Pitch sale: “Parent Class”

Overture Films buys comedy pitch “Parent Class” from writing team Toni Kotite and Marty Scott:

The project, which James Gibb brought to the studio and will produce, revolves around a divorced couple who are deemed unsatisfactory parents and must enroll in a class on how to improve their child-rearing skills. Gibb, who conceived of the story, based it on a real-life class he attended.

Overture is a relative newcomer, but with some well-known names involved in key positions:

With its mix of commercial comedies and dramas, indies and genre films, Overture enters a movie marketplace that is bursting at the seams with new players, releasing an ever-growing number of films vying for limited audiences. Fueled by private-equity and hedge-fund investments or wealthy individuals, production companies like Michael London’s Groundswell, Mark Gill’s Film Department, Sidney Kimmel Entertainment and new distributors like Summit Entertainment have risked hundreds of millions of dollars chasing the same target: a low-budget runaway hit. But to hear it from Mr. McGurk, the former vice chairman of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Danny Rosett, Overture’s chief operating officer, what distinguishes their company are an ownership structure and a business model that allow them to set their sights relatively low.

“If we spend $30 million marketing ‘Mad Money,’ we open to $10 million, and we do $25 million” over the film’s theatrical run, Mr. McGurk said, “we’ll be doing just fine.”

The business plan calls for making movies for less than $30 million in most cases, and holding Overture’s share of production costs to $10 million or $15 million by selling foreign rights or taking on partners. Mr. McGurk said that at MGM, over six straight years its movies in the under-$30 million range averaged nearly 30 percent profits — though roughly a third lost money — because of hits like “Legally Blonde” and “Barbershop.”