by FilmInk Staff
The impact of streaming on the indie film scene is deep, and it’s changed the way that films have been financed for decades, producer Stephen Woolley told FilmInk.
“We’ve always made films in the traditional method,” he said. In short, that means partnering with “small friendly distributors we’ve known over the years” and going to the bank pre-sold. “We then take the movie to American and make a deal there.”
Woolley, who’s been a fixture on the UK and international indie scene for four decades, made a lot of fine and successful pictures this way. Based in the UK, Woolley first founded Palace Video with Nik Powell, in the early ‘80s, then Palace Pictures. They made movies with Neil Jordan like Mona Lisa (1986) and The Crying Game (1992) and helped filmmakers like Peter Greenaway, the Coen brothers, Derek Jarman, and John Waters reach a new audience.
There were many other ventures. A deal with Miramax. Time in LA. Oscars. Tom Cruise in Interview with a Vampire.
“We made a lot of movies with BBC Films and Film 4,” he said. “That traditional model worked well for us. There’s ups and downs. Sometimes you sell your film for not enough. Sometimes you sell it, and it does not achieve the kind of money people hoped.”
Since 2002, Woolley’s focus has been on Number 9 Films, established with long-term partner Elizabeth Karlsen. Their credits include Todd Haynes’ Carol (2015), Great Expectations (Mike Newell, 2012) and the hit Made in Dagenham (Nigel Cole, 2010). They have two recent films: Mothering Sunday (Eva Husson, 2021) and Living, adapted from Kurosawa’s masterpiece Ikiru (1952) and directed by Oliver Hermanus.
Woolley concedes that the ‘traditional model’ is coming to an end. “The alternative [model] are the streamers. You basically get your fee, and you get your financing up front which is really important…”
Still, what the streamers want to pay for are, Woolley says, “the kind of films they want, and that might not tie into what you are trying to do.”
Besides, there is a further disruption; as the streamers rise, physical media further declines and the once lucrative very long ‘snail trail’ of revenue from home video profits can no longer be relied upon.
“That is exactly right,” Woolley said. “We don’t have a great tradition in the UK of holding onto our rights like they do in France. They can finance a film entirely in France.”
Still, he says he is optimistic about the future. “Our films are difficult to get made. Now, if someone is going to give you money no matter who it is – you think, ‘great’.”
For years now, filmmakers have complained that drama in theatrical is ‘dead’. Woolley says that this issue can once more be led back to the impact of the streamers. Still, drama had to be ‘slipped into genre’, in disguise, even as far back as the ‘80s.
“The first film I ever made was The Company of Wolves (Jordan, 1984), which was a horror film that was not quite a horror film,” he said. “Absolute Beginners was a musical that wasn’t quite a musical. The Crying Game seemed like a thriller… but it was really a drama. I’ve always subverted genre.”
Today though, it is the streamers that are covering drama brilliantly he says, attracting A list stars, and top talent and techs, making feature production more expensive. Meanwhile, crews are attracted to the glamour, prestige and twenty-week shoots of something like Bridgerton.
“I don’t think drama is first choice for the cinema experience,” Woolley said. “People consume it at home, it is being squeezed, but there is a slither left, and you get an audience for something like The Father.”
The UK can still attract mega-budget mainstream productions (Harry Potter, Bond), but these are not quite wholly indigenous in character. Meanwhile, British cinema has never been first choice for British cinemagoers (“I think the last time we topped the box office was in 1943”.) Bu, Woolley says, the audience is there, at home, in Australia, in Spain, and Canada.
“People in those territories – and others – love a certain type of Brit cinema and the problem might be that we are making too many films,” he said. “I mean, when we were making Mona Lisa, we were probably making ten or twenty movies a year in the UK. The ratio today is hugely different.”
Principals of UK’s Number 9 Films, Elizabeth Karlsen and Stephen Woolley, will appear in conversation as guests at this year’s Screen Forever conference, March 28 – 30, 2022 on the Gold Coast.
