Gopher Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 Yeah, daughters of rich people shouldn't be allowed to do anything that other first-time producers can't do!The hate here is absolutely astounding. 8 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Futurist Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 I agree with all of you. Hey, she is going to give money to Jlaw so she must doing something right. I am just saying that her career as a film producer was given to her on a silver plater to a very extreme level that is very uncommon and unnusual. In Megan's pipeline The DOR movie New Spike Jonze : Her The Grandmaster by Wong Kar Wai Foxcatcher and she has some rights to Terminator Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RichWS Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 Goddamn her for using her money to make great films. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Nevada Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 Anyone who gives The Master a 32M (!) budget is fine by me. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CoolioD1 Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 She should give Louis CK some money. He always said he'd direct another film if someone just gave him some cash and let him do what he wanted and she sounds like the person to do it. 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Nevada Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 She should give Louis CK some money. He always said he'd direct another film if someone just gave him some cash and let him do what he wanted and she sounds like the person to do it. OMG OMG OMG that would be awesome! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Futurist Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 The Queen has arrived to shoot this. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLK Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 All actions have consequences. It is pretty normal these days for big businesses and deep-pocketed people to come in and drive out small businesses in pretty much any industry you can think of. When you have a lot of money you are not thinking about little things like annual profit and loss within the sub-market. This never ends well. Mid-majors and Indie branches of majors are not going to leave the field open to the likes of Megan Ellison. If the asking price for a "smaller" movie becomes $40 million you'll see more $40 million movies being made. At the same time you will see fewer movies made because if you are putting $40 million in producing a movie you are not going to rely on platform release and VOD to recoup the cost. You will be more aggressive with marketing and that leaves fewer resources and less financing for smaller independent movie. Like I said, Ellison gets to make her half a dozen movies with bloated budgets every year but the business will suffer on the whole. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gopher Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 Are you arguing that the more $40 million movies are made, the less resources smaller movies have? This is something every studio does, but Fox and Sony still leave room to make and market smaller projects. Why is Ellison any different in this setting? Talk to me when small independent movies are no longer being funded because Megan Ellison is funding what are studio movies with names like PTA and David O. Russell. That makes absolutely no sense. The indie market is much, much bigger than the half dozen movies she will fund every year. Indie projects will still find their money and distributors will still pick them up at festivals. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Futurist Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 (edited) What is indie, where do you draw the line ? There were a big hoopla at the SPirit Awards asking if Silver Linings was indie or not. What makes a movie an indie ? Is it only the size of the budget ? The subject matter ? The Pixies, the Smiths, Nick Drake and Elliott Smith are in the soundtrack ? Edited March 20, 2013 by The Futurist Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gopher Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 If a studio is funding a project then it's not an indie. The Master wasn't an indie, neither was Moonrise Kingdom, neither was SLP. If a studio picks up an independently made project like Beasts of the Southern Wild, it's still an indie. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dementeleus Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 I agree with all of you. Hey, she is going to give money to Jlaw so she must doing something right. I am just saying that her career as a film producer was given to her on a silver plater to a very extreme level that is very uncommon and unnusual. Er, this is a pretty common practice, especially for financiers. They have money, they decide to make some movies -- often for some sort of tax subsidy or benefit, or sometimes for the glamour. What makes Ellison unique (so far) is that she actually seems to WANT to make good movies. That's what separates her from the likes of Elie Samaha, Mario Kassar, Yoram Globus, Menahem Golan, or the guys who fund all those Uwe Boll movies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jack Nevada Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 If a studio is funding a project then it's not an indie. The Master wasn't an indie, neither was Moonrise Kingdom, neither was SLP. If a studio picks up an independently made project like Beasts of the Southern Wild, it's still an indie. Thanks for clearing that up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLK Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 Are you arguing that the more $40 million movies are made, the less resources smaller movies have? This is something every studio does, but Fox and Sony still leave room to make and market smaller projects. Why is Ellison any different in this setting? Ellison is different because she is spending more money than she should which makes other studio spend more money than they need to spend on a related project ( Oscar-bait movie). The problem with $40 million movies is that they cost way more than $40 million because studios/distributors cannot follow the platform release formula as that is guaranteed to lose money for you. This isn't that hard to follow. We know what $200 million movies did to the overall movie market. Jacking the price up for mid-level movies is going to drive out small distributors and smaller "studios" out of the market. People who love $200 million tentpoles don't give a fuck about smaller movies and I am seeing the same thing from people who'd rather PTA get $40 million for a $20 million type of movie even at the cost of harming the smaller indie movies. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
4815162342 Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 (edited) Megan Ellison by a trick of birth was given access to a fortune. She is using that fortune to help fund films by high-profile directors who wouldn't get the budgets they got purely from the goodwill of major studios. I fail to see the problem. How does this affect the Beasts of the Southern Wilds, the Winter's Bones, the We Need to Talk About Kevins, etc? Those are low-budget indies. Ellison is dealing with mid-budget, higher-profile stuff. Edited March 20, 2013 by 4815162342 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TLK Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 Megan Ellison by a trick of birth was given access to a fortune. She is using that fortune to help fund films by high-profile directors who wouldn't get the budgets they got purely from the goodwill of major studios. I fail to see the problem. How does this affect the Beasts of the Southern Wilds, the Winter's Bones, the We Need to Talk About Kevins, etc? Those are low-budget indies. Ellison is dealing with mid-budget, higher-profile stuff. Megan Ellison may have an infinite amount of money to spend but most financiers don't and there are only limited number of people who make investment in Hollywood. It is the same reason why $200 million tentpoles have decimated smaller studio movies. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Futurist Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 (edited) If a studio is funding a project then it's not an indie. The Master wasn't an indie, neither was Moonrise Kingdom, neither was SLP. If a studio picks up an independently made project like Beasts of the Southern Wild, it's still an indie. What is a studio then. So when an "indie" is bought by a studio and the studio releases it on 3000 screens with massive marketing and tv ads, it is still an indie ? That doesn't make a lot of sense. I think the definition of indie is not that clear and you ll have a different answer depending on who you ask. Edited March 20, 2013 by The Futurist Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dementeleus Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 Ellison is different because she is spending more money than she should which makes other studio spend more money than they need to spend on a related project ( Oscar-bait movie). The problem with $40 million movies is that they cost way more than $40 million because studios/distributors cannot follow the platform release formula as that is guaranteed to lose money for you. This isn't that hard to follow. We know what $200 million movies did to the overall movie market. Jacking the price up for mid-level movies is going to drive out small distributors and smaller "studios" out of the market. People who love $200 million tentpoles don't give a fuck about smaller movies and I am seeing the same thing from people who'd rather PTA get $40 million for a $20 million type of movie even at the cost of harming the smaller indie movies. Who's to say she's spending more than she should? The people I've read who say that say it because they're speaking from a studio perspective... and that perspective is "the movie is risky, therefore we aren't going to spend money on it". The indie film market is not the same as the studio market (where you literally just have a handful of suits deciding things). There is no "jacking up the price for mid-level movies" because not only are there basically no studio mid-level movies, the reason there isn't is because the studios themselves went nuts, spending $100m+ on James L. Brooks comedies, etc, and then decided thy couldn't bother with the modest returns that a mid-level movie returns, so they decided to swing for home runs every time and not even bother with that segment of the market. It is not a zero-sum game. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dementeleus Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 Megan Ellison may have an infinite amount of money to spend but most financiers don't and there are only limited number of people who make investment in Hollywood. It is the same reason why $200 million tentpoles have decimated smaller studio movies. I'm sorry, those poor financiers. $200m tentpoles have decimated smaller movies BECAUSE THE STUDIOS DECIDED THEY WANTED TO DO THAT. There's literally no reason why Paramount couldn't say, "You know what? Instead of making TF4, we're going to make 5 adult dramas", except that they don't want to bother with the "risk" and they'd rather pander to the teen demographic. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Futurist Posted March 20, 2013 Share Posted March 20, 2013 (edited) What makes Megan Ellison unique is that for some movies, she can afford to finance a movie entirely without co producing or banks. That gives her a power and a leverage nobody has in this industry. SHe already has the money, she doesn't have to convince a bankster to fund her projects. Maybe she has to on movies where her title is executive producer , I think she doesn't finance entirely all the movies she works on. But still, she in deed paid for everything on The Master and Zero Dark Thirty and that makes her a unique animal in the Hollywood landscape. Who has 80 million in its pocket to fund films ? Nobody but her. No wonder all the Hollywood auteurs are rushing to her like bees to their Queen. Thanks to her, they have the money to fullfill their dream project, they don't have to do all the bullshit you have to to convince other people your movie is worth making/producing/financing. You just have to convince her. Edited March 20, 2013 by The Futurist 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
