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What do movie producers do?

Posted on by of Go Into The Story

In part, they make deals like this:

Since they got a big write up in the Wall Street Journal late last month, the “Tag Brothers” have been swarmed by movie producers hoping they would tell one of them, “you’re it.” Meaning he gets the chance to translate their story to the movie screen. Who are the “Tag Brothers?” They are the 10 classmates at Gonzaga Preparatory School in Spokane, Washington 23 years ago whose long-running game of tag got national attention, thanks to the Russell Adams article. Now in their 40s, the former classmates have spread across the country in various fields (one’s a priest), but they stay in touch during the month of February by chasing each other across the country in an obsessive game of tag. They will jet cross country, break into each other’s homes, hide in the bushes until a target appears, or leave for a long vacation to avoid being tagged, all in the name of not ending up “It,” and having to wear that loser title a whole year.

Well, the “Tag Brothers” have just told Broken Road’s Todd Garner that he’s it. After hearing pitches from more than a half dozen established producers who wanted to turn their story into a feature film [emphasis added], they’ve optioned their life rights to Garner, in a deal put together by ICM Partners (which reps the guys) and UTA (which reps the WSJ). Garner will put together a package that he’ll shop to studios. Since studios have been among those making calls, it shouldn’t be a hard sell.

Sourcing and developing material is a primary point of focus for producers. They’re all chasing stories. Sometimes there are situations where “more than a half dozen” chase the same story. Then comes the packaging. Then shopping the project to the studios. Then developing the script. And then try like hell to get the movie made.

What do movie producers do? They work their asses off.

THR: Producers Roundtable

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From THR:

Full uncensored interview with Grant Heslov (Argo), Philippa Boyens (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), Eric Fellner (Anna Karenina and Les Miserables), Stacey Sher (Django Unchained), Joanne Sellar (The Master) and Bruce Cohen (Silver Linings Playbook).

Here is the 1-hour producers roundtable:

For more, go here.

10 Producers Who Will Change Hollywood in 2012

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TheWrap yesterday with a feature on 10 movie producers who will “change Hollywood.” Here’s the list:

ANNAPURNA PICTURES
Megan Ellison

Upcoming Projects: “The Master,” “Lawless,” “Cogan’s Trade,” “The Grandmasters,” “Zero Dark Thirty” and an untitled Charlie Kaufman-Spike Jonze project.

BCDF PICTURES
Brice Dal Farra, Claude Dal Farra, Lauren Munsch

Upcoming Projects: “The Last Keepers,” starring Aidan Quinn, Virginia Madsen and Olympia Dukakis; and “Rhymes With Banana,” starring Zosia Mamet of HBO’s “Girls” and “Mad Men,” and Jaleel White, late of “Dancing With the Stars.”

BEFORE THE DOOR PICTURES
Corey Moosa, Zachary Quinto, Neal Dodson

Upcoming Projects: “All Is Lost,” starring Robert Redford; “The Banshee Chapter”; “The TWV Project.”

BLACK BEAR PICTURES
Teddy Schwarzman

Upcoming Projects: The wry comedy “A.C.O.D.” starring Richard Jenkins should see release this year, while “Broken City” is in post-production, and “All Is Lost” is in pre-production.

BORDERLINE FILMS
Antonio Campos, Sean Durkin, Josh Mond

Upcoming projects: Campos’s dark Paris-set “Simon Killer” and a film Josh Mond is currently writing and plans to direct.

DUPLASS BROTHERS PRODUCTIONS
Mark Duplass, Jay Duplass

Upcoming Projects: “The Do-Deca Pentathlon,” “Safety Not Guaranteed.”

SOPHIA LIN

Upcoming Projects: “Compliance.”

SUPER CRISPY ENTERTAINMENT
Jonathan Schwartz, Andrea Sperling

Upcoming Projects: “Nobody Walks,” which sold to Magnolia; “Smashed,” acquired by Sony Classics; and an untitled Drake Doremus film “about love, fidelity, marriage and music.”

ALICIA VAN COUVERING

Upcoming Projects: The untitled African film from Takal; an Australia-set documentary on pro-surfer Stephanie Gilmore; an indie-rock road movie with composer Teddy Blanks (who did the music and graphic design on “Tiny Furniture”); and a romantic comedy that’s still in the script stage.

XYZ FILMS
Nate Bolotin, Nick Spicer, Aram Tertzakian, Todd Brown

Upcoming Projects: “Electric Bugaloo: The Wild, Untold Story of Cannon Films”; “Dead Mine”; “The Darkness”; “Side Effect”; “Frankenstein’s Army.”

The article has much more about these producers which you can read here.

“The Painful Death of Hollywood’s Producers: No First Class, No Calls Back”

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Yesterday I featured a THR article on studio deals with producers. Today a related article featuring comments and analysis by producers on the current state of the movie business. The general take seems to be this: It’s tough. Some excerpts:

“You aren’t going to get me to talk about how awful the studios are!” says one veteran producer before launching into a tirade on the subject. “The studios just don’t respect what producers do. They’d rather not have them around. … Studios have way too many executives and waste way too much money on that.”

Says another producer who ranks among the Hollywood elite: “The bigger the movies get, the more executives feel they’re producing them. I believe there are more executives being dispatched to locations than ever before. … When the executive says ‘my’ movie, it drives you crazy, and it’s happening more and more.”

With the movie business undergoing a historic realignment as DVD revenue has shriveled and new technology has not yet generated cash to take its place, the issues facing the business are squeezing the top rank of producers, including those who still have generous deals with studios — on paper. It’s trickle-up economics, and those who have long been used to having their voices respected are finding that sometimes — ouch — their calls aren’t even returned.

Some believe that life has changed forever in the movie business, while others — noting that studios are making increasingly homogeneous movies — are hoping that eventually it will become clear that audiences crave something different and that producers are the ones with the experience and skill to develop and execute original, sometimes even great, material.

As everything in Hollywood, these things go in cycles. The studios seem to bounce back and forth between wanting to be hugely hands-on with a movie’s development and production to preferring to let producers oversee the filmmaking process so they [the studios] can focus on marketing and distribution. Is this current hands-on mode just another wave of a cycle or has the economic model changed the dynamic permanently?

For more of the Hollywood reporter article, go here.