FEATURE Following a last-minute, long-haul flight
from Hong Kong to Paris, Weinstein saw the rough-cut version of the fi lm and instantly fell in love with it. After protracted negotiations, The Weinstein
Company (TWC) took US rights alongside a slew of territories including the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Eastern Europe, Canada, Brazil and South Africa. Deals have since been done with Entertainment Film Distributors for the UK and Village Roadshow for Australia and New Zealand. “We would have taken the entire world if it
had been available,” says David Glasser, COO of TWC. “It’s always very important for us to con- trol the English-speaking territories for a whole bunch of reasons, such as being able to use our campaigns, the long-lead press and the momen- tum in the United States.” The deal was offi cially signed at the begin-
ning of Cannes, four days ahead of The Artist’s Cannes premiere on May 15. “We asked Harvey to respect our strategy and
The Artist stars Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo at the fi lm’s premiere at Cannes 2011 The pick-up Artists
Sales agent Wild Bunch adopted a unique strategy when pitching The Artist to international buyers. Melanie Goodfellow tracks the film’s history from sales mystery to global smash
the format was replaced by talking movies? This was the challenge facing Vincent Mar-
H
aval and the team at Wild Bunch when the company took on world sales of Michel Haz- anavicius’ The Artist ahead of last year’s Berli- nale. Their solution? Don’t. Don’t pitch it at all. Wild Bunch saw the allure of the black-and-
white romance — starring Jean Dujardin as a fallen, silent-screen idol opposite Bérénice Bejo as a rising, talking-picture starlet — but knew it would be diffi cult to sell. “We felt as soon as we told the buyers it was
silent and black-and-white, they would lose interest,” says Maraval. “We decided our strat- egy would be to reveal nothing and do the mini- mum, which is rare for us, and to launch the fi lm as a surprise in Cannes.” At Berlin in 2011, the company
signalled the production’s existence with a poster bearing the title but no other details, and did not discuss it with buyers. Getting the picture into 2011’s
Cannes was easier said than done. “Dujardin, Hazanavicius and I are not regarded as ‘tres Cannois’ if you like — we’re seen as too main- stream,” says the film’s producer, Thomas Langmann of Le Petit Reine, whose productions include
■ 48 Screen International at the Berlinale February 10, 2012
ow do you pitch a silent, black-and- white fi lm shot in the long-abandoned fi lm ratio of 1:33 to distributors in the 21st century, some eight decades after
such commercial fi lms as Asterix At The Olym- pic Games. Festival chief Thierry Frémaux eventually
selected the fi lm for an out of Competition slot just ahead of the press conference in April. A non-competitive screening suited Maraval, who wanted to keep the spotlight off the picture ahead of its premiere, but Hazanavicius and Langmann had other ideas. “We begged Thi- erry Frémaux to put us into Competition,” says Langmann. They got their wish just a week before the festival kicked off in mid-May, when it was announced as a last-minute addition to the Cannes Competition line-up. “I’d wanted to remain coherent with our sur-
prise strategy but Michel said screening out of Competition would be like going to a ball and dancing with his sister,” Maraval explains. In the meantime, Harvey Weinstein’s acqui- sition of the film began some two months before Cannes “by chance” after Maraval bumped into the US distributor at the Hong Kong Filmart
in March. “Harvey was at a loose end and asked me if I had anything to show him back in Paris. I said I did, but that I wouldn’t tell him what it was. He would just have to watch it. Har- vey has his good and bad sides, but one of the great things about him is
that he’s still curious enough to jump on a plane to watch a film he knows nothing about,” says Maraval.
not to announce the acquisition ahead of the premiere,” says Maraval. “He managed to con- tain himself until the eve of the premiere but then rumours started to circulate that he had bought the fi lm, and he cracked.”
A fl ying start The rest, as they say, is history. A raft of deals followed the film’s triumphant Cannes pre- miere, including to Spain (Alta), Germany (Del- phi), Italy (Bim), Belgium (Cinéart) and Japan (Gaga). The Artist fi nally hit theatres in France some
fi ve months later on October 12, when Warner Bros France released it on 295 prints. It topped the box-office chart in its first week with 443,000 admissions ($2.7m) and has taken $14.7m in the territory to date. “We set up a vast programme of pre-pre-
mieres based on its presence at festivals includ- ing Cannes, Deauville and Lyon, and also organised a tour by the director and cast of the provinces,” says Warner Bros France president Iris Knobloch. “We did everything we could to ensure the fi lm would touch a large public from the fi rst week.” In the US, TWC opened the picture on four
‘It’s a discovery picture, people go to see the film not quite knowing what to expect and leave
raving about it’ David Glasser, The Weinstein Company
screens, in New York and Los Angeles, on November 25 and widened the release progres- sively. “We believe the picture has very strong world-of-mouth potential. It’s a discovery picture — people go to see the fi lm not quite knowing what to expect and leave raving about it,” says Glasser. “It is a very similar strategy to The King’s
Speech. You allow the fi lm to gain momentum and, touch wood, a couple of award nomina- tions and these two things, combined with a smart marketing campaign, can create a solid awareness and audience.” Hazanavicius, Dujardin and Bejo have been
putting in appearances at US events such as the New York Film Festival last September and an AFI Fest gala screening at Grauman’s Chi- nese Theatre back in November. The Artist has also picked up a raft of US critics’ awards and was named Time magazine’s fi lm of the year in mid-December. “The Time news is an exciting development
and it enforces our plan,” explains Glasser. “Of all the pictures I have had the pleasure of work- ing on… this one has been such a fun ride.”
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