FEATURE FilmNation production The Raven
FilmNation building T
here cannot be many dishes cooked up in Glen Basner’s family kitchen that have gone on to be quite as successful as Film- Nation. Three years ago, the widely
respected former head of sales for Focus Fea- tures and The Weinstein Company sat down by the stove with a staff of three to build a modern sales, production and fi nancing company. Fast forward to the present and the FilmNa- tion CEO and his 23 employees in New York and Los Angeles are riding high with an acclaimed sales slate that includes the spectacu- lar $279m international performance of The King’s Speech (pictured, below). President of production Aaron Ryder, vastly experienced and equally admired in his fi eld, has added a new dimension to FilmNation, developing a pipeline that is drawing some of the most dynamic fi lm-makers working today including Oren Peli and Oliver Hirschbiegel. The first
two productions, James
McTeigue’s The Raven and Mark Tonde- rai’s House At The End Of The Street, will open theatrically next spring and Ryder is in Arkansas until mid-November over- seeing production on the third, Jeff Nichols’ Mud.
“Because we like all types of films, we wanted to be in the specialty business, the genre business and the commercial business,” says Basner. “[We want to work] on a roster of titles like Sanctum, or the Almo-
mme al ■ 14 Screen International at the AFM November 3, 2011
dovar [The Skin I Live In] or the new Terrence Malick or Oren Peli’s untitled fi lm.” Backed by US property moguls Steve Samu-
els (who produced and fi nanced Michael Clay- ton), Anthoni Visconsi and Dominic Visconsi, FilmNation now has the capital to fully fi nance projects. The fi rst is an untitled genre fi lm from Paranormal Activity creator Peli, which will start shooting soon in Eastern Europe. “There have been milestones in the last three years that I look back on and see where we stepped up,” says Basner. “One was when… The King’s Speech producer namechecked us to the world during his Oscar acceptance speech. Then when I saw the FilmNation logo on the Palais in Cannes in front of [The Skin I Live In]. And there was waking up recently to see Sanc- tum passed $100m in worldwide box office while on the same day we went into pre-produc- tion on Oren’s movie.”
Basner’s charm belies a mind as sharp as they come and his calcu- lated approach to building the business is yielding dividends. Fuelled by sales on The King’s Speech and cave-diving adventure Sanctum, which was released in both 2D and 3D, the company has seen its titles gross more than $200m this year-to-date at the box offi ce in the terri- tories it controls.
The sales slate, boosted by
Glen Basner and Aaron Ryder tell Jeremy Kay their recipe for success: whip up commercial productions, add a sales roster from leading directors, and feed a network of international distribution partners
‘It’s our approach to deliver films that can be successful, irrespective of how they work
in the US’ Glen Basner, FilmNation
Glen Basner
Aaron Ryder
»
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64