H'wood hangover
After deal, studios may take months to ramp up
After navigating a maze of labor stress during the past year, the biz must now juggle an array of finished pic projects rushed into production while also trying to keep an eye on new opportunities.
The task is a complex one, as film production, acquisition and distribution -- and especially the budgets thereof -- were all thrown into disarray by the threat of dual strikes by SAG and the Writers Guild of America. When, then, will the industry get back on the beam?
Fall, at the earliest, is the answer most film mavens offered Monday.
Said one Paramount exec: "There will definitely be a couple of months of lull inbetween because nobody can make deals right now. We pre-made a bunch of movies so you won't really notice a break in flow in terms of our upcoming slate. Everyone has been operating under a de facto strike because no one could put anything into production after April 1."
TV execs, of course, haven't been sweating as much as their bigscreen counterparts, especially because actors are added last in the mix, once scripts have been written and sets have been designed. The timing is also more favorable, as most new and returning shows won't start shooting until late July or early August.
And thanks to WGA strike preparation, a higher-than-usual number of series already have episodes in the can (such as Fox's "Undeclared" and NBC's "Law & Order: Criminal Intent").
Three major film studios, Warner Bros., Universal and Paramount, confirmed Monday that they plan to ramp up slowly, starting production only on a couple of small-scale pics in the fall.
Warners execs noted the studio front-loaded its production slate more than most rivals, putting 34 films into production between last year and the June 30 deadline.
Aside from one or two solely WB-financed pics, said one exec, "I doubt we will do more than that because we've already used a lot of our budget. The one or two films ready to go are smaller films that will depend on cast availability and finding locations and putting together a band of people including a crew."
David Matalon, prexy-CEO of Fox-based New Regency, said the company made five pics in the first half of the year -- its output increased by the strike threat. In the second half, money is available but no scripts are ready.
Another high-profile production company matched that mark, making five pics in the first half of the year. But it has nothing skedded for the rest of the way.
"This is a material-centered business," noted one principal at the company. "If someone walked into any studio with a dynamite script and package, he would get a greenlight."
The lights at Fox and U could flash green more often than at rival studios, several top agents assert suggest.
"The honest truth, this strike hasn't really slowed us down," stressed one Fox exec. "We've been pushing forward and moving ahead hoping that the strike would settle -- what the strike affected was timing, not the numbers" of pics.
In the absence of fierce competition for stars and directors, however, those with the money and inclination to do a deal can do so at a more relaxed pace.
Top talent in no rush
Still, a primary indicator of the state of the pic biz is the commitment level of top talent, which appears to be flagging in the summer heat. One veteran agent doesn't foresee any of his A-list clients returning to work any earlier than February. Most don't need to, as their services were so much in demand earlier that they accrued a series of sizable paychecks.
The herky-jerky flow of this movie year means that once things rev up again by November or so, the end-of-the-year holidays could undercut much of the momentum.
Bulging pipelines
Meanwhile, studios have pipelines bulging with finished projects collectively worth hundreds of millions.
Big-budgeters such as "Minority Report," "Time Machine," "Stuart Little 2" and "Spider-Man" all wrapped principal photography prior to June 30 so as to dodge SAG trouble. Yet most won't be released until a full year from now (except for DreamWorks' "Time Machine," which is slotted for Christmas).
The question, then, is whether studios will funnel more funding to extend the cramped post-production process or finish their films as planned and watch as interest payments mount. At a cost of $90 million, for example, "Minority Report" could be an expensive project for Fox to have collecting dust for six months.
But industryites say that most productions will likely spread out the time required for post and spend the same amount of money as was previously budgeted by hiring smaller crews over a longer period of time rather than larger crews during a tighter schedule to meet a pic's release date.
Yet any extra spending on f/x and post production would be a tonic for an industry that was hit hard by strike fears and had to watch available projects drastically dwindle until next spring and summer.
However the protracted post-production puzzle is solved, it illustrates the kind of ripple effects Hollywood may feel well into 2002. (What resourceful exec won't be sorely tempted to blame some bomb on the non-strikes back in 2001?)
Despite planning to take a break in production starting in July, "Men In Black 2" and the next two installments of "The Matrix" will now proceed uninterrupted with their shooting schedules in Los Angeles, New York and Sydney.
Opportunities for indies
On the low-budget end of the spectrum, several indie outfits avoided the production frenzy by betting that SAG would grant them waivers to finish indie pics amid a walkout.
Killer Films, to cite one Gotham-based example, "is different from the studios in that we had contingency plan," said Killer director of development Brad Simpson. "Things we were financing independently have been chugging along."
But with the strike threat easing, the shingle has discovered an encouraging flip side of the majors' drought of top-tier stars. Many actors' fall schedules are wide open, affording plenty of room to maneuver in indie casting.
A case in point is Todd Haynes' "Far From Heaven," which starts lensing this fall with Julianne Moore in the lead. "It's opened up a lot," said Simpson. "Almost everyone we're talking about is available. Most agents I've been talking to have been so bored the last two months."
(Jonathan Bing, Claude Brodesser, Cathy Dunkley, Marc Graser, Michael Schneider and Tim Swanson contributed to this report.)
