Posts Tagged ‘Summit Entertainment’

Writer/Director Bill Condon

The fourth film in the Summit Entertainment series, Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, has now hired Bill Condon as its director. Condon is perhaps the series’ most respected director to date, helming the Oscar nominated films Dreamgirls (Nom. Best Supp. Actor Eddie Murphy, Won Best Supp. Actress Jennifer Hudson) and Kinsey (Nom. Best Supp. Actress Laura Linney).

Commenting on the opportunity to direct a film that’s part of such a huge franchise, Condon said, “I’m very excited to get the chance to bring the climax of this saga to life onscreen,” said Condon. “As fans of the series know, this is a one-of-a-kind book — and we’re hoping to create an equally unique cinematic experience” -HR.

Summit Entertainment production president Erik Feig expressed his delight with the decision to hire Condon, saying, “Bringing Stephenie Meyer’s Breaking Dawn to the screen requires a graceful and intelligent hand, and we believe Bill Condon is exactly the right steward, having shown equal and abundant talents of immense creativity and subtle sensitivity” -HR.

Condon also won an Oscar for writing the adapted screenplay for Gods and Monsters.

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The next installment in the Twilight series, Twilight Saga: Eclipse, is directed by David Slade (Hard Candy, 30 Days of Night) and is set to release June 30th.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Miramax has long been considered a haven for independent financing and distribution, but with it being limited to only a few films per year who will pick up the slack?

Every few months or so, I get into this strange mood where I think the film industry has become all hype and no substance and I feel nostalgic for the movies I used to love.  Typically during these periods, every film I see only seems to confirm that sense and I grow increasingly disappointed until something finally snaps me out of it.

This time last year, I found myself in the midst of one of my film industry doldrums and I walked into Greg Mottola’s coming-of-age film Adventureland expecting yet another gross-out teen comedy like his previous film Superbad.  However, what I encountered was a film that restored my faith in the medium.

I remember the moment exactly.  Kristen Stewart’s character Em and Jesse Eisenberg’s character James are simply driving in a car as the Velvet Underground’s “Pale Blue Eyes” plays on the radio.  They have just left a bar after Em’s secret lover and his wife walk in and the couples share an awkward and loaded exchange.  Em is clearly thrown by the encounter and the scene that follows basically shows her reaction to it.  As she drives, Em’s face goes from sad to angry to disappointed to confused in a matter of seconds, displaying all of the complicated emotions she feels.  And it was during that scene that I remembered how much I love film and how powerful film could be.  It wasn’t just Stewart’s incredible performance or the music choice or the way Mottola filmed it, it was the combination of all those things.  It was the realization that I was seeing a truly extraordinary moment of creation happening on the screen and I had suddenly regained that passion for movies I had experienced as a child.

I’ve recently felt myself moving toward another bout of movie despondency so I popped in my Adventureland DVD and prepared to have my faith restored.  On a whim, I watched the previews before the film and one of them happened to be a roundup of Miramax films, the same company that distributed Adventureland.

As the preview rolled, I realized how many Miramax films I’ve enjoyed throughout the years.  I mean, this is the production/distribution company that first sparked my love for movies all the way back in 1996 with the release of Anthony Minghella’s The English Patient.  I may not have fully understood all the film’s themes at eight years old, but I certainly appreciated the beauty.  The passionate yet tragic love story of the central characters and the gorgeous cinematography are the reasons the film remains one of my favorites even today.  Miramax was the company that sparked my love of musicals too.  Sitting in a half-empty theater in the middle of the day watching Chicago was a positively transformative experience.  The sex appeal and the combination of stage performance and cinema that only film could supply was positively incredible.  Miramax was even the company that taught me about post-modernist referencing: I delighted in the way Wes Craven’s Scream deconstructed the horror genre and was positively astounded by the endless layers of pop culture reference Quentin Tarantino used in the Kill Bill films.  So I began to wonder, what happened to Miramax?

Miramax began some thirty years ago in New York as an independent production and distribution company founded by Bob and Harvey Weinstein.  The goal of the company—named for the Weinsteins’ parents Miriam and Max—was to produce and distribute independent films which were often more notable for their artistic value than their potential box office earnings.  Between their opening in 1979 and 1993, Miramax distributed such films as Sex, Lies and Videotape and Reservoir Dogs.  However, it really began to flourish after the Walt Disney Company bought it in 1993.  After the sale, with more financial backing at their disposal, the Weinsteins were able to run the company fairly independently of the rest of the Disney family.

The Weinsteins had always been fairly aggressive in their business practices, from acquiring films to acquiring promising filmmaking talent, and that same style carried over in their Disney period.  Nowhere was this aggressive business style more apparent than the company’s Oscar campaigns.  Perhaps the best example of a successful Miramax campaign came in 1998 when Shakespeare in Love beat Saving Private Ryan for a Best Picture Oscar.  According to a New York Magazine article from 1995, Miramax spent an estimated $5 million campaigning for the film and its arguable whether it would have been so fortunate without such significant backing.  Miramax carried on in this manner with one successful Oscar-winning film after another.  And then 2005 rolled around.

The Weinsteins had a tenuous relationship with former Disney CEO Michael Eisner over issues like financing and creative matters and when it came time to renew the brothers’ contracts in 2005, the negotiations went so poorly they ultimately decided to leave to create The Weinstein Company.  Miramax continued relatively unchanged under the direction of Daniel Battsek until this past January when Disney closed the its New York and Los Angeles offices and made it a part of the larger Disney infrastructure, thereby reducing the production output to only a handful of films per year.  Though companies like Summit Entertainment and even The Weinstein Company have showed interest in purchasing Miramax from Disney, it’s likely the $700 million asking price, as reported by The Deal Magazine, will mean the company will stay in Disney’s possession for years to come.  However, the real question in all this madness is what company can audiences expect to take up the creative slack?

Miramax’s most obvious heir is The Weinstein Company.  In it’s few short years, it has already made some impressive films like quite a few of this year’s Oscar nominees including Inglourious Basterds, Nine and A Single Man.  And it has quite a few promising films in the pipeline including two Sundance Favorites, The Company Men starring Ben Affleck and Chris Cooper and Blue Valentine starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams.  However, another independent company that might give the Weinsteins a run for their money is Summit Entertainment.  Former Paramount Vice Chairman Robert G. Friedman and Patrick Wachsberger established Summit in April 2007, but it’s already shown some promise.  It produced and distributed this year’s Best Picture winner The Hurt Locker and with the cash cow that is The Twilight Saga as one of its properties, Summit shows no signs of disappearing anytime soon.

Regardless of what the future may hold, I’m sure there will always be films to help remind me why I fell in love with the medium in the firs place.  And if not, I can always pick something from the Miramax library for a little reminder.

Francis Ford Coppola's "Bram Stoker's Dracula" is arguably the most stylized retelling of the Dracula story to date

With vampire craze still in full swing due to the enormous hit that has been New Moon, the same production studio that financed that film has let it be known that it will now finance a remake of the story of Dracula. The project is called Vlad, written by Charlie Hunnam (actor on FX’s Sons of Anarchy), and is focused on Dracula as a young prince (with Vlad the Impaler of course being the inspiration for the character). Music video director Anthony Mandler (Rhianna, The Killers, Eminem) will be helming the project, with Brad Pitt producing. Reportedly, the film is set to have the same degree of stylization as 2006′s 300, which executives at Summit are excited about. The casting of the role of Vlad is expected to be an unknown.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Quick Opinion: As it turns out, we at Movie-Thoughts got our wish for a remake of Dracula, although having it made by Summit, starring an unknown, and captained by a music video director wasn’t exactly what we had in mind. However, here’s the silver lining: Summit is still small enough to not fall under the pressure of big studio-type paranoia (i.e. they can financially afford to be bolder and more daring with their creativity), unknown actors like Brandon Routh have proven that a no-name can indeed carry the weight of an iconic role, and Spike Jonze has proven that a music video director is capable of telling wonderful stories very skillfully. The odds that Vlad will have the same level of performances and direction as the names just listed can only be speculated, but it’s good to think positive.

News has leaked that Summit Entertainment, which owns the rights to and finances the Twilight films, is in the midst of deciding whether or not they’ll try to extend the series by splitting the fourth and final book in Stephenie Meyer’s saga into two movies. The company is supposedly leaning towards splitting the fourth movie into two (making 5 movies overall), but in order to make that plan a reality must first jump a few hurdles.

With New Moon making over $400 million worldwide in its first two weekends, the franchise has risen to a monumental status. This being the case, it then presents the option of extending the series more so than originally planned because box-office returns will have be extremely secure (barring catastrophes). But Summit would need to first get permission from Meyer, who holds vetoing power on almost everything related to the films. And because of New Moon’s success, Summit wants to resign the film’s director, Chris Weitz,  for the fourth and potentially fifth film. However, he had already made plans to direct another film to be produced by Summit, The Gardener, but no deal has officially been closed as of yet. The company has reportedly not ruled out the possibility of making Weitz put that film on hold until after completing the fourth and fifth films – if he signs on to direct.

With the money Summit has made and continues to make on New Moon, it will be able to as well as likely have to pay extra for Weitz services, not to mention also the services of the cast and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, all of which were signed on for only four films.

Source: Variety

Quick Opinion: Extending a franchise by splitting its source material into parts by way of making a higher number of movies is a Hollywood money-making tactic that most seem to actually like. Many Harry Potter fans were upset with each additional film’s lack of detail, faithfulness, etc., saying that all of the films were far too condensed. With Warner Bros. splitting the last film in the series into two films, it has re-encouraged this particular crowd. This is not to necessarily say that the Twilight series has the same breadth as Harry Potter’s, but more movies means more attention to detail, which fans appreciate. So, studios get more money, fans get more material to watch, and everybody wins.