Take note, Hollywood: The New Money Is Here
There are the six major Hollywood movie studios: 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros.
There are mini-majors like Lionsgate and Screen Gems.
Then there are the financiers, independent production outfits.
Two of the movies nominated for a Best Picture Oscar for 2013 — American Hustle and Her — were produced by Annapurna Pictures, founded by Megan Ellison. That’s a financier.
For more background, here are some excerpts from a recent THR article featuring some financiers:
Almost 75 years ago, Howard Hughes spent nearly $4 million of his own money to make Hell’s Angels, upsetting the studio ecosystem. The dusty path he forged has since become a highway for high-net-worth individuals seeking a foothold in Hollywood. Today’s rising stars include Molly Smith, whose Black Label Media partially is funded by her father, FedEx founder Fred Smith; Teddy Schwarzman, who scored a $7 million deal in February from Harvey Weinstein for the Benedict Cumberbatch starrer The Imitation Game; and Australian James Packer, who now runs RatPac Entertainment with Brett Ratner. They’re joining indie players such as Megan Ellison, daughter of Oracle founder Larry Ellison; and Worldview Entertainment, backed in part by stockbrokerage heiress Sarah Johnson Redlich, in financing and producing prestige projects that studios are afraid to make or to fully finance.
Among producers and indie agents, these folks are superheroes. Says New Regency chief Brad Weston, who is working with Packer and Worldview: “They are infusing money into the system and giving us the ability to make more movies. It provides a full set of choices.”
Here are a few examples:
Teddy Schwarzman, Black Bear Pictures
Money Source: He’s the son of Stephen A. Schwarzman, chairman and CEO of investment banking firm Blackstone who boasts a net worth of at least $10 billion.
Film-Biz Cred: Schwarzman, 34, worked as a PA on Natalie Portman’s 2009 film The Other Woman before taking a job at John Sloss’ company Cinetic Media, where he arranged financing for indie titles. While earning his stripes, Schwarzman, who lives in New York, kept his Wall Street roots secret.
Buzz: Schwarzman’s 3-year-old boutique business is hitting its stride: He won a heated battle to finance and produce The Imitation Game after Warner Bros. put the project, which stars Cumberbatch as World War II cryptographer Alan Turing, into turnaround. Schwarzman dazzled buyers in February with a reel, sparking a bidding war that resulted in a $7 million deal with Weinstein for U.S. rights. Black Bear also is financing and producing Gold, based on a real-life Indonesian mining scandal, and has come aboard to pay for 70 percent of Eli Roth’s $5 million Knock Knock, starring Keanu Reeves. Little-known fact: Black Bear helped save Russell Crowe and Mark Wahlberg’s Broken City from being discarded. And Schwarzman was the major financier of J.C. Chandor’s All Is Lost. As for expansion, Black Bear is now the owner of Elevation Pictures, the №2 independent distributor in Canada after eOne.
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Christos V. Konstantakopoulos, Faliro House Productions
Money Source: He’s the son of the late Vassilis C. Konstantakopoulos, a Greek captain turned billionaire entrepreneur who founded Costamare Shipping.
Film-Biz Cred: The shipping heir, who calls Athens home, quietly has been helping to finance smaller U.S. indie titles for more than five years while also bolstering Greece’s film industry.
Buzz:Founded in 2008, Faliro has been involved with a wide array of smaller indie titles, including Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter, Jim Jarmusch’s Only Lovers Left Alive, Terrence Malick’s Knight of Cups, Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight and Alex Ross Perry’s critically acclaimed 2014 Sundance Film Festival entry, Listen Up Philip. Faliro is partnering with France’s Haut et Court and the Netherlands’ Lemming Films on The Lobster, the English-language debut from Oscar-nominated Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, starring Colin Farrell and Rachel Weisz. The low-key Konstantakopoulos doesn’t make the rounds in Hollywood much, but is nonetheless carving out a niche.
Hey, if I were a billionaire, I’d probably start a movie production company. Not only cinematic fun, but if you’ve got money in Hollywood, everybody loves you.
From a writing standpoint, it’s great to have financiers around. Translation: More potential buyers.
And from a moviegoer perspective, while the major studios have basically vacated the medium budget movie space, financiers have stepped in to fill the void. See: American Hustle, Her.
So here’s to all you wealthy movie-loving dreamers. The Hollywood writing community wishes you nothing but success… and validated parking for when we come to pitch you our stories.
For the rest of the article, go here.
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