Classy Classics takes on new role

SPC to focus less on foreign films, fest pickups

By STEVEN ZEITCHIK

The Sundance Film Festival is familiar territory for Tom Bernard and Michael Barker; they've been buying movies there since the fest started. But this year, Sony Pictures Classics will approach Park City with a different mindset.

Barker and Bernard have come to a conclusion not unlike one reached by competitors such as Focus and Fox Searchlight: Relying on the finished-film market is no longer a valid business plan.

To get what you want, you have to be more willing to do it yourself. That means production headaches, a bulkier release schedule and higher budgets.

Barker and Bernard say that, until now, their films' average budgets were about $6 million each. Now, they plan to release films with budgets that could run up to $15 million. Filmmakers, however, will always have final cut.

Says Bernard: "How many places are you still going to get that?"

SPC will still release their usual range of 16 to 22 films a year, but will favor the upper end of the register. And while foreign films and festival pickups will remain a key part of the slate, Barker says they won't be at the forefront in quite the same way.

Sony Classics' new game plan also reflects the needs of its parent company in that Sony, while respecting the Barker-Bernard charter of autonomy, clearly needed to release films above and beyond the festival pickup model.

The unit's response is reflected in Robin Swicord's feature adaptation of "The Jane Austen Book Club" starring Maria Bello and Emily Blunt. Now in post, the SPC project was developed under Amy Pascal and is being produced by John Calley.

The duo says last year's Sundance opener, "Friends With Money," provides a template for their plan. SPC joined the Nicole Holofcener-directed drama early, linking with financial partners. With a cast that included Jennifer Aniston, the femme friendship pic offered what they wanted: commercial prospects with a name cast on a low budget.

Barker and Bernard say a $14 million cume at the domestic box office meant a good return on a modest investment, with a lot of after-market potential. (This year, SPC will bring Luc Besson's Paris-set love story "Angel-A" to Sundance.)

The execs are following a similar template with "The Children of Huang Shi." Now shooting on location in China, the Roger Spottiswoode pic stars Jonathan Rhys-Meyers as the rescuer of children orphaned during the Sino-Japanese war. Pic could be positioned as a prestige movie that, thanks to Rhys-Meyers, appeals to a younger and wider audience.

"It's an organic change within the company, but it's also an organic change within the marketplace," says Barker, holding forth at the company's charmingly cluttered offices in the Sony building in midtown Manhattan, filled with Bernard's hockey paraphernalia and Barker's gaggle of Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes awards (won when a movie earns a certain number of good reviews from the site), along with the more typical posters and screeners.

Change has never been high on SPC's to-do list. Friends call them hard-charging and financially shrewd; the less friendly might say feisty.

Everyone acknowledges they're two film-literate execs who have done the improbable: survive in a specialty world that has been buffeted by change.

In many ways, SPC is the same as when it was founded 15 years ago. Production and acquisitions chief Dylan Leiner is what passes for an SPC rookie: He's been there 13 years.

However, Barker and Bernard say they are ready to make some serious tweaks.

The year should see SPC release a spectrum of pics that includes a Jude Law-produced remake of "Sleuth" (in which Law will star opposite original thesp Michael Caine); and an animated movie about the Iranian revolution, "Persepolis," based on the popular graphic novel.

There is also more traditional SPC fare, such as the East German period drama "The Lives of Others," a Chow Yun-Fat martial arts movie, and Errol Morris' Abu Ghraib docu "S.O.P.: Standard Operating Procedure."

SPC has had prior dabblings in bigger-budget movies, such as the star-studded adaptation of "The Merchant of Venice" and last year's Oscar darling, "Capote." However, the new plan calls for more of these projects, with earlier involvement in their production.

In some ways, 2007 is an odd year for the company to shift focus. At the Toronto Film Festival last fall, wags kidded that Sony Classics wanted to lock up every spot on the foreign Oscar list after it purchasd the official Netherlands selection, Paul Verhoeven's political thriller "Black Book"; the company also owns the selections from China, Germany, Switzerland and Spain.

But Barker says the company's shift shouldn't affect foreign films, pointing to the commercial viability of "Volver," the company's breakout "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" ($200 million-plus worldwide) and current non-SPC hits like "Pan's Labyrinth."

The pair also doesn't see the new slate affecting their famously low-spend, high-creativity marketing. Bernard likes to talk about "several audiences" for a film -- that "Black Book" could find an audience among both fans of Central European cinema as well as those of slick Hollywood thrillers.

So with "The Jane Austen Book Club," the company hopes to tap into an arthouse audience that might appreciate the same Austen novels as the movie's characters as well as a female demo that it can target with promos at real-life Jane Austen book clubs.

"This is a big change, but it's not a big change," says Barker.

Traditionally clean-shaven, Barker has grown a thick black beard in the past six months.

It's tempting to see the change as symbolic of his company's growth: Small and cosmetic, but not insignificant.