The_Hollywood_Reporter__February

The Business
Executive Suite
Now that you are in charge of both
Screen Gems and SPWA, will they
remain autonomous?
Yeah. They’ll remain autonomous
divisions. I don’t look at SPWA
as a releasing label. SPWA does
operate under the Stage 6 label
for our higher-profile stuff, only
because we didn’t think “Sony
Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions”
was a very good label to put on a
movie to consumers. Screen Gems
obviously will be more focused
on development and production
— SPWA being more of an indiefocused
label, working with
independent producers on either
productions or acquisitions.
How will Screen Gems change
under your leadership?
I think that’s going to evolve,
but I’m not sure it will change.
Screen Gems will fill a valuable
role as a lower- and modestly
budgeted production division
for targeted audiences. We’re
not going to try to be Columbia,
pursuing large tentpole movies
for a wide, wide audience.
TriStar is more of a dramatic,
adult-oriented, literatureoriented
division. There’s a great
space for Screen Gems to operate,
not only in the horror and
urban spaces where it has been
successful, but Clint had success
in other modestly budgeted
targeted movies, from Easy A
to The Vow to other movies that
might not feel like big Columbia/
TriStar movies. Certainly,
I’m not looking to make $100 million
movies.
How will SPWA and Stage 6 be
distinct from Screen Gems?
Stage 6 operates within SPWA.
I think SPWA’s going to continue
doing what it’s doing, making
and acquiring interesting and
adventurous movies. There is
some overlap with Screen Gems
product, be it Insidious or Don’t
Breathe or The Call — many of
which could be released under
the Screen Gems banner. But it’s
a different group of executives
who’ve had great success, and
I think will continue to pursue
1
1 A scoresheet from Game 5 of the 1965 World Series, which Dodgers fan Bersch
attended with his father. 2 Original Porky’s poster “given to me by writer-director
Bob Clark after we discussed a potential sequel idea.” 3 Bobbleheads
“representing a pet project I want to make about the 1948 [Harlem] Globetrotters.”
4 A box-office chart from the weekend Insidious: Chapter 2 debuted at No. 1.
what they’ve been doing. As an
acquisition entity, SPWA has
branched out to higher-budget
[fare] by acquiring most of the
international rights to Arrival,
which is certainly not a genre
movie, and we’ll continue to do
things like that.
Arrival made more money overseas
than it did domestically. Why didn’t
Paramount take that gamble?
I have no idea. We were circling
the movie at Cannes several years
ago. We were looking to take the
world on the movie, and then
we heard Paramount had stepped
up and bought U.S., Canada and
China. By the time we moved, we
took everything off the table that
we could.
What has been the most profitable
SPWA film to date for you?
Recently, Don’t Breathe [2016] was
extremely profitable for us. It was
a sub-$10 million movie, which
did about $160 million at the box
office. It also helped bring Fede
2
4
3
Alvarez to the studio. He’s now
doing the Girl in the Spider’s Web
movie [for Columbia]. That picture
was a success all the way around.
How would you characterize the
state of indie filmmaking right now?
It’s as robust as I’ve ever seen it.
There has been a huge infusion
of capital and high-net-worth individuals
coming into the space.
There’s some great independent
pictures being made. It feels like
it’s very healthy. We’re all challenged
by the market economics,
the streaming services and
people not going to theaters as
much, but the state of the industry
from a production and a
creative perspective is probably
at an all-time high.
Does the old adage that so-called
“black” movies don’t play overseas
still hold?
I don’t think that’s consistently
true. Movies that speak to a
uniquely American experience
don’t play overseas. Evangelical
Christian movies, as opposed to
biblical movies, might be more
American. Sports movies don’t
play, baseball movies especially.
A lot of dialogue-driven comedies
don’t play because it’s more
American in the humor. So I
think to the extent that African-
American movies speak to a
more Americanized experience,
they won’t play. But I’m sure
you can find numerous movies
with largely African-American
casts that have played big. Get Out
played well overseas, because I
don’t think it spoke to a uniquely
American experience.
Do you ever trade notes or wind up
competing with Sony Pictures
Classics’ Michael Barker and Tom
Bernard at festivals?
We wouldn’t compete, but we
certainly talk to them and coordinate
with them all the time.
Whiplash was an example where
[pre-Sundance] we had bought a
significant percentage of international,
and then they came in at
the festival and bought domestic
rights and most of the remaining
international rights. They’ve
released a number of movies
that we’ve bought either at festivals
or otherwise, like Austenland,
which we bought at Sundance.
Sometimes we buy pictures
in concert with them, sometimes
buying international where they
then stepped up for domestic,
and sometimes buying pictures
that they then agreed to distribute
for us. There’s a wide variety
of ways we can work with our
sister division.
You are one of the only high-level
executives to survive the Sony
hack. What was the fallout for you?
I don’t know how much of my
personal information was out
there because I didn’t want to
know. I signed up for the Cadillac
version of LifeLock for myself
and my kids. I think everybody’s
more careful with what they put
in writing. Doing less by email
and more by phone is far more
efficient anyway. We have a great
workspace here where we’re all
contained on a floor, and I’m on my
feet all the time in other people’s
offices because I find face-to-face
communication far more effective
in getting things done.
THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
40
FEBRUARY 7, 2018