – May ’10 (DWA)
Footloose – June ’10
The Last Airbender – July ’10
Dinner for Schmucks – July ’10 (DW)
Oobermind – July ’10 (DWA)
Morning Glory – July ’10
Now… the studio is financially responsible for all the DW movies. So they have a vested interest in success or failure, even if they didn’t really “produce” the films. On the other hand, the strategic need for having at least one Paramount-made movie every quarter next year (Feb/June/July) may not be irrelevant to this move.
There is also this… revenues from DVD sales of Star Trek (release date: 11/17/09) and Transformers 2 (10/20/09) will not be in Paramount’s pocket before December. Cash flow, cash flow, cash flow…
There is also this…
Yeah… unless they are going to reconfigure the entire international release schedule, illegal but plentiful DVDs and online downloads of Shutter Island from other countries’ releases will be available months before the film is released here in the US. There could even be legal DVDs from other regions landing before next February. This is pretty much unheard of for a big major studio release.
Or they may be scrapping the entire international schedule as well.
Don’t know. A call is in. But Paramount Publicity is endlessly hamstrung by these premature leaks to Nikki that Moore and Grey use to feather their nest with her (as though it really mattered). International is a key element of this story… but it’s not a story… it’s a leak… so I am – along with others – waiting on an answer to this key question.
This story about Leo not being available to sell the movie overseas… more bullshit. The movie was being released worldwide in a one month period. If Leo was not locked in for 3 weeks between the end of September and mid-October MONTHS ago, someone would be getting fired… DiCaprio would be having a big problem with studios… and he would be backstabbing Scorsese. Don’t expect Leo or the studio to be fronting this spin when the story is told on-the-record. But don’t be surprised if it is “no comment”ed and then hoped to be part of stories, run via Nikki as though it was official. Backdoor news via gossip… classic.
One last note… there will be no Oscar nomination for Shutter Island off of a February release, even with 10 nominees. A successful, high-quality commercial movie by a prestigious filmmaker getting the benefit of momentum at year end is not only possible, but with 10 films, looking likely. Ramping up awards heat around a commercial movie 10 months after release and 5 months after DVD release is nearly impossible, in any atmosphere. If Shutter is one of the 5 or 6 best films of 2010, okay… it has a shot. But otherwise, it is the end of any Oscar daydreams for the film.
And as noted before… that may well be the reason for the shift. It’s an extra $15 million that Par does not have to spend on an extended Oscar run when it already knows that a win is nearly impossible for a film like this and a nomination will not add to their cash flow.
And there will be more actual cash in hand after the two big DVD releases…
Super Movie Friends EXTRA
Last week, James Rocchi and Mark Olsen had some stuff to add about Inglourious Basterds that hit the cutting room floor. You can check it out now, if you like…
Red, Yellow, Green
While kicking in my choices to the editor of the MCN Critics Roundup Chart, I was kinda blown away by all the greens I was claiming. Inglourious, World’s Greatest Dad, Art & Copy, and Passing Strange. And last weekend, it was District 9, Ponyo, and Grace.
It really must say something about distribution right now that the end of August is the strongest part of the summer for quality movies.
DP/30 – Grace
Writer/Director Paul Solet and Jordan Ladd sat down to chat about the dead-alive baby thriller. Grace.
Things are changing up a little and this DP/30 is the first film to get its very own DP/30 page instead of just being after the jump.
We’re also doing new looks for Super Movie Friends and for DP/30 Awards Season interviews. We hope you enjoy the new looks.
As is so often the case, these pages are a work in progress, so your opinions on them – style and substance – are invited.
Super Movie Friends 3
This week, Larry Gross, Kim Morgan, and Luke Y Thompson join me to discuss the summer movies in general and Inglorious Basterds in detail.
Here is a clip of the IB conversation. The entire discussion can be watched here.
ADD – By request (we’ll see how popular), a mp3 audio, 20mb version of the episode.
And Much To My Surprise…
I am wanting to see this new-era Lansing/Jaffe-Meets-The-Scotts flick…
Press Release – LAFCA Joins The List Of Penniless Champions Of $70k Short LACMA Cinema
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Declare their Support of the
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Redbox Drama
Now we have a wave of journalists supporting the “Redbox Revolution.”
I get this as a rebellious teenager thing… boo studios… oooooh, ya had it coming… boo on you!
But the whole thing is so obvious… and so NOT Napster and the record business, a model of failure that, for reasons of sheer intellectual laziness, journos keep wanting to hang around the necks of the film business even though it is not particularly relevant at this point or at any point in the last decade. (You never know when the industry can find a way to make shit out of Shinola…. so I can’t vouch for the future.)
Of course, consumers want more for less. DUH! They always have. They always will.
This does not make giving them everything for less a workable business model. Just ask the newspaper business.
At the risk of being accused of supporting the bean counters again, industries that do not create products that are consumed – from soda to tires – and have a high cost of ongoing operation have a very, very difficult problem in a shifting advertising atmosphere. The industry has lived in a bubble in which consumer prices were naturally inflated by limited availability. That’s over.
But the cost of making movies – while inflated right now after years of massive DVD sell-thru revenues – is still very high. And trying to keep the price point up, though reasonable, is the challenge. When I read smart people talking about “what consumers want,” as though it is some fundamental right to have content producers give their product away for too little money to make a profit, I wince every time.
Reality is that the media environment is changing and businesses need to adjust to that change to survive. Yes. And those who cannot will simply not be in business at the end of the day. But, seriously, do people really expect studios to rent movies for a buck because people want a bargain?
The huge mistake the studios have made is acting too slowly. All of a sudden, Redbox is a cause and not just some business trying to manipulate a well-organized market. This should have been organized over a year ago, as Redbox rose.
Other markets are long settled and people don
Cronkite to Novak to Hewitt?
May they all rest in peace.
Cronkite was the front man. Hewitt was the guy who perfected form. Novak was a guy who adapted from both of the others.
I don’t care much about the politics of any of these men. But all three did break ground. For me, Hewitt is the big one. He was the one who learned with Murrow, directing See It Now, then produced for Cronkite and the evening news, then mixed the two into a 40 year run of 60 Minutes, evolving the form and keeping on top of it every step of the way. He lived the rise and fall of CBS News more so than anyone else who was living a week ago and historically, he is the survivor figure of them all.
Greatest sandbox in the world, no? For 60 years. 25 to death. Wow.
