Category Archives: Film

Film news with a particular orientation towards Australia.

100 Bloody Acres: What went wrong?

Australian horror/comedy 100 Bloody Acres tanked at six Australian cinemas last weekend. Producer Julie Ryan has some compelling theories on why that happened.

Ryan sees an urgent need to re-think the traditional film distribution model and for a campaign to convince Australian cinemagoers of the entertainment value of Australian films.

The producer identifies a number of factors which she believes militated against her film, including the release date, competition from The World’s End, a UK film in the same genre, piracy and file sharing, and lack of marketing support.

Continue reading 100 Bloody Acres: What went wrong?

Cannes 2013 Extra: branding yourself and your projects

Branding yourself sounds like Blade Runner, but emerging producers are being taught these android skills in the training for Cannes. Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch was there, reporting this, our final bit of coverage from Cannes.

One of the keys to success at a film market is presenting yourself and your project in the best way possible. Roshanak Behesht Nedjad of Flying Moon Filmproduktion gave a lot of insights at a session called “Branding Yourself and Your Projects” at the Cannes Film Market last May. Screen Hub’s Andrew Einspruch was there, reporting this, our final bit of coverage from Cannes.

Let’s start with some numbers. There were around 12,000 film buyers, sellers, agency representatives and wannabes at this year’s Cannes Film Market. Obviously, not all of them are empowered to write a cheque.

So let’s simplify for the point of illustration. Assume there are just 1,000 sales agents there who could actually make a decision, and they are there for the five main days of the market. Now assume they only have meetings with two people on any given day (which is absurdly low – it is more like five to ten per day, at least). So, 1,000 agents x 5 days x 2 meetings/day = 10,000 meetings. If they all saw the same people, that’s 5,000 projects being pitched.

The point being made by Nedjad? At a minimum, you are competing with at least 5,000 other projects. That’s your starting point, and probably a very low number.

Sobering. Continue reading Cannes 2013 Extra: branding yourself and your projects

Melbourne’s 37º South selects best pitches

A new project from the producer of Whale Rider, an adaptation of a US book and a Chinese-Australian co-production are to be pitched in the UK after being selected by Melbourne’s 37º South Market.

The three films will be pitched at the UK’s Production Finance Market (PFM) in October following a positive response at the seventh edition of 37º South, which runs as part of the Melbourne International Film Festival.

New Zealand producer Tim Sanders is to pitch The Guinea Pig Club at PFM and received $1,850 (A$2,000) from sponsor Film Finances to help cover expenses.

After learning he would be heading to London for PFM (Oct 16-17), Sanders told ScreenDaily: “It is the story of a Kiwi surgeon called Archie McIndoe who restored the bodies of badly injured fighter pilots in World War II and also gave them the will to live and hope for the future.

Continue reading Melbourne’s 37º South selects best pitches

Mystery Road takes a new (distribution) path

Ivan Sen’s new film Mystery Road, which will open the Sydney Film Festival, is bypassing the established theatrical distributors in a rare departure from the usual distribution model. Producer David Jowsey and writer-director Sen have decided to release the murder mystery on August 15 via Dark Matter, a company they own with Michael Wrenn.

The rationale: If the film turns a profit, that will go to the filmmakers, not the distributor. The producers are paying for the marketing costs, avoiding the standard 25%-30% fee charged by distributors. They’ve hired the Melbourne-based Backlot Studios to negotiate terms with exhibitors for a flat fee. Distribution veteran Alan Finney is a consultant and Tracey Mair is coordinating the national marketing and publicity campaign.

The film stars Aaron Pedersen as an Aboriginal cop, Detective Jay Swan, who’s called on to investigate the murder of a young Indigenous girl and realises a serial killer is at work. The cast includes Hugo Weaving, Ryan Kwanten, Jack Thompson and Tony Barry.

The $2 million film was financed by Screen Australia, Screen Queensland and the ABC. Gary Hamilton’s Arclight Films has world sales rights outside Australia.

By Don Groves – INSIDEFILM – [Tue 04/06/2013 08:32:57]

More Here:

http://if.com.au

Alec Baldwin: ‘The movies are abandoning serious acting to television’

The actor has been at Cannes making a documentary, Seduced and Abandoned,
about the film festival. Here he talks about the state of his profession today

Where I’ve ended up, I’m pretty content. I see the people at the top of the movie
business today and I compare their careers with those at the top 40 years ago. I wouldn’t trade places with those that dominate today; I don’t necessarily want what they have. I want the choices they have but I look at some of the films they make and think: “You could get anybody to play those parts.”

They’ll roll out a film like Lincoln every now and again with Kushner and Spielberg and Day-Lewis – who is someone I worship. I saw him at the SAG awards and I said: “Do you realise what your career means to other actors? You give them hope that there is still some purity in acting.”

Those movies are exceptions to the rule. When I started out in the early 80s, twothirds of the movies made were very cast specific, meaning: “We need that woman to play the psychiatrist and that man to play the judge.” Now that’s down to one quarter. Now they have a line item in the budget that says: “Here’s how much money we’re going to spend for that part – get whoever you can that’s acceptable.”

Cable TV is the bastion of great acting now. This is why you have this riotous celebration of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Homeland – all these really seminal dramas.

The motion-picture business is more and more abandoning serious acting to television. If they want a serious experience, people have been raised over the past 20 years to depend less and less on movies for that.

However, the apex of this business is still to make a great, great film. When Marty Scorsese said to me: “Come do The Aviator with Leo” – I adore Leo and I admire him, he’s probably my favourite young actor around today; and Ryan Gosling, I love Ryan – I was elated. I wept. To go and make great movies is still the ultimate. But it’s like musical chairs. They’re taking away more and more chairs but the number of people circling the table trying to sit down when the music stops is the same. And now people are fighting and fighting and fighting. Now my agent calls me and says: “I got a phone call from some famous director …” and I’ll get very excited and become so happy. “What did he say?” “Only five other guys have to die and you can have this part.” And I go: “Oh my God, thank you.”

As told to Catherine Shoard – The Guardian, Thursday 23 May 2013

Smart Art Films Thrive at the Right Price

Certain helmers can attract financing, but balancing a bare-bones budget with auteur integrity can be tricky.

In the movie business, the label “art film” isn’t always a deal-breaker.

Nowhere is this more apparent than at Cannes, where films that might seem obscure to your average Hollywood studio executive rack up worldwide presales and receive the kind of attention devoted to Brad Pitt strolling down the Croissette.

Consider some of the filmmakers in this year’s lineup: Sofia Coppola, James Gray, Alexander Payne, Roman Polanski, James Toback. They’re not exactly synonymous with blockbusters, but in the realm of global film financing, their names attract coin — at the right budget and with key cast attached.

Producers and financiers say the principal ingredients to getting these movies made are much the same as they were in the past: packages that yield foreign presales, securing locations that provide soft money and tax incentives, and foraging around for ways to cover the risk against the lack of domestic distribution. Continue reading Smart Art Films Thrive at the Right Price

Revolutionary New Screenwriting Software Able to Write Screenplay on Its Own

In what the Writers Guild of America is calling the worst thing to happen to its
members since Starbucks banned screenwriters from all of its locations worldwide,
the soon-to-be released latest version of the revolutionary screenwriting software,
Easy Script, will produce a full-length screenplay without the need of a writer.

Many in Hollywood believe Easy Script 2.0 will be the final nail in the coffin of the
screenwriting profession, which is why dozens of studio executives and producers
have already sent their assistants to wait in line until Easy Script 2.0 goes on sale
Friday at midnight.

“Unlike Easy Script 1.0 which could only rewrite a screenplay enough to receive co-
writing credit and save the studio money on screenwriters’ production bonuses, Easy
Script 2.0 can write a completely original screenplay,” Easy Script CEO Miles Evans
told Hollywood & Swine. Easy Script 1.0 was launched in 2000, and became a vital
resource in the development of many of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters. But the
software hasn’t been without critics, including “Spider-Man” director, Sam Raimi.

“When I was making my ‘Spider-Man’ trilogy, Sony opted for our screenwriters to
use Easy Script over the industry standard Final Draft to save time,” Raimi said.
“Unfortunately Easy Script made the third act of each film exactly the same, with the
villain kidnapping Kirsten Dunst and Spider-Man having to rescue her.”

But several technology pundits are advising consumers to wait until Easy Script 3.0
is released next year, when many of the flaws plaguing Easy Script 2.0 are fixed.
According to one tech analyst, one of the biggest flaws of Easy Script 2.0 is the
software’s inability to tell the difference between a good or idiotic script note from a
studio executive or producer.

Other notable flaws include the fact that Easy Script 2.0 has a tendency to look at
pornography on the Internet when it is supposed to be writing, turning in its drafts
weeks late, in addition to constantly wanting to direct.

Visit HollywoodandSwine.com for more.

Hollywood and Swine – MAY 3, 2013

Screenplay, novel, movie: Sony options The Rosie Project

By Matt Millikan | Monday April 29 2013

Screenplay, novel, movie: Sony options The Rosie Project

Author/screenwriter Graeme Simsion

Debut novelist Graeme Simsion can do no wrong. Not only has The Rosie Project been sold to over 30 countries, it’s also just had the screen rights optioned by Sony Pictures.

According to Deadline the screen adaptation will be produced by longtime colleagues and Sony executives Matt Tolmach and Michael Costigan, working together as producers for the first time. Columbia Pictures president Doug Belgrad and production president Hannah Minghella closed the deal with Simsion, who adapted the novel from a screenplay he started as a creative writing student in Melbourne. Now it has come full circle, with Simsion having written the screenplay of the novel that was based on his screenplay.

‘We love this story,’ Minghella stated. ‘Not only does it have tremendous commercial appeal, but a wonderfully interesting, groundbreaking lead character. There’s already been an incredible response to this novel in Australia and the UK and we think it will strike a similar chord in the States.’

It seems likely, with The Rosie Project a bonafide hit that has so far netted Simsion around $1.8 million AUD. In a sign of its continued success, one of America’s major publishing houses Simon & Schuster will publish in America in October.

While talking to Simsion earlier this month he mentioned shopping the script, not only the book rights, around Hollywood and already having interest from studios. If the screenplay is anything like his manuscript, Simsion would’ve had no shortage of suitors. Almost every major publishing house in Australia bid on the manuscript, with Simsion eventually deciding on Text Publishing.

The Rosie Project follows genetics professor Don Tilman as he undertakes The Wife Project, a curiously scientific approach to matrimony based on a questionnaire that hopefully uncovers his ideal partner. In traditional screwball style, Rosie is anything but perfect candidate, yet still might be the one.

Yet much of the success of Simsion’s book is based on the unique narrative voice of Tilman, who suffers from undiagnosed Asperger’s, with much of the charm coming from the protagonist’s inner world. We wondered how he might translate that from page to screen.

‘In The Rosie Project what Don thinks is a very big part of it,’ he said. ‘That’s why you get the buddy in film, rather than being what Don’s thoughts are, because Don describe them to us, Don will tell Gene.’

It’s not the first time that Simsion’s tried to have the film made. According to the writer, the script was with a producer for a year earlier in its existence but didn’t go anywhere. In order to get it off the ground, he wrote the novel. As he tells the Penguin Blog, one of the reasons to write the novel ‘was to get more attention for the script to help fund the making of the film’.

Matt Millikan | mattm@artshub.com.au

Matt Millikan is a writer and assistant editor at artsHub. You can follow him @MattMEsq

The China Clusterf–k: Is Hollywood Fed Up?

Erratic decisions, murky agendas: Frustrated studios are up against a not-so-secret agenda of the world’s second-biggest box office market as they try to build their own entertainment studio system.

At a time when securing film financing is harder than ever, Hollywood desperately is searching for a pot of gold. And there it sits in China — if only the studios can figure out how to get their hands on it.

But increasingly, whether seeking a big investment in a slate of movies or a far
smaller commitment to an individual film, they are meeting with frustration. “A lot
of people in China talk about wanting to invest, and ultimately, for whatever reason,
it doesn’t seem to happen,” says the head of one entertainment company. “It’s
unclear to me what they think they’re getting going in and, when it doesn’t happen,
what’s caused them to change their minds.”

By now, many studio executives have given up on the idea that authorities will ever
permit a Chinese company to invest broadly in a studio whose films might not suit
the state-run China Film Group. Many have actively pursued deals including,
recently, Sony Pictures and Universal. (Some are said to be under pressure from
parent companies in this respect.) Financier-producer Legendary Pictures also is said
to be in pursuit of Chinese money.

Among contenders, perhaps DreamWorks Animation, with its family films, has fared
best. It has released more than a dozen films in China without a hitch and has
announced plans to team with Chinese partners to build a production facility in
Shanghai. Kung Fu Panda 3 is set to be the first animated co-production in China.

Others have learned that even a partnership with a Chinese company on a film
doesn’t ensure their movie will be designated an official co-production, which allows
studios to get a bigger cut of the box-office gross.

In fact, even if studios expect nothing more than the chance to play a movie in
Chinese theaters and believe all hurdles have been cleared, sudden obstacles can arise. Such was Sony’s experience withQuentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained, pulled from theaters in China on April 11 literally moments after it began to play.

Still, the lure of China is strong. The country has become the world’s No. 2 movie
market (behind the U.S.), on track to become No. 1 by 2020. (China generated box
office of $2.7 billion in 2012, up more than 30 percent from the previous year, and
the country is still adding screens fast.) Although China typically returns only 20 to
25 percent of box-office grosses to U.S. studios on films allowed in — less than other
foreign markets — a smaller cut of a bigger pot is well worth pursuing, especially in
these hungry times.

But some say the climate in China seems to be getting worse, despite the easing of its
quota system to allow into the market 34 foreign films a year instead of 20. There
have been frequent censorship issues to contend with, as well as the Chinese desire to
tilt the board in favor of homegrown product. In August, when The Amazing Spider-
Man was forced to open opposite The Dark Knight Rises, MPAA head Christopher
Dodd called the Chinese embassy in Washington to ask why.

There’s growing awareness that the Chinese agenda in dealing with American studios
is largely about creating China’s own version of Hollywood. “I think they have a real
ambition to build up a film industry, a real studio business,” says Sony
Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton. “They hope to learn a lot about how movies are
made and marketed.” Such thinking is said to have been behind Dalian Wanda
Group’s $2.6 billion acquisition of U.S. theater circuit AMC Entertainment in 2012.

A top U.S. executive says he believes China’s primary intent is not to make money but
“to create an industry equal to Hollywood, but in a way that reflects Chinese culture
and sensibility and history.” And the goal is for those films to play globally, as
American movies do.

Given all this, plus a shifting political landscape that is opaque to most Westerners,
one Hollywood exec sums up the situation bluntly: “China is way too big to ignore
and way too f–ed up to expect anything.”

For studios, the immediate question is: What do the Chinese really want? When it
comes to co-productions, U.S. studios have learned that injecting a few Chinese
elements into a film does not suffice. DMG Entertainment, the Chinese company that
partnered with Disney’s Marvel on Iron Man 3, had touted the movie as a co-
production, but questions arose as to whether the film would meet China’s ill-defined
criteria. (One problem: Ben Kingsley plays a villain called The Mandarin.) Marvel
ultimately decided not to seek co-production status; instead it will release a tailored
version of the film in China.

Even if a studio is not dreaming of getting co-production status but simply wants the
best chance for a release in China, there may be unforeseen issues, as Sony found
with Django. No reasons were given for pulling the film, but several American
executives are surprised that its extreme violence and nudity had made it past

Chinese censors in the first place. (Several doubt the film will ever be released in
China.)

Last year, Tarantino lent his name as a “presenter” on the martial arts film The Man
with the Iron Fistsstarring Russell Crowe and Lucy Liu. Chinese authorities reviewed
the script for the $15 million movie and allowed the entire picture to be filmed in
China. The only issue raised was an oblique objection to a Chinese actor who
apparently was out of favor. (The actor was not cast.)

But producer Marc Abraham says Chinese authorities ultimately declined to allow
the film to play there for reasons that were never explained. “Filming in China was a
great experience but it was beyond my skill set to understand or fathom the inner
workings of the Chinese government,” Abraham says.

In light of the challenges, some studios have adjusted their thinking. Paramount will
partner with two Chinese entities on Transformers 4 and cast four roles with
Chinese actors selected through a reality television show whose panel of judges
includes producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura, casting directorDenise Chamian,
Paramount executive Megan Colligan and former Academy head Sid Ganis.

Nonetheless, Paramount is not counting on Transformers 4 to be a co-production,
says studio vice chairman Rob Moore. Doing that would be a mistake. “We’re taking
a different approach,” he says. “We are only counting on the fact that we have
identified partners that we believe will help us make the best, most playable movie
for China. If we have a more playable movie in China, we’re going to be happy with
that.”

24/4/2013 by Kim Masters –THR

The crest is history

Actors Sam Worthington and Myles Pollard made the part-surf, part-drama flick Drift over a packed 32 days in Western Australia.

He is a bone fide Hollywood star, the face of the Avatar and Clash of the Titans
franchises and an emerging producer, but Sam Worthington knows he is still
learning.

Take the incident outside an Atlanta bar late last year, when he was handcuffed and
pepper-sprayed after an altercation with a bouncer.

”I was an idiot,” Worthington says. ”If I show you the photo, you’ll understand why.”

The former NIDA student, who now lives in Hawaii when he is not making films
around the world, scrolls through his phone to show a scary-looking shot of him as a
character called Monster in the coming Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie Ten.

”I learnt not to go out in Atlanta, which is primarily a black town, looking like that –
with swastikas on me and ‘world Aryan race’,” he says. ”I forgot that I was looking
like that. So as I was going up to a bouncer, it kind of got out of hand.

”You suddenly realise the thing I have to learn from this is to take my tattoos off and
take my earrings out and I’ve got a bald head and I look quite intimidating.”

Once a promising but limited tough-guy actor, Worthington showed he could really
act in Somersault, opening himself up as a farmer’s son struggling with his sexuality.
When he graduated to bigger movies in Hollywood, he showed his action chops in
Terminator Salvation, Avatar and Clash of the Titans.

”The whole world went a bit upside down when Avatar hit,” he says. ”I call it running
with the bulls. Jason Clarke [the Australian actor from Zero Dark Thirty] and Chris
[Hemsworth from Thor] are doing it at the moment. You run with the bulls. You take

all the movies that come your way because of the fear you’re never going to work
again.

”I’ve got to the point now where I can put the brakes on. I can do movies that are
smaller. I don’t have to be the pretty boy running ’round with the short skirt and the
rubber sword any more.”

And one of those smaller movies shows that even if Worthington is still learning at
36, he is prepared to pass on his Hollywood experience to Australian friends.

When one of those friends, former McLeod’s Daughters star Myles Pollard, asked if
he wanted to be in the surfing action-drama Drift, Worthington was only partly
interested.

The two surfing buddies, who auditioned for NIDA together in Western Australia
then went through the country’s leading acting school in the same year, had long
talked about making the definitive Australian surf film.

While Worthington liked the sound of Drift, which Pollard was producing and acting
in, he had no intention of starring alongside him in the film.

”It could have been quite easy to phone up his mate who does Hollywood movies,
have his mate sign on and you get your money,” Worthington says. ”I refused that. I
said, ‘No dude, you’ve got to build a base around you. Go find a bigger producer, go
get yourself directors, develop the script.’

”It would have been too easy to do that and we don’t work that way as mates.
Amongst us boys, we forge our own way.”

It was a tough-love decision that Pollard now calls ”the biggest favour he could do
me”, encouraging him to learn the business of producing.

Shot around the rugged south-west of Western Australia, Drift is that rare thing: an
Australian surf film with not just spectacular wave action but an engaging story. It
centres on two brothers, Andy (Pollard) and Jimmy (Xavier Samuel from
Anonymous, A Few Best Men and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse), who launch a
backyard surfwear business in the 1970s. It’s a fictionalised version of the origins of
labels such as Billabong, Quiksilver and Rip Curl before they became international
brands, with a story of a family’s struggle to survive after moving to a new town and
facing conflict from a local bikie gang. Worthington plays a surf photographer who
arrives in town in a hippie-style bus.

”It happened here in our backyard,” Pollard says of the rise of the big surf brands.
”These backyard companies became world-beaters on the world stage. I don’t think
that’s been told in a feature film.”

While Drift suggests Pollard has the looks and talent to have his own international
career, he admits to lacking confidence when he tried the Los Angeles audition
circuit after McLeod’s Daughters.

”Myles has got a son,” Worthington says. ”He goes, ‘The primary thing is, I want to
do a movie that my son can watch down the track and be proud of something that his
father did.’ That sold me.

”Then you look at the story and it’s about family who are struggling and get their
dreams come true. Not to embarrass my mate but this is Myles’ dream coming true –
almost parallel with the guy in the movie’s dreams coming true.

”Him and his character had that great crossover, which makes Myles’ acting way
more honest and believable because he’s feeling it for real. That was something I
wanted to help endorse.”

Another former NIDA student from the same year, Morgan O’Neill, wrote the script
and co-directed Drift with Ben Nott.

Pollard says producing Drift was like a university degree, especially when the shoot
ran up against time constraints for lack of finance.

”We had a 38-day schedule,” he says. ”We had to reduce that to 32 because of the
lack of finance. Ripping six days out of the schedule was pretty rough. We were
shooting quicker than telly. So to be in the water as an actor, freezing, I had little
escape from that because I knew just how valuable the time was and how long we had
Sam for.

”It was stressful but pressure makes diamonds.”

Worthington is also moving into producing, starting with a TV series on the
journalists covering the Gallipoli World War I campaign to commemorate the 100th
anniversary next year, and two movies too early to announce – ”but they’re big” – in
the US.

”We’re doing a thing with [director] Phil Noyce as well, which I’m in because I liked
it that much. But the rest of them aren’t vanity. ”That’s what I think is the key: you’re
doing it from a place where you’re paying it forward almost;

it’s much more interesting to produce it.”

The surfing movie is a tough genre to crack, Worthington says. ”I said what you
should do – and Morgs and Myles agreed – was get proper professional surf
photographers who have shot Taj Burrow’s movies and actually been out in Grajagan
in Indonesia and places like that. Get those guys because the cinematography in a lot
of surf films is a land [director of photography] in the ocean trying to prove himself.

”But if you get the guys who live in the ocean, who know how to photograph the
waves and photograph surfing, that really helps.”

Being around so much surf sounds an ideal film shoot for two surfing buddies but
Worthington says six-metre to nine-metre swells in the middle of winter were often
perilous. ”We know we can hold our own but there were waves where you were
nervous,” he says.

”Even bobbing around in a 20-foot swell in the horizon, I’ve never been that scared
in my life. But I understand the ocean – I know that I’m not going to die. I have
enough trust in myself being able to read where the swells are coming.

”I said to Myles, ‘Let’s just go out there and take it on. It’ll seem more real for an
audience.”’

Drift  opens in cinemas on May 2.

Garry Maddox – SMH – April 21, 2013