Ever heard of Picturehouse? Not many have. It's a relatively new distribution company that finally gelled and took on a name earlier this summer. The venture is owned and funded by New Line Cinema and HBO Films productions and looks to be an indie outlet for 8-10 of those companies' films each year.
Why a new company? HBO and New Line are jumping on the bandwagon with other major studios to create a solid pseudonym under which they can publish their more artistic, "high-quality" films (i.e. whatever they can get for a reasonable price at Tribeca and Cannes). Essentially, it's an opportunity to take a chance on riskier movies without muddying up the books at the home office. OK, it may not be that shallow of an idea, but it's probably not far off.
What's the real reason behind these indie production units? If you don't care (frankly, I don't blame you) and would rather hear about Nicole Kidman's next movie entitled FUR (which probably isn't any more appealling), drop down about four paragraphs. Those of you who are interested (all three of you - you know who you are) in my boring diatribe about mainstream studios buying up indie films under pseudonyms, feel free to keep reading.
I'm not totally sure exactly what was going on in studio execs minds (dark, crazy places that they are), but here's my take on the basics. Studios are interested in one thing: money. They leave the creativity up to people like producers and directors, except when they think creativity isn't going to make the film more financially successful. At that point they begin to meddle and we end up with movies like Alien 3.
Something interesting happened though, around the time of the bizarre success of The Blair Witch project. [JOSH NOTE: Actually, Pulp Fiction is largely to blame for this... but Blair Witch played its part.] Studios began realizing that low budget films with a spark of creativity could actually make money, sometimes with an even greater percentage profit than big budget films. Small time studios like Lions Gate Films had been doing it for a while and were becoming quite successful.
Major film festivals (Cannes, Tribeca, Sundance, etc.) were proving to be homes for some pretty amazing independent films. Not wanting to damage the "indie" marketing value of the films with their big budget names, major studios decided they needed an art-savvy face under which they could buy up and distribute these not-so-mainstream titles. Thus was born the indie friendly film branches. Warner Bros. did the very thing when it spun off Warner Independent Pictures, the company responsible for distributing this summer's surprise hit March of the Penguins and the upcoming A Scanner Darkly.
Picturehouse Films is the latest such indie spin off. The funny thing is that its funneling films for New Line, a company that originally prided itself on being an independent film producer. I guess Lord of the Rings convinced them they were now playing at the grown up table and they decided it was time to branch out. In the last couple of years it has released and marketed smaller films under subsidiary names of Fine Line and Newmarket Films, but Picturehouse looks to become the distributor and marketer for those departments.
Welcome back, those of you who skipped ahead. I heard about Picturehouse while looking around at upcoming trailers and wasn't completely surprised to find that the company's first official film under its new name is yet another creepy looking indie film starring Nicole Kidman. Involuntary twitching set in as unwanted flashbacks from seeing Birth began washing into my brain. Prior to picking a new name for itself, Picturehouse had already released a couple of movies including Gus Van Sant's Last Days (the not-really-about-Kurt-Cobain movie about Kurt Cobain's final hours) and The Chumscrubber. Neither film faired very well with critics in the mainstream.
According to the Picturehouse Films website, (http://www.picturehousefilms.com) FUR is a film that "conjures an image of visionary artist Diane Arbus by intertwining a fictional romance with aspects of Arbus' life in order to explore the mysterious artistic development of a woman who is now regarded as one of the most influential photographers of all time." Now you know why New Line Cinema wasn't excited to put the phrase "from the studio that brought you Lord of the Rings" in there.
The movie stars Kidman (who plays Diane Arbus) and Robert Downey Jr. and is directed by Steven Shainberg. Not to be confused with any other Steven S-bergs out there, Shainberg doesn't have much of a resume except Secretary, a movie about a sadomasochistic, ex-mental patient personal assistant and a couple of short films starring Angelina Jolie from before she was famous. Given Kidman's recent choice of projects her presence isn't anymore encouraging. Apart from Arbus' interesting career in photography, the only bright spot for the film seems to be Downey Jr. in the cast. Could be brighter. Nothing so far indicates why the film is titled FUR and I'm not in any hurry to find out.
FUR, Picturehouse Film's first official release under its new title, rolls out sometime next year.
