Producer Profile: Who Made What

Excellent feature in Variety about some of the producers of this year’s top movies. A few excerpts:

“127 Hours”
Danny Boyle, Christian Colson, John Smithson
ORIGINS: “It’s a true-life story based on Aron Ralston’s book ‘Between a Rock and a Hard Place,’?” explains Christian Colson. “Danny wrote this great treatment on spec and met with him early on, but Aron was then very committed to any film version being done as a documentary feature and effectively passed. Danny and I went off to make ‘Slumdog,’ and around Oscar time we decided to revisit the project. This time Aron was a lot more receptive.”
FUNDING: “We went back to our collaborators from ‘Slumdog’: Fox Searchlight and Pathe. Danny has an overall deal with Searchlight, I have one with Pathe, and there’s also a side deal that enables Searchlight and Pathe to jointly finance the slate of films Danny and I develop. It just felt sensible, correct and also smart not to break up a winning team unless we had to — and that also applied to all our heads of department.” 
HIGH HURDLES: “We had to get the budget right as it’s not an obvious sell, and we shot in a very remote, hostile location.”
DOMINO EFFECT: “The first star aboard was Danny. And if we hadn’t found James Franco, we wouldn’t have made it.”

“The King’s Speech”
Iain Canning, Emile Sherman, Gareth Unwin
ORIGINS: “It originally came to us as an unstaged play, with the idea that we’d become the Australian co-producer and help in the U.K.,” Iain Canning explains. “We loved it, as did our sister companies, Transmission in Australia and Momentum in the U.K., and we worked with the writer on a couple of versions of the film script. Geoffrey Rush had already been sent the script — to his house, not through CAA — and we came onboard and began doing deals.”
FUNDING: “It pre-sold amazingly well. We pre-sold some territories to the Weinstein Co. and also went through Transmission and Momentum. We needed to cashflow those pre-sales, and we had a gap and tax credits, and did it through the Aegis Film Fund. We then had an equity position and had two equity investors, the U.K. Film Council and Molinare, who did the post.”
HIGH HURDLES: “The intense pressure we were under to close the financing at a time when many people believed that any British historical drama was not in vogue.” 
DOMINO EFFECT: “Geoffrey Rush committed first, and based on that and the script, we financed the film and got everyone else.”

“The Social Network”
Dana Brunetti, Cean Chaffin, Michael DeLuca, Scott Rudin
ORIGINS: “It came from a book proposal written by Ben Mezrich, and Dana Brunetti and Mike DeLuca had developed it,” Scott Rudin says. “They took it to Sony, I got my hands on it and we all agreed to collaborate. Aaron Sorkin came on and wrote a brilliant script very quickly, and we then went to David Fincher who was the first and only person who ever saw it.”
FUNDING: “It was entirely through Sony. They loved the script from the first draft and wanted to make it in a sane and responsible way, in the same kind of financial way we did. So once it was agreed we’d do it with David and everyone, we came up with a financial structure that worked for everyone and pulled it together. But it meant everyone taking huge cuts. No one got paid to do it. It was a ‘for love’ project.”
HIGH HURDLES: “The biggest issues were dealing with all the legal issues of Facebook — what we legally could and couldn’t do and say. Everything was sourced and vetted and required an enormous number of lawyers. That process began before the script was written and went up until the movie’s release.”
DOMINO EFFECT: “Fincher. Once we had him, everyone else followed.”

“Inception”
Christopher Nolan, Emma Thomas
ORIGINS: “Chris (Nolan, who also produced) had been interested in the subject matter of dreams and the nature of reality for a very long time,” Emma Thomas explains. “About 10 years ago, he wrote 80 pages, which gradually turned into the film over the years, so it was a very long process.”
FUNDING: “We were lucky in that we were coming off the success of ‘The Dark Knight,’ and when he finished the script, we went back to Warner Bros. We don’t have a deal with them per se, but we have a great relationship with them, and they all read it and really got it. So they jumped onboard and said they’d finance the whole thing, but then Legendary also came onboard as a partner.” 
HIGH HURDLES: “The huge scale of the film and the tight schedule. We had an extremely short prep period. The studio only read it for the first time in March, and we began shooting in July, which for a film of this scale, filming all over the world, is pretty incredible.”
DOMINO EFFECT: “Once Leo came on, that set the tone for what the movie was, and the rest was smooth sailing.”

“The Town”
Basil Iwanyk, Graham King
ORIGINS: “It came to me through another director who had the rights to this book ‘Prince of Thieves,’ but we couldn’t agree on what movie to make, so Warners and I gave him time to set it up somewhere else, but he couldn’t. So we mutually parted ways, and that’s when we went to Ben (Affleck).”?
FUNDING: “Warners financed the whole thing and brought in Legendary as partners. That made it very easy.”
HIGH HURDLES: “The biggest obstacle for me was getting this key location, Fenway Park. It’s an iconic ballpark and this film’s about robbing the stadium, so it’s integral to the story. You can’t cheat Fenway, so without it we’d have been in big trouble. But Ben was instrumental in us getting it, being a Boston boy, a Red Sox fan and so on. And that was a very big deal to me, that he got them to let us shoot there.”
DOMINO EFFECT: “Ben was the key. He wrote it, starred in it and directed, and he was adamant about playing Doug. Then he came up with these great names — Jeremy Renner, Jon Hamm, Rebecca Hall — not the usual run-of-the-mill names studios approve, but smart names and great actors.”

Producing movies — a tough gig. But when it all comes together and the movie is a success, it must be a pretty sweet experience.

Takeaway: If you have a script similar in tone and feel to a movie that gets produced, find out who that movie’s producers are, and reach out to them about your project. Producers can be more inclined to be open to new writers, always on the look-out for a great story. How to find contact information for producers? You should be able to use Google to find their offices. If not, consider subscribing to IMDBPro.com. 

One thing: Make sure your script is a professional quality read. You have one chance to make a good first impression.

Comment Archive