Warner Bros is spending an apparent $140m on Paul Thomas Anderson’s new film, according to a fresh report. More here.
For some time now, Warner Bros has been on an auteur recruitment drive, seeking to attract critically-admired filmmakers to its banner. The studio boss, David Zaslav, may be an arch-deleter of completed films and the architect behind the gutting of classic movie channel TCM, but he does seem to have a thing for working with visionary talent and seems willing to pay for it too.
In the past year, Warner Bros has green-lit films from ‘serious’ filmmakers and thrown some serious financial heft behind them too: Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Bride is said to be costing $100m whilst Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17 has been priced at $150m, an expensive price tag for a film releasing in the notoriously quiet month of January (although that wasn’t its original release window).
Then there’s Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, another purported $100m film which is said to include rights eventually reverting to Coogler, and David Robert Mitchells’ Flowervale Street, a $90m project that sounds gloriously weird given the price tag.
The more cynically-minded might just assume that Zaslav will hit the ‘delete’ button if he doesn’t think the films will make money and whilst he clearly has form in this area, the Warner Bros chief is more likely paying a premium for these projects because he knows that his studio needs to re-establish some degree of accord with filmmakers and audiences. That’s following several years in which frustrations have grown around Warner Bros’ rather dubious practices.
Will these films make money though? The most expensive project of the bunch is said to be Paul Thomas Anderson’s upcoming film, which is still untitled.
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that the project has a price tag of $140m, making it by far and away the most expensive film the director has ever made. Even Anderson’s most financially successful film, 2007’s There Will Be Blood, only managed to amass around half of that amount.
However, the report points out that the project has plenty going in its favour too. It’s said to be Anderson’s most ‘mainstream’ project by some way. It has a very bankable movie star in the form of Leonardo DiCaprio leading the cast, a summer release date with an IMAX run to boot and apparently, lots of stunts, car chases and explosions.
Still, with some reports suggesting the budget could be as high as $175m, there’s no doubt that the Warner Bros executives are going to have to market this one very, very well, especially as the film is likely to be aimed at an older audience bracket.
There’s also the fact that DiCaprio’s last film, Killers Of The Flower Moon was an expensive drama that financially underperformed, contributing to Apple’s reported decision to step away from wide theatrical releases. Still, this is Warner Bros, the same studio whose marketing department managed to turn Barbie into a $1.4bn movie through some inspired ploys, so there’s plenty of shrewd folks there who are probably cooking up some clever ideas as we speak.
Given the price tag, we can already see this film being one of those ones that the world determines ‘the future of original cinema’ upon as 2025 rolls around. It’s going to be one interesting narrative in a summer full of them. We’ll bring you more as we hear it.
