The Green light to make a movie…
August 12, 2009
Hi, remember me? Yes I’ve been absent for a little while with my blog. Things have been quite hectic. So hectic in fact that I’ve had two movies green lit in the last six months. A $15M L.A. based thriller which I co-wrote and will direct called SIN OF MAN and a $4M classic horror called 9TH PASSENGER that LionsGate UK are involved in…
I’ve popped the champagne twice… we’ll three times actually. The third when I found out that a major ‘A’ list actor said he wanted to play the lead in SIN OF MAN… The highs have been enormous… and then the lows, when a few weeks before pre-production begins I get told that the project is dead, have been cavernous.
It’s a tough old world out there. But all is not lost. Both projects are in better shape than ever to get made and I have a well known actress’ production company interested in getting me to write a screen adaptation of a well know play. It’s a project I have wanted to do for years and it may, at last, be happening.
Sometimes it is tough to know how to deal with set backs at such a late stage. Especially when you have put in such enormous amounts of work for a financier who then backs out at the last minute. On SIN OF MAN I had put together budgets, schedules, scouted locations (all for no pay yet :-)) only to find out that they actually had no money. An interesting dilemma. And whilst I have been kicking myself saying ‘why didn’t you spot it before’, I have solace in knowing that the company had another movie who were already in pre production with pay or play offers to some very heavy hitters who were dupped too!
With 9th PASSENGER, things we’re a little different. Days away from transferring the rights to the screenplay the financier said they didn’t want to be involved with a WGA production. They had known all along that it was the only way to make the film. But at the last minute they pulled a fast one and tried to get the writers to go behind the WGA’s back… It was a shoot out… They pulled out their gun thinking that we would roll over… But instead they lost one of the best projects they have ever been involved with.
This town, this industry, is full of bullshitters. People who don’t treat this industry as an ‘industry’. It’s very frustrating. There seems to be a complete lack of worth, or at least understanding of someones worth/a projects worth. People are just blinded by the excitement and sexiness of making movies. They either pay far too much for something or don’t pay enough. Very rarely does something have a correct market value.
I watched Richard Attenbourgous CHAPLIN the other night with Downey Jr in the title role. A great movie. But what got me was the simplicity of the industry. How easy it was to see the chain. One day I’ll build a filmmakers community where we can go back to those days of simplicity… where we can all earn money for the work we do… and have a regular stream of income… where we can work to support each other and grow as a team… and where we can make many great movies each year at a low cost point so that the investors can get their money back and feel as if they are involved in a business that understands it’s market, it’s price point and keeps it’s costs lean. That community with be called FILMMAKERS RANCH…
It’ll take a number of years and, at the moment it seems like it will be based out of England. For the filmmakers I’ll have 30 films that will be made over 3 years, and for certain investors I’ll have a structure whereby I can reduce their risk to 0. Watch this space… As with everything, it will take time but you just have to keep pushing.
