Bart & Fleming: Brad Pitt Detours To Netflix
via Deadline
FLEMING: We broke a story this week that I predict will further dissolve the barriers between TV and feature films. Brad Pitt sets his next star vehicle at Netflix. It’s different from past Netflix deals like the Crouching Tiger “sequel” or a four-pack of Adam Sandler comedies, because who knows what the theatrical release value of either of those really is. We know Pitt is one of the few globally bankable stars who matter anymore. Also an enterprising producer, he realistically assessed the risky commercial prospects of a prestige passion project, and bypassed the enormous P&A and foreign sales and uncertain theatrical penetration for a slam dunk at Netflix. Ted Sarandos and Reed Hastings are busting down doors all over the world and will be in more countries by the time this film rolls out in late 2016. And they were only too happy to pay a premium for a game changing coup. And so a potentially huge global audience of Netflix subscribers will see the David Michod-directed War Machine, with Pitt playing a character modeled on General Stanley McChrystal, who ran the war in Afghanistan until undermined by politics, and some indiscreet quotes in a Rolling Stone article. This turns the traditional theatrical feature model on its ear and creates an alternative to what often proves to be an incredibly costly and inefficient strategy; who not bring movies directly to an audience satisfied to stay home and watch it on the 60 inch TV screen.
BART: Don’t knock the ‘inefficient strategy so aggressively–it’s still the strategy that has kept Hollywood purring for generations. Still, Pitt’s venture should be studied by every star. The ever increasing obsession of studios on tentpole picture has sharply reduced the opportunities for top actors to find a challenging role (unless they like ants). The situation is vaguely reminiscent of that moment in the 40s and ‘50s when the studios abruptly terminated their contracts with top stars. Suddenly every actor was desperately trying to develop his own films – a very few, like Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster showed any talent at it. Today, the big stars find that new platforms are beckoning and need to find ways to access them. Since agents look upon their stars as “brands,” perhaps they should follow the lead of the top fashion brands that pursue down-market labels. Think of Valentino, Armani, Missoni and Ralph Lauren. Why shouldn’t Clooney have a Clooney Red (like Valentino)or Di Caprio a Di Caprio Exchange(like Armani)? Liberated from the pressure of finding a decent part in a superhero movie (Downey is a very lucky man), they might come up with some fascinating projects for Netflix or Amazon or some sharp-edged short form pieces for other platforms – think mobile! I don’t yearn to see any more Adam Sandler movies, but he could still be likeable in six minute chunks on my smart phone.
FLEMING: Here is what I like about this. Had that Entourage movie been made for and shown on HBO, it would have cost less money, and it would have created enough of a ratings bang to have birthed an annual visit with Ari Gold and the boys. It would have been a win. Instead, its $25 million domestic gross (and miniscule overseas tally) puts it in the summer casualty column because these niche movies just cost too much money to launch to the mass market. Netflix got its TV game changer with House of Cards (Kevin Spacey is a guy who has shown the flexibility to gamble on platform disruptive projects, including Margin Call), and he needed one big movie star to take a gamble, and now he got it and it will open the door to all kinds of things. When I saw Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson peel the layers on complicated characters over the course of 8 or so hours in True Detective, I felt the ground shifting. I love mystery novel series, but you never see them turned into movies. Michael Connelly battled in court for years to get back his Harry Bosch novels that languished forever at Paramount, and then Amazon Studios turned it into the streaming service equivalent of a page-turner novel with Titus Welliver playing Bosch.
I would love to see Netflix revive Robert B Parker’s Spenser For Hire series with a great actor like Kyle Chandler playing the boxer-turned-gumshoe, serving up a new mystery every year. The possibilities here for quality are enormous. You can never replicate the shared theater going experience on something like Jurassic World, (which will hit break-even in days, Universal’s fourth film this year to recoup within 30 days of release) and even certain smaller movies where you shut out the world for a couple hours. It can be a great business that pours off cash at an astonishing rate. But until movie makers and exhibitors figure it out with windowing and find a way around the spectacularly inefficient manner in which marginal movies are marketed, I’d call War Machine constructive progress. I caught up with John Ridley at our Awardsline Emmy party last week. Hadn’t seen him in forever, but we kind of grew up together, me covering him when he was struggling and his Three Kings script got taken away and refashioned into a memorable movie by David O Russell and his book Stray Dogs got overhauled by Oliver Stone into U-Turn. Ridley has since won the Oscar for 12 Years A Slave and spends much of his time on the series American Crime. He said he loves movies but relishes the authorship given a TV creator/show runner that isn’t part of feature films. We both agreed this whole golden era of series occurred because Hollywood stopped making edgy mid budget films, forcing guys like Ridley to the small screen so they could feed their families. Pitt/Netflix is another iteration of a creative business adapting and finding a way for quality to rise. Some lessons will never be learned–how is it they’ve made four Jurassic Park movies and still go into each one not realizing a dinosaur theme park is a bad idea?–but Hollywood is evolving fast and Netflix is forcing the issue. My question is how much longer the Academy will require award season “qualifying theatrical runs” for Oscar consideration, which means you show it in a theater in New York and Los Angeles. Netflix will provide that for War Machine, but it is beginning to seem silly and meaningless, since it’s not how this project will be consumed globally.
BART: Let’s not get carried away, Mike. A theatrical release is still a smart and reasonable mandate. There are elements of the Academy process that don’t make sense any more — an example is the requirement that documentaries need a New York Times review to qualify for Oscar nomination. But leave the movie stuff alone.
