Oscar Moguls: Brad Grey (Paramount) Q&A
Deadline is running an interesting series of interviews with the heads of production at major Hollywood Studios. The focus of the Q&A’s is on the current Oscars race, but I’ve drilled down into each conversation to highlight information relevant to screenwriters.
As I have said before, it’s important for writers to learn as much as possible about studio execs and producers — how their minds operate.
This interview is with Brad Grey, chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures, a studio which saw seven of the 13 movies it released in 2010 gross more than $100 million domestically. Their line-up of Oscar nominated movies in 2011:
20 Nominations: 10 True Grit, 7 The Fighter, 2 How To Train Your Dragon, 1 Iron Man
Interview excerpts:
DEADLINE: Let’s talk about True Grit first. There already was a classic movie and John Wayne won an Oscar for it from a 42-year-old novel. How do you say yes to a remake of that? And to a western?
GREY: Well, it’s my responsibility to decide what gets greenlit at our company. And for me it’s a very easy call when the economics are right to back Joel and Ethan in anything. There is very little that Joel and Ethan could come to me with that I wouldn’t support at the right price point because I am a huge admirer of theirs. And having grown up in the business representing talent and nurturing talent and surrounding myself with the best in talent, I consider them among that group. And so I just think we are fortunate to be in business with them. So now you get to True Grit, and they had a take on how to make the book something special and to really take those characters and turn it into what would be the most commercial work that they have done because it didn’t lend itself to great violence.
DEADLINE: Now on The Fighter, Paramount was developing it and then pulled out. Relativity comes in and cuts the budget by half. Why didn’t Paramount just cut the budget?
GREY: I think that is somewhat inaccurate. We supported Mark Wahlberg and tried to develop it for years with him. But it wasn’t coming together, and certainly wasn’t coming together at the price point that it was finally made at. And so we talked to Mark specifically about lowering the budget. But for any number of reasons, and I certainly can’t even tell you at this point why, it just never got there. But we didn’t want to derail Mark’s passion project, so we said ‘Try to figure this out.’ Relativity then stepped up at the price point that they were comfortable with. We made a deal that we’re very comfortable with. And then I really think to Mark’s credit he got it all done and then I couldn’t be more proud of our group at how they marketed and handled this film. Under Rob Moore’s guidance. I think our senior executive team at this point throughout the company is the gold standard. It’s taken some time, I’m going on six years here now, but I think we have the best there is in the business.
Key takeaway:
Price point: “There is very little that Joel and Ethan could come to me with that I wouldn’t support at the right price point… [re The Fighter] But it wasn’t coming together, and certainly wasn’t coming together at the price point that it was finally made at.”
We may think of movies as stories, entertainment, or an aesthetic experience. The bottom line for a studio executive is that a movie is a product which has to be sold. As a producer once told me, “The problem with the idea of movies as art is that they’re really about commerce.”
When we were developing Alaska at Castle Rock, one of the execs there broke it down this way: For every dollar they spend to produce, market and distribute a movie, they have to take in three dollars in revenue.
So when a studio exec like Brad Grey looks at a potential project, setting aside the quality of the story entirely, they have to ponder at least these two economic considerations:
* Will this movie be able to make three dollars to every dollar we spend?
* What is the highest price point we can go before the deal doesn’t make sense?
Perhaps no studio is currently as concerned with minimizing their financial risk than Paramount. Indeed in 2010, they announced a new in-house division — Insurge Pictures — which focuses on micro-budget movies ($100K). And why not? This a company that had one of the highest ROI’s in film history with the smash hit movie Paranormal Activity.
What does this mean to a screenwriter? Well, you can continue to write scripts with stories that excite you without regard to budget, no problem with that. If it’s a great script, it will likely get set up and hopefully produced. But as witnessed by the success of contained thrillers like the movie Buried and specs scripts in the sub-genre that sold in 2010 like “Killer” and “Down,” some writers are choosing to work on story concepts that use a single location, thereby reducing budget costs considerably — making the price point that much more doable in the eyes of a studio executive.
For more of the Brad Grey Q&A at Deadline.com, go here.
Tomorrow: Jeff Rabinov (Warner Bros.)