Niche films' low budgets mean they still have a good chance of at least breaking even. Twentieth Century Fox will only have to gross a couple of million dollars to earn back its money on its recent release The Brothers McMullen . That probably wouldn't even pay the catering on the typical film the studio releases. And when an arthouse film breaks out into the mainstream, it can be enormously successful. Four Weddings and a Funeral cost only $4 million, but it grossed more than $250 million worldwide.
There's more to studios' interest in art films than a search for lower-cost, lower-risk alterna tives to their standard fare, however. The studios have long used the independent film world as a farm system for writers, directors, and virtually every other position in movies.
Now, they seem to want to gain some control over that farm system, helping to cement relationships with the talent of tomorrow. For instance, a couple of years ago, Sony Pictures picked up director Robert Rodriguez's independently made (and ultra-low budget) El Mariachi for distribution. The film did well, and Sony signed Rodriguez to direct Desperado, which became one of 1995's most profitable films.
Art films can also help cement relations with established talent with a yen to try something different. Witness all the big-name actors who took low salaries to act in Pulp Fiction.
Of course, there may be problems. The big studios are geared toward putting out big, mass -audience films. It isn't clear that their bureaucracies can be as nimble as the small companies that have traditionally dominated the niche-film market.
There's the basic question of whether these new divisions can stick to their mission of making low-cost films. In the two years since it was acquired by Disney, Miramax has raised eyebrows with its relatively free-spending ways. Competitors grumble that the Weinsteins have used Disney's dollars to bid up the price of talent. So far, though, Miramax's budgets remain well under Hollywood standards, and they seem to be successful. Witness the money Pulp Fiction made.
And once a specialized film is made, there's the problem of selling it. Marketing an art film involves more than just buying a lot of television adsit requires wit and creativity.
Take The Brothers McMullen. Edward Burns made the movie for $20,000, raised mostly from family members. Then a friend of his who works for Fox Television passed on a videotape to the head of Fox's arthouse distributor, Searchlight. Searchlight in turn gave Burns $50,000 to finish post-production of the film. In exchange, Searchlight got the option to distribute the film. Burns finished editing the film, and he took it to the Sundance Film Festival. The audience response was so enthusiastic that Searchlight picked up its option, paying Burns $500,000 for the movie.
Searchlight then used a series of low-cost stunts to create awareness for the film. The night before it opened in New York, for example, they invited every McMullen in the Manhattan phone book to a special screening. In another stunt, they admitted each person who brought his brother free.
The most obvious way to generate awareness for a niche movie may be controversy, how ever. And that poses problems of its own, at least for big studios.
Miramax is the past master of this trick. From the violence in Pulp Fiction to the transvestite in The Crying Game , Miramax has not shied away from taking on films with controversial elements. Indeed, it has used those elements to gain all sorts of free publicity for the films. But much as they may love the publicity controversy generates, it remains to be seen whether big corporations have the guts to continue releasing very controversial movies. Two years ago, for example, Disney made Miramax give up the Martin Lawrence concert film You So Crazy after the ratings board slapped it with an NC-17 rating. Disney is contractually bound not to release unrated films, and it has a corporate policy against releasing NC-17 films. Earlier this year, the Weinstein brothers released the film Kids on their own for much the same reason.
Disney has reason to worry. When Miramax released the R-rated Priest, it inspired boycotts of Disney products by Catholics upset at the film's presentation of sexually active clergymen. Small companies don't have to worry about such threats, since people offended by their films probably aren't their customers to begin with. But a big corporation has to consider a film's impact on the rest of its businesswhich in Disney's case includes not only family films but theme parks, both much larger sources of revenue than Miramax.
If big studios don't prove able to stick with specialized films, however, that doesn't mean they won't get made. As long as the audience is there, firms will have an incentive to produce for them. And if the big companies neglect this audience, that just creates an opportunity for the next Miramax.
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