“Studio report card gives 2008 the grade”
We’ve already been tracking LA Times columnist and blogger Patrick Goldstein’s ‘report cards’ of Hwood movie studios’ performance in 2008 here. In today’s LA Times, Goldstein provides a summary as well as some thoughts about the strong performance of movies at the box office in January 09. Here’s a money quote:
But the lowest point was yet to come, since it was Warners that acquired (through its now-defunct Warner Independent Pictures specialty division) the U.S. rights to “Slumdog Millionaire.” After seeing the movie, the studio decided it had no interest in releasing it. (If Fox Searchlight hadn’t jumped at the chance to handle the movie here, Warners was considering taking “Slumdog” straight to video.) It’s one thing not to see a hit when it’s in the script stage, but it’s another thing to actually see a great movie and still take a pass. It’s a depressing commentary on the current state of today’s studio culture that either Warners is run by people who don’t know a great movie when they see it or they decided the studio didn’t know how to market the year’s best movie. Publicly, Warners says its end-of-the-year slate was too crowded to make room for “Slumdog Millionaire.” In other words, when push came to shove, Warners was far more eager to release nice, innocuous comedies like “Four Christmases” and “Yes Man” than a cinematic tour de force that is now the leading contender to win the best picture Oscar.
At the recent Beyond Words event I posted about here, moderator Judd Apatow harangued again and again the nameless Warner Bros. toadie who went all thumbs down on Slumdog. WB head honcho provided a semi-mea culpa with a nice nod to screenwriting with this comment:
“I think it’s fair to argue that if you’re an independent filmmaker that you might not want to take a picture to Warners,” studio chief Alan Horn acknowledges. “But we do believe in making good, compelling movies. We had a very solid, profitable year overall. I think our production and marketing departments are excellent. We did have our disappointments, which only reminded me of a simple priority: screenplay, screenplay. It all starts with that. After that, anything can happen or, as William Goldman so eloquently put it, no one knows anything.”
Re screenplay priority: Amen!
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