'Greenlight's' last hurrah
'Feast' getting latenight rollout, DVD release
So, what do you do when the public has seen the infighting up close?
"Project Greenlight" -- the movie-contest skein, in part created by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, to give unknowns a chance -- became better known over its three seasons for on-camera headbutting than moviemaking. (One may have wondered whether the point was to give neophytes a break or to discourage regular joes from making movies.)
After creating the stinkers "Stolen Summer" and "The Battle for Shaker Heights," the show switched from HBO to Bravo, and its focus turned to making a genre pic that could actually make money. The resulting feature, "Feast," by John Gulager, wound up on the slate of the Weinstein Co.
TWC has figured out an innovative way to finally get the movie to auds. Call it the "sort of straight-to-video" rollout. TWC will give the pic -- about a group of strangers battling ghouls in an old tavern -- a national release of latenight shows over one weekend. It'll then land on DVD in October.
Industry typesreveled in each disastrous turn on "Project Greenlight." But the "winning" filmmakers may have been better off putting their wares on the kinder, gentler fest circuit. (Some of the show's alumni have been plugging away. "Stolen" helmer Pete Jones sold last year the spec script "Hall Pass" to 20th Century Fox. "Shaker" helmers Efram Potelle and Kyle Rankin are directing indie shorts through their Newborn Pictures label. And "Shaker" scribe Erica Beeney landed some writing assignments -- including a new "Gidget" pic that never got surfing.)
At the Weinstein Co.'s AFM event last year Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino schmoozed. Gulager was there, too. But when asked if he was promoting "Feast" with international buyers, he replied that he actually had just heard about the party and crashed it.
It remains to be seen whether the pic will get him on anyone's guest list.
