THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER 59 SEPTEMBER 4, 2019
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STUDIO
S.help him care for his terminally
ill wife (Johnson).GREENLAND
STXinternational
Stars Gerard Butler
Director Ric Roman Waugh
Buzz Trump recently put
Greenland in the news, sparking
apocalyptic predictions. This film
follows a family’s fight for sur-
vival in the face of, you guessed it,
a cataclysmic natural disaster.TRUE HISTORY OF
THE KELLY GANG
CAA/UTA/Memento
Stars George MacKay,
Russell Crowe, Nicholas Hoult
Director Justin Kurzel
Buzz A fictionalized retelling of
the life and crimes of infamous
19th century Australian outlaw
Ned Kelly (MacKay).VIOLENCE OF ACTION
STXinternational
Stars Chris Pine
Director Tarik Saleh
Buzz Swedish helmer Saleh makes
his English-language debut with
this dramatic actioner that stars
Pine as a former Marine who joins
a paramilitary group in a desperate
attempt to support his family.THE BURNT ORANGE HERESY
CAA/UTA/HanWay
Stars Claes Bang,
Elizabeth Debicki, Mick Jagger,
Donald Sutherland
Director Giuseppe Capotondi
Buzz The Square star Bang plays
an art critic who agrees to steal
a priceless masterpiece from
reclusive artist Jerome Debney
(Sutherland) on behalf of a power-
ful collector (Jagger).COMING HOME AGAIN
ICM Partners/Asian Shadows
Stars Justin Chon, Jackie Chung,
John Lie, Christina July Kim
Director Way ne Wang
Buzz Indie stalwart Wang returns
with this drama about a Korean
American man who cares for his
ailing mother while trying to
master her traditional cooking.THE FRIEND
STXinternational
Stars Casey Affleck,
Dakota Johnson, Jason Segel
Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite
Buzz Manchester By the Sea's
Affleck stars in another
heart-wrenching drama about
a man whose family dynamic
is drastically changed when a
friend (Segel) moves in to‘Success for Our Films
Is Not Measured by
Traditional Metrics’In the wake of the underperforming Late Night, Amazon is trying
a shorter, Netflix-style release window, but insiders say the
strategy risks alienating filmmakers BY REBECCA KEEGANS
even months after Amazon
racked up a record $47 mil-
lion in acquisitions at
Sundance, the company’s film
division is heading into the fall fes-
tival season with a slate of movies
it now needs to sell to audiences.
After underwhelming box
office results for its first
Sundance buy, the
Mindy Kaling comedy
Late Night, which has
grossed $15.5 mil-
lion domestically since
opening in June, Amazon
is deploying an array of release
strategies for its Toronto-destined
films, including The Report, The
Aeronauts and Honey Boy.
There’s no question Amazon
had higher hopes for Late Night,
for which it spent $13 million on
U.S. rights and committed to a
wide release, but the streamer
says the calculus of an Amazon hit
is different from that of a standard
theatrical release.
“Success for our films is not
measured by traditional metrics or
simple box office reporting,” says
Matt Newman, co-head of movies
at Amazon Studios. “The theatri-
cal release is one path for us to
market a film before its Amazon
Prime Video release.”
For two of its awards season-
geared films, the streamer has set
release dates based not on when
a film will fare best in theaters,
but on when it will find the largest
audience on Amazon Prime. The
Adam Driver-Annette Bening CIA
drama The Report will open in
theaters Nov. 15 before premier-
ing on Amazon Prime on Nov. 29,
in time to reach Thanksgiving
weekend audiences. Similarly,
the Eddie Redmayne-Felicity
Jones hot air balloon adventure
movie The Aeronauts will open in
theaters Dec. 6 before premiering
on Amazon Prime on Dec. 20, to
reach year-end holiday audiences.
Those two-week releases are
a departure from how Amazon
attained its biggest film suc-
cesses — Manchester by the Sea
($47.7 million domestic) and The
Big Sick ($42.9 million domestic)
— both of which were handled by
third-party distributors and had
traditional theatrical windows.
Since Amazon launched
in-house marketing and distribu-
tion departments in 2017, the
company has yet to match those
heights. And Amazon Studios
head Jennifer Salke’s trio of filmFrom top: Annette Bening in
TIFF title The Report; Reid Scott
and Mindy Kaling in Late
Night, which has grossed only
$15.5 million domestically.executives — Newman, Julie
Rapaport and Ted Hope — have
taken time to find their footing in
an inhospitable box office climate.
The truncated releases for
The Report and Aeronauts are
modeled on the path Netflix pio-
neered in 2018 with its best
picture nominee, Roma,
but it’s a route that
risks what had been
one of the company’s
strongest selling points
to Hollywood’s creative
community, says analyst
Michael Pachter of Wedbush
Securities. “Amazon doesn’t care
if they lose $30 million,” Pachter
says. “They do care if they alienate
filmmakers. Amazon was able to
capitalize on being the benevolent
streaming service by giving film-
makers the full theatrical release.”
The company is heading to
Toronto with a whopping nine
movies to promote, including the
Kristen Stewart vehicle Seberg,
the French-language drama Les
Misérables and the Marie Curie
biopic Radioactive, and will likely
buy more.
“I’m looking at them as a
healthy place to sell movies right
now,” says one agency source.
“Late Night on the surface to us
didn’t work. But we don’t have
visibility into their Prime metrics.
They’re not a traditional studio.
We’re selling them content in the
same way we would with the other
buyers — when the deal is right.”SalkeHOT
LIST