Posted by Michael Raben at ip5.pontiac.mi.pub-ip.psi.net on January 03, 2000 at 02:49:33:
In Reply to: let's go to the movies... posted by judeablue on January 01, 2000 at 14:46:22:
: but I was watching mallrats and realized that grammercy was the company on that, while there was mention of miramax for chasing amy (am I right here??) I haven't seen it in a while, so to get to the bloody point is, do filmmakers have to stick to the same movie company, or does it go to the highest bidder?
First, MadKow (below) was on about Clerks; it was made independently and
Miramax picked it up at Sundance, pouring some money into it to acquire
the soundtrack et. al. things. Sometime after that, Kevin (or perhaps
more specificially, View Askew) signed a 'first-look' deal with Miramax,
which gave the 'Max first shot at anything that the VA crew came up with.
From my understanding, the Miramax execs DID have first crack at producing
Mallrats, but declined. So, the details of the politiking aside, Kevin,
Scott, et al. took the script to Gramercy, who put up the production money
and distributed the film.
Fast forward a few years ----> Going independently once again, the VA crew
raised the money and made Chasing Amy. Mr. Harvey Weinstein himself was
rumored to be quite emotionally affected by the rough-cut, or so the story
goes. Miramax bought the film from View Askew, again pouring some money
into the post-production budget and again distributing.
Dogma was produced with Miramax money.
: I was thinking it was more like music companies where you have contracts and that sort.
Sometimes individuals (or even companies, but it's much rarer) ARE signed
to multi-picture deals with the larger studios. More often than not though,
individual projects are catch-as-catch-can, being shopped around until
somebody in some position of power green-lights it.
Always,
Michael Raben