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

Nomura Equity Research analyst Michael Nathanson goes deep on changes in new report on film economics

Shrinking release slates, a focus on tentpoles and the emergence of a ‘new normal’ in the homevid market has allowed the largest media congloms to boost the financial performance of their movie divisions. Nomura Equity Research analyst Michael Nathanson goes deep on the changes in a new report on film economics.

Even with all the B.O. statistics that are churned out on a daily basis, the profitability
picture for films at the major studio congloms is often opaque at best. Michael
Nathanson, a respected biz analyst for Nomura Equity Research, did forensic work
on studio financials over the past decade to better understand the composition of
revenue and earnings that the majors derive from film these days. It’s especially hard
to get a handle on the numbers for congloms such as Time Warner and News Corp., since each studio lumps TV content revenues together with pics for financial reporting.

Perhaps the biggest revelation from Nathanson’s probe was the degree to which the Big Six studios (Disney, Fox, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros.) have successfully reined in costs in order to improve profitability. Part of that has come from the steady trimming of annual release slates at the majors, and part has come from hawkish management of overhead costs (and the jettisoning of so many pricey producer housekeeping deals).

In the report “Studio Revenue Never a Sure Thing,” Nathanson focused on three
encouraging trends for the film biz that solidified in 2012:

The reversal in the long-term slide of annual admissions, which grew in 2012  for the first time since 2009.

The leveling off of declines in the homevideo marketplace.

The continued growth of international box office as a share of total B.O.

The focus on tentpoles and franchise releases also has improved the overall
performance of film divisions, even with the eye-popping production budgets and
marketing expenditures those pics require. In success, they drive more worldwide
B.O. and downstream revenue than a midsized movie. And tentpoles tend to travel
the globe better than midrange pics — a crucial calculation because of the rising
proportion of B.O. returns that come from outside the U.S.

But doesn’t Wall Street frown on the idea of studios routinely making $200 million-
plus commitments to a single movie, especially when it turns out to be a flop, a la
“John Carter” or “Battleship?” Not as much as you’d think, Nathanson argues,
because film in general remains a small part of the picture for the largest
conglomerates. The contribution by films to a Big Six conglom’s budget is highest at
Viacom, with 30.2% estimated for 2013, followed by Time Warner (25.3%), Disney
(12.7%) and News Corp. (11.7%).

“It’d be an issue if movies were a bigger factor as a percentage of a company’s
profitability, and if there (was) a greater occurrence of blowups on tentpoles,”
Nathanson told Variety.

“If it becomes more of a habitual thing, there may be greater scrutiny. For the time
being, having that opaqueness hasn’t really hurt anybody,” he said. “The stocks are
all at 52-week highs, and companies like Lionsgate have doubled (share price) in the
past year. If you see a greater occurrence of bombs, there will be more time spent on
understanding how the studios account for them.”

Looking deeper into film activity at Time Warner, News Corp., Disney and Viacom,
Nathanson found that film revenues dropped $3.7 billion from 2007 to 2012, while
operating costs fell $3.4 billion, including a $400 million drop between 2011 and
2012. For studios, film profit margins in 2012 were higher than 2007 levels (around
the 11% range) and costs are down 18% from 2007. That’s mostly because studios are
releasing far fewer films than they did six years ago.

Between 2006 and 2012, the aggregate number of annual releases by the Big Six
dropped by 69 titles, a decline of 34%, according to Nomura. The 2012 figure stood at
134 releases, down from 145 in 2011. The focus of studio resources on tentpoles and
franchise releases, of course, has come at the expense of other types of movies. As
Hollywood’s creative community can attest, the midrange budget studio pic is fast
becoming an endangered species.

The year-to-year volatility of film revenue for the majors remains a concern for
investors because of the huge fiscal difference between hits and misses at the plexes.
Nathanson estimated film revenue for the Big Six studios was down 4.5% in 2012, to
$21 billion, compared to 2011, which saw a solid 5.8% gain.

The rebound in admissions last year was a good sign to Wall Street that moviegoers
will turn at the plexes if Hollywood’s product is strong enough. From 2000 to 2012,
the compound annual growth rate of admissions eased 0.2%. Admissions hit 1.3 6
billion in 2012, up from 1.2 9 billion in 2011, which reversed a two-year trend of declines. But continued declines among moviegoers in the 12-24 age range is cause for concern.

The stabilizing of homevid activity is also a big plus for Hollywood in the eyes of
investors. After seven years of declines, homevid appears to have found a “new
normal.” Spending on home entertainment products was essentially flat (up 0.2%) at
around $18 billion in 2012 compared with the previous year — the first sign that new
VOD and SVOD streaming platforms are starting to offset the drop in physical disc
sales. Revenue from VOD platforms gained 10.8% in 2012 vs. the previous year to $2
billion, while streaming revenues spiked 45.8% to $2.3 billion.

Nathanson argues that the shuttering of 750-plus Blockbuster stores by Dish
Network, and Netflix’s “forced obsolescence” of its physical disc subscription model
has pushed consumers to check out new alternatives. If revenue from streaming
options is subtracted from last year’s home entertainment spending tally, revenue
would have declined 4.2%.

On the international front, Nathanson’s number-crunching reinforces just how
reliant Hollywood studios have become on overseas B.O. to improve margins. After
calculating the B.O. splits with domestic exhibs, he estimates that domestic B.O.
revenue for Time Warner, News Corp., Viacom and Disney in 2012 has dropped $550
million since 2007, while the international haul has climbed $350 million over the
same period.

Still, even in a fast-changing marketplace for film, the significance of a pic’s domestic
B.O. perf can’t be overlooked. “Film studios still need to maintain a stable
relationship with U.S. theater owners, given this fi rst window sets the vast majority
of value for downstream windows,” Nathanson wrote.

2012 BOX OFFICE

Global: $34.7 billion
Domestic: $10.8 billion
Int’l: $23.9 billion
Domestic admissions: 1.36 billion
Avg. domestic ticket price: $7.96
Films released domestically: 677

Cynthia Littleton – VARIETY – 18.04.13