The $11 Billion Year
Page 1
DEDICATION
For David and Nora
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
INTRODUCTION
1. JANUARY: THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
Searching for Sugar Man, The Sessions, Beasts of the Southern Wild, Safety Not Guaranteed, Black Rock, Your Sister’s Sister, Arbitrage, Detropia, The Invisible War
2. MARCH: CHASING THE FRANCHISE
John Carter vs. The Hunger Games
3. SPRING: CINEMACON, SXSW, AND THE MOVE TO DIGITAL
4. MAY: THE CANNES INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Amour, Moonrise Kingdom
5. JULY: COMIC-CON AND THE FANBOYS
DC vs. Marvel
6. THE FALL FILM FESTIVALS
Argo, Silver Linings Playbook, Life of Pi, Lincoln
7. WOMEN, POLITICS, AND ZERO DARK THIRTY
8. THE HOLIDAY DRAMAS
Les Misérables, Django Unchained
9. TEN THINGS THAT CHANGED THE OSCAR RACE
PICTURE SECTION
AFTERWORD
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
BOX-OFFICE CHARTS
GLOSSARY
INDEX
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CREDITS
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
INTRODUCTION
It looks good on paper: at final count, the 2012 domestic movie box office delivered a record-breaking $11 billion ($10,954,921,197, according to one source,* up 8.4 percent from the previous year). If record foreign dollars were added to the total, this book would be The $35 Billion Year. But despite appearances, the movie business isn’t thriving. For one thing, much of that growth was from premium 3-D ticket sales, which are already in steady decline, a victim of overexuberance. Many consumers are watching their content on smaller screens, either in their homes or in their hands. And yet, against all odds, Hollywood studios and theater chains are still keeping the romance of moviegoing alive. But for how long? Netflix accuses theaters of “killing the movies.” Amazon Studios debuts new television series. Blockbuster closes all of its brick-and-mortar stores. Hollywood is like Harold Lloyd in Safety Last, hanging desperately to the hands of that old (silent) clock, which is moving inevitably toward future time.
Global audiences flocked to the top ten highest-grossing movies at the 2012 box office, all but two (Brave, Ted) based on some well-known intellectual property—or IP, as they say in the trade—such as Marvel’s The Avengers, DC’s The Dark Knight Rises, and the young adult franchise The Hunger Games.
But the seeds of the industry’s destruction were present in 2012. The major studios with billion-dollar annual production budgets plunked their money on wowing audiences with easy-sell prebranded event movies. Costs burgeoned and studios needed to score in foreign markets, especially China, which grew 36 percent in 2012 and outstripped Japan in box-office sales to become the world’s number two market. The studios and thriving independents, from Harvey Weinstein to Disney, were willing to curry favor with the mighty Chinese censors to gain access to that market, going so far as to reedit such films as Django Unchained and Iron Man 3.
With remarkable prescience, in June 2013, at a University of Southern California event with George Lucas, Steven Spielberg predicted an “implosion” in the industry: the failure at the box office of up to a half dozen megabudget movies, or “tentpoles,” “that are going to go crashing to the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.” Lucas concurred. Within six weeks Spielberg’s prediction came true. Five would-be blockbusters tanked during the summer of 2013, all too expensive to make and market to earn their money back, even with foreign dollars added in: White House Down, After Earth, The Lone Ranger, Turbo, and the biggest flop of the lot, R.I.P.D.
Spielberg and Lucas were basically calling attention to the end of the movie business in which they grew up, one that didn’t rely so heavily on tentpoles, that nurtured movies as varied as American Graffiti and Star Wars, E.T. and Schindler’s List. Supposedly at the top of the Hollywood pyramid, Spielberg was horrified two years earlier when he had to hustle to get the backing to make Lincoln as a motion picture; he considered turning to HBO. Steven Soderbergh took the latter route with his entertaining Emmy-winning Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, which starred Michael Douglas and Matt Damon in top form. That movie would have cost a studio $70 million to make and market as a theatrical feature, Soderbergh estimated. As an HBO film, it cost $23 million. Something is wrong when Soderbergh elects to retire from studio moviemaking and take his best ideas to television.
In its desperate quest for audiences eager to show up on opening weekends, the film industry seemed bent on chasing young males around the globe with simple-minded, visually dense, formula action fare, and doing so at the expense of driving many other groups who love movies to television and other alternative screens. This was how the major studios, under increasing pressure from their corporate parents, were coping with the multiple threats that were challenging their entrenched ways of doing business. At the same time, innovative funding, distribution, and marketing strategies were bubbling up from the independents, free from the restraints tethering the established studio behemoths. Now what?
As a film journalist and critic who has been watching this industry evolve over decades, I have always been fascinated by the ways in which the Hollywood system works. For many years I wrote hundreds of columns and features about the industry for various publications, including Film Comment, Premiere, the New York Times, the Washington Post, LA Weekly, Entertainment Weekly, the Hollywood Reporter, and Variety. Today, I continue to track the business full-time, only now it’s not for a print bimonthly, monthly, weekly, or daily; it’s online 24/7. My berth at my daily blog, Thompson on Hollywood (TOH!), which I founded in 2007, gives me a unique window from which to observe and report on moviemakers, marketers, and the different kinds of movies produced and released, from microbudget do-it-yourself (DIY) films to global blockbusters.
Though online reporting has a currency and excitement all its own, it doesn’t pause well for reflection and portraiture. So I figured that a book would give me room to share my experience as an insider reporting on an industry in the throes of radical change. Inspired by William Goldman’s classic The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway, about the plays and musicals presented during one theatrical season, I thought, what if I focused on one calendar year of the film business? What would such a chronicle tell us about the way the system was working—or not?
Each chapter could cover a different facet of the movie business: I would follow key films through their discovery and release—and when they’re very good, very lucky, or very well-marketed, I would follow their trajectory through the award season. I would look at which movies work and don’t work at the indies and the studios, from script development, financing, production, and marketing to getting a movie in front of eyeballs—and not necessarily into theaters. And so this book was born. And the year 2012 turned out to be a stunning year to track.
Along with radical structural movement and box-office disasters, it brought sublime moviemaking. Even with all the changes and worries and anxieties about the future, 2012 broke the box-office record, and the nine 2012 Best Picture Oscar contenders marked a high point in quality—while also scoring big at the box office. But those movies were all, in one way or another, exceptions to the rule. Like Lincoln, they were passion projects of filmmakers who had to struggle to get them made.
As it turned out, a lot else happened in 2012 to make it a truly transformative year. Lucas retired, and Spielberg, like many of his generation who find themselves too narrowly defined by the studios—see, for example, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Michael Mann, and Neil Jordan—headed for television with Falling Skies, Under
the Dome, and Extant. There are manifold reasons why the studios are willfully allowing their creative brain trust to nurture what critics are calling a Third Golden Age of Television, and why gifted talents from Lena Dunham (Girls) and Claire Danes (Homeland) to Soderbergh, Jane Campion (Top of the Lake), Robert Towne (Mad Men), and producer Cathy Konrad (Vegas) have detoured from pursuing film careers.
Look at the fortunes of three of the top producers in Hollywood. Jerry Bruckheimer, Brian Grazer, and Scott Rudin once commanded the richest production deals, the best projects, and the most resources at their respective studios. Even these successful producers have been cut back. New York class act Rudin, now based at Sony, is producing for Broadway (Book of Mormon, Fences) as well as Hollywood, making such films as David Fincher’s The Social Network, the Coens’ Inside Llewyn Davis, and Paul Greengrass’s Captain Phillips that are aimed at the fall Oscar corridor—the only way to make quality films of any scope these days.
Once Disney’s star producer, Jerry Bruckheimer luckily has a booming television career (The Amazing Race). For even though he scored big with the $3.7 billion Pirates of the Caribbean series, in September 2013 the studio did not renew his deal after a string of failures: Prince of Persia, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and most notably the $250 million Johnny Depp western The Lone Ranger, which cost Disney a $190 million write-off in 2013.
And Universal trimmed back Grazer and partner Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment deal, after such duds as Cinderella Man, succès d’estime Frost/Nixon, and dumb male comedy The Dilemma. Tellingly, Grazer and Howard had to raise money for movies like Formula 1 racing film Rush from global investors, just like everyone else.
Major stars who once commanded $20 million upfront guarantees are no longer carrying their weight, except for the few who still command overseas followings in established sequels: Tom Cruise, Bruce Willis, and Will Smith. These action stars are replaceable because they’re squandering their talent in green-screen high-concept action pictures packed with digital visual effects. Which is not helping them to win their first Oscar, either.
Look at onetime superstar Tom Hanks. He collected a royal payday for Imagine’s Da Vinci Code franchise, but his $20 million salaries are no more. He’s developing web series and starring on Broadway. He didn’t get paid much for Cloud Atlas, which Andy and Lana Wachowski (best known for The Matrix series) funded independently overseas and finished with their own money. Despite the presence of several other once-surefire stars, it flopped. Hanks marked a return in Paul Greengrass’s awards-quality drama Captain Phillips. Another onetime A-lister, Richard Gere, now stars in low-budget indie movies like Arbitrage for peanuts.
Hollywood is struggling to protect its profit margins while supporting an incredibly expensive infrastructure. Why are pricey movies like Hasbro’s Battleship made? When they hit, such tentpoles pay for the studios’ overhead. And the studios believe costly event movies and franchises are the only way to compete with the glut of content available as consumers gain near-instant access to films and TV shows via an eight-dollar monthly subscription to Netflix, as well as through mobile apps and extraordinary cable offerings. They would rather spend heavily on playing it safe than spend less on something innovative.
As music, books, television, journalism, and radio adapt to digital platforms, so must the movies.
Also in 2012, substantial paradigm shifts finally came to fruition: the rise of video on demand (VOD) began to compensate for diminishing revenues from sales of DVDs and other ancillary products, and a continuing shortened window of time between first theatrical release and video home entertainment. Theaters and studios struggled to find a new status quo as pressure increased to give audiences what they want, when they want.
The relatively unencumbered indies are able to push innovation while the studios know they have to stay ahead of competitors and not miss the new road to riches—or even survival. Nipping at the heels of the six major studios is the newly anointed seventh major Lionsgate-Summit, which is pushing full steam ahead and enjoyed a billion-dollar 2012, beating Twentieth Century Fox and Paramount in market share. Those two majors, along with Disney, Sony, Universal, and Warner Bros., all risk becoming dinosaurs. (It’s notable that throughout 2012 and 2013 management shifts rocked Disney, Universal, Fox, and Warners.)
2012 was the first year that 35-millimeter celluloid was no longer the primary exhibition medium projected in theaters. It was also the year that the industry completed the circle of digital production and exhibition as theater owners, dependent on their studio suppliers, struggled to keep their doors open. Meanwhile, television became more exciting, and many moviemakers headed where the creativity and money was. As women and ethnic minorities continued to be marginalized in an industry still hidebound by old ideas, conventions, and almost superstitious beliefs and taboos, the studios continued to chase one primary demographic—young men—with big-budget action entertainments. This is also the demographic with the most competing leisure options. Meanwhile, the audience segment most in the habit of going to the movies, adults, are being shunted to television.
WHAT THE PUBLIC KNOWS ABOUT the entertainment industry is the tip of the iceberg. It’s a business controlled by the savviest PR machine in the world. Everything is geared toward putting the best possible face on the players, the stars, and the movies. In this book, my aim is not to promote the industry, but to take you with me through one year in the movie business in order to reveal how the system works.
It was impossible to mention all of the 670-plus movies released in 2012, but I touch on many of them along the way. I talk to many sources—from studio execs, distributors, moguls, and producers to screenwriters, filmmakers, creative visionaries, and actors—who risk it all to rope us into their dreams and make a killing. They talk about scripts, casting, production, editing, marketing, distribution, release publicity, and reviews. All these things lead to the most important moment in any film’s life: opening weekend, when a movie lives or dies.
And it looked like 2012 was the year of the ultimate killing . . . on the surface at least. I start at January’s Sundance Film Festival, which functions as an independent showcase for developing talent, a marketplace for making deals, and an early bellwether for awards. I track several rising filmmakers lucky enough to land studio distributors, including Benh Zeitlin of Beasts of the Southern Wild, as well as documentaries and features headed toward a variety of alternative distribution options.
March reveals the studios’ mad rush to establish franchises, as two studios gambled hundreds of millions: on John Carter, which cost Disney $200 million in losses, and on The Hunger Games, which succeeded far beyond Lionsgate’s wildest dreams.
In April, I attend South by Southwest (SXSW) in Austin, Texas, where the worlds of Silicon Valley, Hollywood, and music collide with mutually beneficial results. I also visit the annual theatrical exhibitors convention, CinemaCon, in Las Vegas as the industry faces myriad threats and challenges, trying to hang onto audiences as production costs and premium ticket prices soar. As always, Hollywood is embracing new technology: the shift to digital, whether it’s 3-D, IMAX, or VOD. I report on the increasingly fraught partnership between the studios and the theater owners—who battle to hang onto the experience of moviegoing in theaters and their share of the shrinking box-office pie—and cover the industry’s move away from analog formats, examining how that affects the way audiences will consume content in the future.
May’s Cannes Film Festival introduces more key players in the awards race, from Harvey Weinstein to Sony’s Michael Barker and Tom Bernard, as well as a number of films heading toward Oscar contention, including Moonrise Kingdom and Amour.
July’s Comic-Con in San Diego is a massive showcase for the studios’ summer comic-book juggernauts, aimed mostly at fanboys. These movies include The Avengers and Man of Steel, from rival comics empires Marvel and DC, respectively.
Summer’s end brings Venice and Telluride and the start of the fall film festival cir
cuit, including Toronto, New York, and AFI Fest, which filters and launches the award season players, from Ben Affleck (Argo) and David O. Russell (Silver Linings Playbook) to Ang Lee (Life of Pi) and Steven Spielberg (Lincoln).
While looking at the making of December’s Zero Dark Thirty, Kathryn Bigelow’s brilliant follow-up to The Hurt Locker, I address the challenges for women in Hollywood. Bigelow proves that even a woman director taken seriously by the male-skewed studio establishment can be dive-bombed at Oscar time.
Late-breaking Christmas movies often have the Oscar advantage, and in 2012 they included Tom Hooper’s Les Misérables and Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained. In the final chapter, I track the key decisive moments in the race to the Oscars, and I cover the big night, from following Adele and Anne Hathaway down the red carpet to congratulating the winners at the Governor’s Ball.
This chronicle of 2012 is a slice of what happened during a watershed year for the Hollywood movie industry. It’s not the whole story, but it’s a mosaic of what went on, and why, and of where things are heading. It’s just what one workaholic cinephile was able to capture about one year. Welcome to my world. Enjoy.
CHAPTER 1
JANUARY: THE SUNDANCE FILM FESTIVAL
SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN, THE SESSIONS, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED, BLACK ROCK, YOUR SISTER’S SISTER, ARBITRAGE, DETROPIA, THE INVISIBLE WAR
It’s Saturday morning at the Sundance Film Festival, January 21, 2012, the third day of the ten-day festival. I’m having eggs and coffee with Indiewire editor-in-chief Dana Harris at the Yarrow Hotel when I get an e-mail from a mutual friend in New York telling me that Bingham Ray, fifty-seven, has suffered a massive stroke during the Art House Convergence conference in nearby Midway, Utah. We’re stunned. It’s as if the heart of the American independent film movement has broken.
I first started going to Park City back in 1987. Over the years I made a set of friends in the independent community, from fellow film writers to distributors and filmmakers, who tracked the key world film festivals throughout each year: Sundance in January, Berlin in February, SXSW in March, Cannes in May, Seattle and Los Angeles in June, Venice in August, Telluride over Labor Day weekend, Toronto in September, New York in October, AFI Fest and the American Film Market in November. One of my favorite festival buddies was Bingham Ray. When we started going to Sundance, we’d hang all day in the back of one of the tiny screens at Park City’s Holiday Cinema to watch obscure movies that had never been screened before in public. That was the joy: the discovery.