\n\tWilliam Goldman\u2019s adage that \u201cnobody knows anything\u201d never gets old.<\/p>\n
\n\tIf studios and financiers knew what was going to work every time, everyone would be rich and the industry would be a lot less interesting. <\/p>\n
\n\tThe old saying reared its head today at the Zurich Summit<\/a> when filmmakers and brokers behind the year\u2019s horror phenomena Backrooms<\/a> and Obsession<\/a> admitted that they didn\u2019t know their films were about to go stratospheric. There\u2019s absolutely no shame in admitting that. No one knew quite how enormous both films would become, even if many clearly believed in the films and the filmmakers.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cYou know, it\u2019s funny,\u201d CAA Media Finance Co-Head Roeg Sutherland mused during a panel on the independent business. \u201cWe have a colleague in our department who sold Obsession. I can promise you, we had no idea that Obsession was going to become Obsession.\u201d <\/p>\n \n\tCAA co-repped the domestic deal with Capstone, selling the Curry Barker-directed movie out of Toronto for around $14M to Focus. The film went on to make a staggering $264M in the U.S. alone off a $1M budget. It took $520M global. <\/p>\n \n\tBut believing in a filmmaker is where it starts, added Sutherland. <\/p>\n \n\t\u201cI think the most important thing, is less about IP and genres, though those things can be important, but it\u2019s always about the filmmaker. Whether it\u2019s an established filmmaker or a discovery, it has to be someone that you\u2019re willing to go on a ride with. You never know what\u2019s going to happen. But that\u2019s the central element that will decide whether a movie is gonna be good or bad. The filmmaker is the person you\u2019re betting on.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tIn an earlier panel, Backrooms director Kane Parsons was asked whether he contributed to the distribution and marketing of the A24 smash. While A24 clearly mounted a brilliant campaign, Parsons admitted that there was a level of uncertainty over what the film could do and who exactly it would reach.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe truthful answer,\u201d the 20-year-old said about the horror film that took a whopping $400M global off a $10M budget, \u201cis that I don\u2019t think there was a real sense of what it would be prior to the release of the film. I don\u2019t. Even at the height of projections.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\tParsons added that he didn\u2019t know whether the film would truly click with fans of the creepypasta genre, but that he \u201cliked to think we did the core idea that they were expecting.\u201d Clearly he did, and plenty more.<\/p>\n \n\tLater in the day, CAA Media Finance co-head Sarah Schweitzman also noted the serendipitous element to this summer\u2019s record-breaking $4.7BN domestic box office. But also to the success speaking to a desire for authenticity and irreverence.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cWhen you look at the landscape today, the movies were so amazing this year, and they\u2019re so different to what they\u2019ve ever been, and unexpected in achieving the success that they\u2019ve they\u2019ve achieved. There is no way in which you can categorize the film business as unhealthy, because it\u2019s burgeoning, it\u2019s booming. I think that also speaks to where we are politically. There\u2019s a lot time for irreverence. It\u2019s a time for saying things that are maybe unpopular or maybe scary, but there\u2019s a real underground belief and desire to hear the truth, which is not necessarily something that everyone is encouraged to do right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"William Goldman\u2019s adage that \u201cnobody knows anything\u201d never gets old. If studios and financiers knew what was going…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":861682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[247168,88,206,85043,109539],"class_list":["post-861681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-backrooms","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-obsession","tag-zurich-summit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=861681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/861682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=861681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=861681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=861681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}