$300 MILLION MOVIES
“Adam
Fogelson, the chairman of Hollywood’s newest studio [STX Entertainment], listened to a pitch for a
film called ‘Unmanned’ with an encouraging smile.
“.
. . . In a sense, he embodies the movie business he hopes to dominate:
calculating, impulsive, hard-nosed, and hopeful.”
“ . . . .
The six major studios, besieged by entertainment options that don't require people to get off the couch, have bet that the future lies in films that are too huge to ignore. Although they make low-budget films for targeted audiences (teen girls, say, or horror fans), they focus most of their energies on movies that cost more than three hundred million dollars to make and market. Such films are predicated not on the chancy appeal of individual actors but on ‘LP’-intellectual property, in the form of characters and stories
that the audience already knows from books or comics or video games.
that the audience already knows from books or comics or video games.
“These blockbusters are intended to appeal to everyone, everywhere-but they leave many people cold. STX's founder and C.E.O., Bob Simonds, told me, ‘There’s a huge vacuum there. And that vacuum
is the place you can tell human stories - what I think of as movies.’ What had vanished were the kind of character-driven, John Hughes-level films that suck you in on a rainy Saturday morning. So
STX was betting on the enduring appeal of movie stars. But they had to be playing the kinds of role that had made them stars. Russell Crowe in ‘Robin Hood’? Yes. Russell Crowe in ‘The Water Diviner’? No. And the movies had to be sensibly priced, by current standards: between twenty and eighty million dollars.
STX's internal data showed that such star-showcase films, within that budget range, were profitable thirty per cent more often than the average Hollywood film. So the studio planned to make a lot of them. By 2017, STX expects to release between twelve and fifteen movies a year, as many as some of the major studios.”
is the place you can tell human stories - what I think of as movies.’ What had vanished were the kind of character-driven, John Hughes-level films that suck you in on a rainy Saturday morning. So
STX was betting on the enduring appeal of movie stars. But they had to be playing the kinds of role that had made them stars. Russell Crowe in ‘Robin Hood’? Yes. Russell Crowe in ‘The Water Diviner’? No. And the movies had to be sensibly priced, by current standards: between twenty and eighty million dollars.
STX's internal data showed that such star-showcase films, within that budget range, were profitable thirty per cent more often than the average Hollywood film. So the studio planned to make a lot of them. By 2017, STX expects to release between twelve and fifteen movies a year, as many as some of the major studios.”
Tad Friend, ‘The Mogul of the Middle, As the Movie Business
Founders, Adam Fogelson Tries to Reinvent the System,” New Yorker,
January 11, 2016, pp: 36-49 (38)+.
