Category Archives: Film

Film news with a particular orientation towards Australia.

‘King’s Speech’ Oscar Winners Hire BBC High-Flier To Ramp Up TV Ambitions

Emile Sherman and Iain Canning’s See-Saw Films bring in ex-BBC Films and BBC4
commissioning editor Jamie Laurenson to build small screen output.

LONDON – Oscar winning producers Australian Emile Sherman and Englishman
Iain Canning’s production banner See-Saw Films is boosting its television ambitions
with the duo bringing in former BBC high-flier Jamie Laurenson to spearhead the
push. The British banner, which produced The King’s Speech, earning Canning and
Sherman best picture plaudits along with Gareth Unwin, has appointed Laurenson as
the company’s head of television.

Laurenson joins from the pubcaster where he was exec producer for BBC Films and
commissioning editor for drama for BBC 4 for four years. In his newly-created role
Laurenson will be tasked with running development and overseeing See-Saw Films’
television productions.

See-Saw is currently in production on Jane Campion’s Top of the Lake, a six-part
series for BBC 2, UKTV Australia & New Zealand and the Sundance Channel, to be
sold by BBC Worldwide. It is the company’s first foray into television production
having also produced, aside from The King’s Speech, the Michael Fassbender-
starrer Shame.

Canning and Sherman described Laurenson in a joint statement as a “perfect fit” for
their company. “As an incredibly experienced film and television executive we are
excited by his decision to focus solely on developing and growing our TV business.
Increasingly there appears to be no distinction between film and television talent and
hiring Jamie puts us in the best position to take advantage of that,” the duo said.

Laurenson said he had been “very lucky to work with a host of immensely talented
people whilst at BBC Films.” He added: “I’m really looking forward to the new
challenge and to continuing a strong relationship with the BBC.”

Laurenson’s resume boasts development work for An Education, starring Carey
Mulligan, James Marsh’s Project Nim, the Michelle Williams’ starrer My Week With
Marilyn, Salmon Fishing In The Yemen with turns from Ewan McGregor and Emily
Blunt and TV projects including Toast and Holy Flying Circus.

5/2/2012 by Stuart Kemp – THR

International buyers eye bigger pics

If “cautious optimism” was the catchphrase going into last year’s Cannes, this year’s
starting line echoes a tone more of “cautious ambition.”

Sales agents brought a number of well-received big-budget projects to market last
year, notably “Cloud Atlas,” “Pompeii” and “Enders Game.” But this year, with the
indie sector stronger theatrically than it has been in years, and with international
distribs flush with success from pics like the “Twilight” franchise and “The Hunger
Games,” as well as “The Iron Lady,” “The Woman in Black,” “The Artist” and
“Midnight in Paris” all having performed well territorially, there’s a feeling among
buyers that bigger is better.

Indeed, the theatrical business has proved a boon for key distribs, considering the
decline of DVD in markets such as Spain, Italy and Scandinavia, and with TV sales
tougher than ever, particularly in Italy. Moreover, VOD has yet to gain traction
outside of the U.S. and Blighty.

Peter Philipsen, general manager of independent films at Nordisk Film, one of two
international distribs (including Brazil’s Paris Filmes), to have benefited from both
the “Twilight” franchise and the “Hunger Games,” says that finding such pics can be
elusive.

“There are not a lot of franchises in this business that really work, let alone in the
independent market,” Philipsen notes. “The last one before ‘Twilight’ was ‘Lord of the
Rings,’ which was huge and gave a really big boost to the business as a whole.”

To date, the “Twilight” franchise has grossed $62.2 million in Scandinavia for the
distrib, while “Hunger Games” sits at $12.6 million and counting. Philipsen notes
that Nordisk’s handling of the “Hunger Games” release was aided by having
previously released the “Twilight” pics.

“It was very much the same mechanics marketing-wise,” he says. “Both were from a
book franchise, targeted at roughly the same market, and the material wasn’t very
well-known outside of the U.S.” (which benefited from huge awareness of the
Suzanne Collins’ tomes, having sold 24 million copies before the film’s release).

In the U.K., where sales of the book sat at 275,000 copies before the pic bowed (and
only half that figure before Christmas 2011), it was the film itself that drove book
sales. Now, with “Hunger Game” taking in £20.2 million ($32 million) over its first
four weeks of release — by far its biggest box office over that period — Lionsgate U.K.
CEO Zygi Kamasa sees a clearer future for the distrib. “We’ve already dated the next
film (of the trilogy for some time in) 2013, and that’s rare for our business to have
something on the calendar that we know is going to be a hit,” he says.

Rodolphe Buet, CEO of Studiocanal Germany, for which “Games” is likely to surpass
the 2 million admission mark — the distrib’s highest such total in more than five
years — says he hopes this kind of success not only proves the company can handle
big day-and-date releases, but serves as a strong sign to local exhibs that more good
news is on the way.

“It’s always a question mark for them to know if an indie is able to market a film in
the same way as the studios, and now they know that Studiocanal is prepared to
invest in a strong P&A commitment (in this case, above $5 million) for a movie,”
Buet says. “Hopefully, they will remember this next time we bring them a project.”

Following the pattern of “Twilight,” returns on the subsequent “Hunger Games” titles
should be even stronger than the original. But while foreign buyers may come to
expect boffo B.O., few have secured rights to the pics, for which Lionsgate is almost
certain to demand a premium.

Philipsen notes that at Cannes, many distribs’ positions will be affected by what is on
offer.

“There might be a handful of projects that we’re interested in,” he says. “It’s not like
(franchise films) appear at every market — it’s fairly rare material.”

Some of the projects that could feed the post-“Hunger Games” demand are teenage
witch-pic “Beautiful Creatures,” based on the bestseller by Kami Garcia and Margaret
Stohl, which Summit/Lions-gate shopped to buyers in Berlin, and Constantin’s sci-fi
fantasy pic “The Mortal Instruments,” based on the tomes by Cassandra Clare.
Sequel to “Red,” “Red 2” — from Lionsgate Intl. — is also whetting buyers’ appetites.

Cannes will also be the first time Lionsgate Intl. is making “Games” sequel “Catching
Fire” available to buyers.

Medusa Films’ Faruk Alatan says he’s already seeing some interesting projects at
Cannes with budgets between $50 million-$60 million.

Los Angeles-based distributors rep Mirjam Wertheim says buyers have become much
more disciplined, pointing to a buoyant AFM in November. “They don’t buy just
because they like the sales agent anymore,” she says. “They know what works for
them in their territory, they know what their niche is.”

Still, there is concern that with the high demand for the next big thing, some
producers bringing such projects to market will arrive on the Croisette with
underdeveloped and underfinanced material.

“You try to identify these projects beforehand and not spend valuable time at
markets discussing them,” Philipsen says.

Nevertheless, Kamasa sees a more ambitious market, willing to pay for the certainty
bigger movies bring. “Everybody is going to be buoyed by the fact that we can do
mainstream, so we can be aggressive in buying bigger movies,” he says. At the same
time, he cautions that just because “Games” figures to give Lionsgate a minimum
three-pic hit franchise, it doesn’t mean the distrib itself will be shopping only for
possible tentpoles.

“We’ll still be a cautious, prudent buyer,” he says. “There’s no doubt that it’s a great
comfort economically to know that we’re going to generate a lot of profit on this
franchise, but we have to try and balance our slate with movies that complement
that.”

By DIANA LODDERHOSE, ADAM DAWTREY – Variety – Sat., May. 5.

Dialogue with Richard D. Zanuck

Venerable producer discusses the biz, Tim Burton and how to pitch

Although Richard D. Zanuck has spent more than five decades in the movie business,
the Oscar-winning producer is only interested in looking ahead — specifically toward
the May 11 release of his sixth film with Tim Burton, “Dark Shadows.”

“The rules may have changed, but if we want to stay in the business, we have to
consider these the good old days,” he says. Zanuck recently sat down in his Beverly
Hills home with Christy Grosz to discuss the film that surprised him the most, the
unpredictability of box office and the resilience that being a producer requires.

CG: Is there a secret to producing you learned early on that would benefit young
producers?

RZ: You have to be able to take rejection. You have to really be able to look in the
mirror and ask yourself, “How many doors have to be slammed in my face?” Because
if you’re not up to that, you’ll get eaten up.

With “Driving Miss Daisy,” we were turned down by every studio, sometimes two or
three times. We would plead the case, but when you start talking about an old lady
and a black chauffeur, you can just see the executive’s eyes roll in the back of his
head. That took four years. “Cocoon” was about eight years. And the picture that we
ended up calling “Deep Impact” was a story that David Brown and I had been
working on for 18 years. We hadn’t been working on it all that time. We just put it
away. Then suddenly we thought maybe we should go back and present that idea.
The secret is, don’t give up. If it’s a great idea, it somehow will break through.

CG: When you’re pitching ideas, is that stubborn persistence also a factor?

RZ: If I’m pitching, I’m not running for the door: I’m staying in my seat; let them
run for the door. When I have a piece of material, much like casting a picture, I try to
match the studio head (with) the property. I think, “This will touch so and so. This
will excite somebody over there.” I’m trying to narrow down the chances of being
eliminated.

CG: Do you think there are misconceptions about what a producer does?

RZ: I think there’s been a devaluation of the concept. Maybe too many people have
used the term “producer” when they weren’t qualified. That’s what the Producers
Guild has been fighting for years. I was the chairman of the producers’ branch of the
Academy for about 10 years, and we were constantly trying to find ways to prevent
this proliferation of credits. A producer should contribute from the very beginning
until the very end, in all aspects. I’m there at the set every day, on every shot. Not
that the director, particularly Tim (Burton), needs me, but just in case. There are
producers who don’t even watch the dailies, who have some contact with the project
and get their name slapped on there. That’s what we’ve been trying to get rid of.

CG: How the role of the producer changed over the years?

RZ: I grew up in that era of moguls. Each studio at that time had a staff of producers
who worked exclusively for them. They all reported to the studio head, but they were
really in charge of the movie from beginning to end. Directors in those days were not
nearly as powerful — they came in, directed, and sometimes would go right to

another picture, not even go through the editing process. It was up to the editorial
department and the producer. It wasn’t all coordinated through the eyes of a
director.

CG: Is there any way you can predict something like “Alice in Wonderland” making a
billion dollars?

RZ: If anybody could predict those things, they wouldn’t be working. They’d be
enjoying life by the pool. “Alice” had wonderful ingredients, but a billion dollars is a
big number to hit. As it was growing and we were releasing in more territories and
we were getting these unbelievable numbers, we’d ask ourselves, “Why?” It’s one of
those things you don’t understand. But it was a story that had been around for 160
years. It was so well known, but you still can’t really figure it.

CG: Are there movies that have surprised you?

RZ: When I was head of (Fox), it was “Valley of the Dolls.” I used to preview in San
Francisco a lot. We’d take a small jet out of the Santa Monica Airport and fly up
there, have dinner at Ernie’s, and then preview and then fly back. We thought we had
made a good picture, corny but something that audiences would really enjoy. And the
(reaction) cards were unbelievably bad. It was just terrifying. On the way back, I was
afraid the director, Mark Robson, was going to jump out of the plane, he was so
beside himself. But we released it a few weeks later, and it became a big, big hit.

Mostly, it doesn’t work that way. When a preview’s bad, it’s going to play bad. I still
get an awful feeling before a preview, nervousness and anxiety. That’s just how I am.
You spend a year working on something, and you’re using somebody else’s money,
and you want it to be successful.

CG: “Dark Shadows” puts you together with Tim Burton for the sixth film in a row.
What about that collaboration works so well?

RZ: This would be a dream come true for any producer. I’ve worked with so many
top directors — William Wyler and George Cukor and Franklin Schaffner and
Vincente Minnelli — and each one is brilliant in their own right. But Tim is the only
real artist, literally an artist, of the group. His creative genius is to combine the
physical image with some emotional values, and people don’t give him enough credit.
Working with Tim, it’s like I was in the early days with (Steven) Spielberg. I try to
free them up as much as I can. I want that mind to be uncluttered, so it can work on
the picture.

Studios think a director just walks on set and things happen, but (directors) have to
do endless weeks, months of homework if they’re any good. Most agents and studios
know that they have to go through me if they want something answered. I’ll only
bring the important things to Tim.

Between set-ups, Tim will pick out a spot about 50 feet long and pace. I’ve never seen
him sit down. One time we put one of those pedometers (on him) at the beginning of
the picture, and it was amazing how many miles (it registered) — he could have
walked around the world. (Sometimes) I’ll walk and pace along with him. I’ll say, “I
know you’re doing your laundry list, but we have to have an answer on this or that.” I
think it’s part of his way of thinking, but also keeping people at bay.

But it’s an amazing collaboration for me at this point of my life. Not that I wouldn’t
have gone on (producing) without meeting Tim, but it’s made it so much more
fascinating. It’s really been a wonderful part to a long, long career.

Richard D. Zanuck: At a glance

Made producing debut in 1959 with Richard Fleischer’s “Compulsion,” which
screened in competition at Cannes. The pic took acting prizes at the fest for Orson
Welles, Dean Stockwell and Bradford Dillman.

Named prexy of Twentieth Century Fox in 1962 at age 28. Formed the
Zanuck/Brown Co. in 1971, which, with partner David Brown, produced such hits as
“Jaws,” “The Sting” and “Cocoon.”

In 1991, Zanuck and Brown were honored with the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial
Award by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Zanuck’s father, Darryl
F. Zanuck, had been given the Thalberg honor in 1944.

Nominated for Oscar’s best picture:

“Jaws ,” 1975
“The Verdict,” 1982
“Driving Miss Daisy,” 1989 (winner)

Number of films produced with director Tim Burton: 6

“Dark Shadows,” 2012
“Alice in Wonderland,” 2010
“Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street,” 2007
“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” 2005
“Big Fish,” 2003
“Planet of the Apes,” 2001

By CHRISTY GROSZ – VARIETY – Sat., May. 5, 2012

China plans $1.27 billion production hub

BEIJING — Chinese entrepreneur Bruno Wu’s Harvest Seven Stars Entertainment is
linking up with Tianjin city government to build Chinawood, a $1.27 billion film and
media hub over a whopping 8.6 million square feet.

The base is aimed at U.S. and other foreign productions and will provide a hub for
co-productions, which are exempt from Chinese import quotas. Some 35% of the
investment is earmarked for film financing, the group said in a statement.

The initial build, comprising 377,000 square feet of offices, is nearing completion
and will open in October.

Wu has been busily building bridges with Hollywood in recent months, having linked
up with Jake Eberts and Justin Lin on projects already this year, and launched $800
million private equity fund, Harvest Seven Stars Media Fund, in February.

Among Chinawood’s functions will be a co-production film financing platform, a co-
production service center with post facilities, a facility for 3D conversion and a
distribution and marketing center.

Wu said that the East Asian film market was on track to be worth $10 billion by 2015,
and China would make up half of that market, rapidly catching up with North
America.

“It is crucial, as well as inevitable, that we offer the products and services to facilitate
substantial cooperation between the two territories. This project is a significant step
towards closing that gap by providing expertise and facilities in all areas of financing,
legal, co-production, distribution, marketing, sales and infrastructure,” he said.

The group said discussions were underway with a number of other companies from
around the globe.

Tianjin is a coastal city, around 30 minutes from Beijing by high-speed train. It has
been growing in recent years by aggressively attracting high-tech industries to set up
there.

By CLIFFORD COONAN – Variety – Sun., Apr. 29, 2012

Seeking indigenous ghost stories

The creators of the film, SAMSON & DELILAH are offering the opportunity for
people to be a part of their exciting new project. They’re on the look out for
Indigenous people who have had first-hand encounters with ghosts!

Have you seen a ghost? Know someone who has? Had a weird experience that you
just can’t explain? Yes? Then they want to hear from you!

Director, Warwick Thornton and producer, Kath Shelper are in pre-production for a
new project based around Indigenous ghost stories and encounters with the after-
life. Stories that are poignant and relevant to Indigenous issues is what they’re after
– and the blacker the better!

You won’t have to appear on screen, but they would love to hear about your first-
hand experiences.

If you have a ghost story, or know someone who does, please visit the Scarlett
Pictures website at http://scarlettpictures.com.au/ for more information, or contact:

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ozghosts
Phone:
(02) 9319 6133
Email: ghosts@scarlettpictures.com.au
Post: PO Box 322, Potts Point, NSW, 1335

Thornton & Shelper’s feature film debut, SAMSON & DELILAH stunned the film
world by taking out the coveted Camera d’Or (Golden Camera) at the Cannes
International Film Festival and went on to win multiple awards, including Best
Picture at the AFI Awards.

Media release from Scarlett Pictures – Monday 30 April 2012

Convergence Review strongly supports Australian content

The final report of the Convergence Review strongly supports the social and cultural
value of Australian content and makes it very clear that, without intervention, it will
drop to unacceptable levels. It is proposed that the current rules applying to free-to-
air and subscription television be repealed but that a new technology-neutral regime
be uniformly applied to all players, including the networks’ digital multichannels,
internet-delivered channels with television-like content and on-demand services.

To be one of the “content service enterprises” subject to the new regime, a service
must be screening or offering professional television-like drama, documentary

and/or children’s programs, and meet not-yet-determined minimum revenue and
audience thresholds. This means that platforms that predominantly run user-
generated material and social media sites escape the recommendations. If a service
falls into this category it will be required to invest a percentage of its revenue into
Australian drama, documentary and children’s programs, or into a “converged
content production fund” with a very broad remit.

Having a transitional period is recommended on the Australian content front, during
which subquotas on the main commercial free-to-air are increased by 50 per cent —
to make up for how little local content is on the multichannels – and the 10 percent
minimum expenditure requirement on eligible drama subscription channels is
extended to children’s and documentary programming.

The review committee states that there is a continuing case for government support
for Australian production – again, it is drama, documentary and children’s
programming that needs intervention – and it has stuck by its guns in
recommending that the value of the producer offset should go up from 20 to 40 per
cent for “premium” television content, putting it on the same footing as features.

More Here:

Home

By Sandy George – INSIDEFILM – [Mon 30/04/2012]

The rise of the zomcom: how zombie films have taken over the world

It seems every country wants a piece of zombie-film action and as new Cuban
zombie satire Juan of the Dead proves, this well-worn genre is showing no signs of
dying out.

Ghoulish satire … Alejandro Brugués’s zomcom Juan of the Dead is Cuba’s latest
offering to the zombie genre.

Zombie films are becoming like burrito chains, or Olympic games: every nation’s got
to have one. Since the neo-zombie renaissance begun in earnest by Danny Boyle’s 28
Days Later (2002), we’ve had American zombies (thereturn of George A Romero;
the Dawn of the Dead remake; The Walking Dead), London-commuter zombies
(Shaun of the Dead), Spanish zombies (REC), Thai zombies (SARS Wars), Serbian
zombies (Zone of the Dead) and Taiwanese zombies (the forthcoming Zombie 108).

This week sees the arrival in UK cinemas of the Cuban incarnation, in Alejandro
Brugués’s zomcom Juan of the Dead.

They pop up everywhere; they show no respect for international border
demarcations. Now that globalisation has started to emit a sickly smell, what better
ambassadors than a shambling cadaver with a manky eye cavity? The postwar
zombie film always liked to travel, with its penchant for sordid exoticist expeditions
like Zombie Flesh Eaters and Zombi Holocaust; and its apocalyptic urges meant that
destined to go global. Now that we’re officially, as the Žižek says, living in the end
times, the genre has really come into its own.

A couple of years back we were recoiling from zombie banks, and with people talking
about “gangrenous” states like Greece, it seems the bits are still dropping off the
global economy.

Zombies are the 99%, the proletariat of the undead – and so the perfect vehicle for
detailing fears about mass civic breakdown. There was always grotesque humour in

even the most serious zombie films, and the renaissance of the last decade has made
the comedy dominant. In the true tradition of the decadent frisson, we’re loving the
grisly spectacle of our decline. John Wyndham’s “cosy catastrophe” – the genre of
literature in which the breakdown of civilisation is weirdly good to the protagonists –
has been superseded by the carnival catastrophe, à la Zombieland.

Juan of the Dead – hailing a couple of hundred miles west from the zombie’sHaitian
birthplace – is the most laidback entry yet; its great contribution to the form is the
first zombie tango, between Alexis Díaz de Villegas’s Havana slacker and a ex-drag
queen ghoul he is handcuffed to. The film delights in expending its satiric munitions
on behalf of the Cuban home crowd. The government tries to claim the undead
hordes are American-backed dissidents, and Juan and buddy wriggle out of the
limiting strictures of armageddon with a little shifty private enterprise, Ghostbusters-
style: “Juan of the Dead, we kill your loved ones, how may I help you?”

Well done to Brugués, because it’s quite a subversive film. And, as the first recent
Cuban production I can remember to receive this level of international attention, it
has a significance that goes well beyond the self-inflicted Shaun of the Dead
comparisons: it’s another sign of Cuba – as Raúl Castro continues to liberalise –
slowly rejoining the global market economy. Given the undead boom, a zombie
calling card’s not a bad one if you want to demonstrate a sense of humour and
commercial film-making nous.

I’d be intrigued to know what either Castro thinks of Juan. Forty years ago, you
imagine many Cubans would have shared Romero’s politics, and resisted tooth and
nail being subsumed into the ranks of the mindless capitalist walking dead.

Now they’re climbing into the same boat as the rest of us, the zomcom suddenly
makes sense. The first wave of zombie pictures viewed dismemberment/ engulfment
as an occasion of pure disbelieving horror; now we know that consumer culture
dismembers your bank balance and engulfs your psyche, and we shrug. What can you
do – especially if get the taste for consuming? Being chained to Simon Pegg’s couch,
like a decomposing Nick Frost in Shaun of the Dead, and still getting to play
PlayStation is starting to look like a sign of the times.

We’re all the undead now – and the list of those with a viable resistance plan is
dwindling. No wonder every country is lining up for a piece of zombie-film action.
But, as Kim Newman pointed out in his Guardian webchat last week, the fetish is
starting to feel worn out. Perhaps that’s because there seems to be no other ending
for zombie films than submission to the throng, whether it’s done in Shaun and
Juan’s carnival spirit or in the rage-filled blitz of Danny Boyle’s revenants.

If you take zombie films as social allegories, then the lack of narrative imagination
(hard when your brains have been scooped out) is a worrying thing. I wouldn’t expect
a revolution any time soon: if there’s one thing that doesn’t phase this genre, it’s
overuse.

Phil Hoad – Tuesday 1 May 2012  BSTguardian.co.uk

Convergence Review: At a glance

The Convergence Review is 177 pages and covers a wide range of issues facing the media.

Here is a short summary of some of the report’s main recommendations:

-Recommendation for establishment of two separate regulatory bodies: one a statutory body and the other self regulated.

-The Statutory Regulator is to replace the Australian Communications and Media Authority; incorporate Classification Board and make rules on Australian content.

-The industry led body will cover TV, radio, online and print and will review news and commentary standards.  It will replace the existing Australian Press Council.

– ABC and SBS are not required to participate in the industry-led  body but must develop their own codes that take into account the new body’s standards

–  ABC and SBS Charters to be updated with a requirement that 55 per cent quota apply to Australian content on the  ABC and half that for SBS

– Rejects Finkelstein report recommendation for outlets which distributes more than 3000 copies of print per issue or a news site with a minimum of 15 000 hits per year on the grounds that it is “far too low” and very “resource-intensive”

– The licensing of broadcasting services to cease Commercial free-to-air broadcasters licence fees, calculated as a percentage of revenues, would be abolished in favour of a market-based approach to pricing broadcasting spectrum.

– Regulation of media ownership, media content standards and Australian and local content to continue

– Major media outlets to be classified ‘content service enterprises’ (CSE) and regulated based on their size and scope, rather than how they deliver their content

– A CSE is defined by: the professional content they deliver; large number of Australian users of that content; high level of revenue

– All CSEs contribute to a “uniform content scheme” for the production of Australian content.

– Review recommends threshold levels for CSE initially should be around $50 million a year of Australian-sourced content service revenue and audience/users of 500 000 per month, thus potentially excluding Google, Apple and Telstra

– Major international online and media enterprises, such as potentially YouTube, would be required to contribute to producing local content

– A ‘minimum number of owners’ rule and a ‘public interest test ‘ replace the current ‘75 per cent audience reach’ rule, the ‘2 out of 3’ rule, the ‘two-to-a-market’ rule and the ‘one-to-a-market’ rules of media ownership.

– Convergence Review findings to be implemented three stages.

 From: The Australian   April 30, 2012

 

Prelude to a hit

Forget watching trailers before a feature film – previews are now the main event.

The online video touted an epic unveiling from one of Hollywood’s most revered
filmmakers: ”In three days, Ridley Scott returns to the genre he redefined.”

For the next two days, videos ratcheted up the excitement for the new project.
Finally, it arrived: not the movie, not even the full-length trailer, but the one-minute
”teaser” for Scott’s upcoming film Prometheus.

”We teased the teaser,” says Oren Aviv, the chief marketing officer for 20th Century
Fox. ”And it was viewed 29.7 million times.”

This is the new world of trailers, in which the internet and fan culture have turned
one- to three-minute ads, once seen only in cinemas, into events promoted and
analysed as avidly as the films themselves.

Trailers are now watched more online than in theatres. Audiences streamed more
than 5.3 billion trailers worldwide last year and are on track to significantly outpace
that figure this year.

”Our work used to be looked at as pieces of advertising that quickly comes and goes,
but now it’s a key piece of content that people are going to analyse and judge,” says
Michael McIntyre, the president of a Los Angeles entertainment marketing firm
mOcean, which has made trailers for films including The Avengers, Project
X and The Grey.

Aiming to take advantage of the mania surrounding trailers, studios now market the
marketing. Movies that followed the Prometheus lead, with a ”trailer for the trailer”,
have included The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 and Total Recall, and
Sony Pictures held screenings in 13 cities around the world in February to debut a
trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man.

The likes of Yahoo and iTunes battle to be the ”exclusive” first home for a trailer
online, often trading high-profile placement on a home page in exchange for the
favour. In other cases, trailers are shared with devoted fans via Twitter or Facebook.
Sometimes studios pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to companies promising to
help turn videos viral.

”You used to put the trailer in theatres and hope for the best but now we can use
digital marketing tools to make it a destination,” says Marc Weinstock, the
worldwide marketing president for Sony.

First used nearly 100 years ago and shown after the main feature, trailers long
consisted of scenes from a film interspersed with text or narration. Eventually they
evolved to feature super-fast cuts, flashy graphics and original soundtracks.

Studios spend between $US100,000 ($97,000) and $US200,000 to make each one,
though costs can hit $US1 million if the trailer includes an expensive song.

To keep fans engaged and take advantage of the web’s endless inventory, studios now
put practically every available piece of content – be it trailer, commercial, clip or
behind-the-scenes feature – online.

”We get so many more assets and they’re rolled out earlier and earlier,” says Sybil
Goldman, the vice-president of entertainment for Yahoo.

The increasing number of trailers online means increased scrutiny for the people
who make them. Bloggers and tweeters dissect every frame of a trailer for mysterious
projects, such as The Hunger Games or Prometheus, and can create instantaneous
bad buzz for films whose trailers they don’t like, as happened to the flops John
Carter and Green Lantern.

”People have access to so much marketing content in so many ways now that you
have a higher bar for what is and isn’t a good trailer,” Aviv says.

There’s also growing scrutiny of the campaigns themselves. Avid fans are aware of
the huge amounts of content being thrown at them and are becoming increasingly
cynical.

”The general consensus among people I know is that they are milking it too much
with a trailer for a trailer,” says Nick Bosworth, the editor of the trailers section on
the movie fan site JoBlo.com.

Critics also complain that trailers can give away the whole film. But testing shows
that moviegoers are less likely to buy a ticket when they don’t know what to expect.
Studios, in other words, are sticking with what works. As the hype and attention
around trailer debuts keep growing, they increasingly resemble another high-stakes
moment for the movie industry.

”In some cases,” says Mojo co-owner Michael Kahane, ”the trailer launch has become
just as big an event as the movie opening weekend.”

Ben Fritz – Los Angeles Times – April 28, 2012

Have blockbuster movies lost the plot?

As Avengers Assemble, Prometheus and The Dark Knight prepare to slug it out in
cinemas, Robbie Collin asks how Hollywood snatched defeat from the victory of
Jaws.

There are two different accounts of the origin of the word blockbuster and, as tends
to be the way with these things, the bogus one is the most appealing.The version
most often given by those who work in the film industry – the wrong one you wish
was right – claims the word has its origins in jazz-age Hollywood, where it was used
to describe films and plays that were so popular they enticed customers away from all
of the rival theatres and cinemas in the surrounding area. At the expense of one
soaraway hit, so the story runs, an entire block would go bust.

It’s a romantic image – just think of that brilliant scene in The Artist, when the
silent-movie star George Valentin sees the crowd for a talkie stretching all the way
around the block and only then realises that the age of sound has arrived – but
regrettably, it’s also an entirely fictional one. The word actually made its way into
Hollywood parlance from the munitions industry, where in Forties Britain, the term
“blockbuster” was coined to refer to the RAF bombs also known as “cookies”:
4,000lb, 8,000lb and 12,000lb monsters that were big enough to flatten an entire
Nazi neighbourhood in one go. It was seized upon by the showbiz journal Variety,
among others, and was used as a slang superlative for describing a play or film that
was enormously successful, or failing that, just enormous.

The pyrotechnic origins of the word were spookily prescient: cast an eye over
Hollywood’s offerings for the impending summer season and it becomes clear that

blockbusters are now films in which we watch things being destroyed by the noisiest,
costliest means imaginable. In a list of this summer’s most successful films, it is likely
that Avengers Assemble, Prometheus and The Dark Knight Rises will be placed very
highly, and the trailers promise extensive scenes of buildings and people being
elaborately rent asunder.

There is no reason to think the inevitable box-office success of any of these films will
be undeserved: Joss Whedon, Ridley Scott and Christopher Nolan, their respective
directors, are three rare talents able to marry intelligent storytelling with grand-scale
mayhem. But zoom out a little and the contemporary blockbuster landscape starts to
look increasingly odd. Two of the most successful multiplex franchises of the past 10
years are Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean. Although they share common
ground with older blockbusters such as the Indiana Jones films and Top Gun – in
their blending of history and fantasy and sensualisation of warfare, for a start – in
terms of quality, there is no comparison. But what the Pirates and Transformers
films lack in style, suspense, pathos, structure, characterisation, tragedy, comedy,
artistry, cineliteracy and coherence, they make up for in the size of their budget. It is
hard not to conclude that nowadays blockbuster status is bought, not earned.

With emerging audiences in Russia, India, the United Arab Emirates and China keen
to spend big on spectacle, it often proves to be a shrewd investment. Disney’s risible
science-fiction romp John Carter was branded a flop by the trade press on release
and broadly ignored by Western audiences, but has quietly made back its vast £160
million budget, and more, in places like Russia, Brazil and south-east Asia. The most
recent Pirates of the Caribbean film, which was almost as bad, took three quarters of
its £630 million gross overseas. When James Cameron’s Titanic was re-released for
the Easter bank holiday weekend, Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corporation,
which owns Titanic studio Twentieth Century Fox, triumphantly announced on
Twitter that the film took almost twice as much on its first night in China as it did in
America. “New markets fast expanding for US films,” he tweeted, his ability to use
the present continuous tense temporarily stymied by the thought of all that money.

In fact, the international blockbuster market is in such rude health that previously
recession-cowed studios are upping the annihilation levels in what might otherwise
be run-of-the-mill action films in the hope of cashing in. Battleship, a dim-witted
alien-invasion romp released in Britain last week, found itself “upgraded” to
blockbuster status by Universal Pictures with a reported £22 million budget hike
midway through production, and has been rolled out internationally a month before
its American release – in other words, to the audiences most likely to appreciate it,
which, depressingly, include Britain.

Every cent of additional funding was earmarked for either improving the existing
special effects or adding more computer-generated destruction, not in the original
script. Accordingly, the film’s running time was stretched beyond two hours and the
volume of the explosions increased. “It was one of the craziest meetings I’ve ever
had,” the director, Peter Berg, has recalled. “They said, ‘We want to go bigger.’” Over

its debut weekend, Battleship was the most popular film in 20 countries, including
the UK and Germany, and set new box office records for Universal in South Korea,
Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. The film took £35 million in three days, notably,
without the help of either Russia or China (it opened in both countries yesterday). In
the current market, bigger is always better.

It wasn’t always thus. Arguably the first modern blockbuster was Steven Spielberg’s
1975 film Jaws: compared with this summer’s offerings in terms of both budget and
on-screen carnage, a small fish indeed. But the way Spielberg’s shark tale
transcended its creature-feature roots to become an international pop-culture
phenomenon set out the template by which almost all future blockbusters would be
marketed.

Previously, films had been launched with a glossy Hollywood premiere, followed by
the first tranche of reviews and then a gradual spreading of prints across the US and,
eventually, the UK. Jaws opened simultaneously on 464 screens, many in seaside
towns not unlike the one depicted in the movie. It was advertised in prime-time slots
on all three American television channels for three days beforehand. Universal’s
advertising campaign included “public service shark facts” posters as well as more
conventional bills. Discussion of the movie filtered beyond entertainment journalism
and into the hard news agenda. Like the great white itself, there was no escaping it.

This saturation approach to marketing was designed to weaken the effects of bad
reviews and negative word of mouth (not that Jaws had much to worry about on
either front) and also to turn the film’s release into an international – here’s that
word again – “event”. It worked. Jaws took more than £300 million worldwide and
single-handedly doubled the share price of Universal’s parent company, MCA.

The decade that followed yielded Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, ET: The Extra
Terrestrial, Ghostbusters and Back to the Future; an unprecedented purple patch in
blockbuster history. These films – thrilling adventure sagas with a fantastical bent
and a broad, almost universal appeal – collectively make up what I would describe
as, without a flicker of irony, the classical era of blockbuster film-making.

The philosopher Hegel believed ancient Greek sculpture represented the apex of fine
art because the sculptors’ creative spirit was embodied by the very substance of those
sculptures: simply put, marble was the ideal medium through which to communicate
the gods’ unearthly beauty. Similarly in the late Seventies and early Eighties, the
emergent special effects industry allowed the likes of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas,
Ivan Reitman and Robert Zemeckis to fully articulate their ideas on screen for the
first time, and the blockbusters’ form and content existed in a kind of perfect
Hegelian balance.

Quite what Hegel would make of the likes of Battleship and the pornographically
cynical Transformers movies is another matter. Since the Eighties, setting aside very
occasional special cases such as Christopher Nolan’s Inception, the Wachowski

brothers’ The Matrix and James Cameron’s Avatar, special-effects technology has
hopelessly outpaced and outclassed film-makers’ ideas, and that crucial equilibrium
has been lost.

Yet the lack of worthwhile ideas does not seem to have demoralised cinemagoers,
who continue to turn out in their hordes. Michael Bay has said, with perhaps a trace
of sarcasm, “I make movies for teenage boys – oh dear, what a crime,” but his three
Transformers films have made in excess of £1.6 billion for Paramount, Hasbro,
various cinema chains, and Bay himself. If Bay’s films, the seemingly endless run of
superhero flicks, Battleship et al really are aimed squarely at teenage boys, why are
people who are neither teenage nor boyish going to see them?

For the answer, we need only look to Jaws – or rather to its marketing model, which
is now being pushed to increasingly solipsistic extremes. Trailers are now trailed with
teaser trailers – and in the case of Prometheus, teasers for teaser trailers. Behind-
the-scenes shoots are released before we get the chance to actually see the scenes
behind which they’ve been shot. Positive buzz from preview screenings laps the
planet in seconds thanks to Twitter, while the grumbles remain embargoed. When we
go to the cinema to watch a blockbuster, it doesn’t mark the commencement of our
experience of the film, but the culmination.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Inspired by the ideals of the slow-food movement, I’d
like to see a return from today’s junk cinema to slow blockbusters: handcrafted,
artisanally produced summer entertainments made by directors who actually give a
fig about what they are pumping out. Encouragingly, there are stirrings that suggest
such a move may already be in the offing, thanks to another emerging market:
teenage girls. Gary Ross’s The Hunger Games, a terrifically intelligent science-fiction
film based on the book by Suzanne Collins, is aimed foremost at that demographic.
And Tarsem Singh’s Mirror Mirror, the first of the 14 fairy-tale adaptations on
Hollywood’s release slate, had all the wit and dash of the old blockbusters and none
of the barefaced stupidity of the new.

Naturally, it’s still about the money: last weekend, The Hunger Games broke the
£300 million barrier and is now on track to gross more in the US than any of the
Twilight or Harry Potter films. But with any luck, this influential young audience
could give us more blockbusters worth queuing around the block for. In a battle
between the teenage girls and the Russians, I know whose side I’m on.

CLASH OF THE TITANS: Your guide to this summer’s biggest films

Avengers Assemble – Comic book legends Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and the
Incredible Hulk, along with a host of supporting players from their respective solo
movies, join forces to save Earth from an other-worldly menace in this winningly
glossy superhero spectacular. Pop culture maven Joss Whedon directs.

Release date: 26 April

Prometheus – Ridley Scott returns to the Alien universe with a sprawling space
exploration epic in which a crew of scientists travels to a distant planet in the hope of
finding mankind’s origins. Instead, they find something considerably nastier. The
red-hot cast includes Noomi Rapace and Michael Fassbender.

Release date: June 1 – Snow White and the Huntsman

In her first blockbuster role outside of the wildly successful Twilight saga, Kristen
Stewart stars as a sword-wielding Snow White in this expensive-looking, Tolkien-
inflected spin on the evergreen fairy tale. Ian McShane, Ray Winstone and Bob
Hoskins number among the dwarfs.

Release date: June 1 – The Amazing Spider-Man

Columbia Pictures takes Marvel’s web-slinger back to his roots, again, in this moody
reboot of the superhero franchise starring Surrey-raised 28-year-old Andrew
Garfield alongside Emma Stone and Martin Sheen. Not only is director Marc Webb
ideally named for the project, his previous film, (500) Days of Summer, suggests he
can handle the swirling twentysomething angst.

Release date: July 4

The Dark Knight Rises – The third and final instalment in British director
Christopher Nolan’s broodingly solemn Batman trilogy pits Christian Bale’s Caped
Crusader against the drawling terrorist kingpin Bane, played by Tom Hardy, and
Anne Hathaway’s light-fingered Catwoman. Breathtaking set pieces and a relevant
social subtext are both promised.

Release date: July 20

By Robbie Collin, Film Critic – 27 Apr 2012 – UK Telegraph