Most influential movie company you’ve never heard of
BURBANK, CALIF. — The mural in Todd Lieberman’s office captures the film producer’s uncanny year.
Taking up part of a wall in a room on the Disney lot, the artwork depicts a woman with a rose, a tattoo and an eye bearing the word “wonder.” It is meant to represent “Stronger,” “Wonder” and “Beauty & The Beast” — the three movies Lieberman and partner David Hoberman produced this year at their Disney-based Mandeville Films.
As difficult as it is to get even one movie made in brand-driven Hollywood, Mandeville in 2017 somehow finessed three, all very different — a blockbuster, a sleeper and a critical darling. Chances are if you’ve seen a hit movie this year, you’ve partaken of Mandeville’s handiwork. “We didn’t orchestrate it this way,” Lieberman said, commenting on the mural he commissioned. “But someone pointed out to me that this year we had three pillars — beauty, strength and wonder. Those strike me as the necessary traits for a good life.”
In a Hollywood often portrayed as a faceless machine, Hoberman, 44, and Lieberman, 65, epitomize the very human, very hands-on type of producers who can operate the gears. The pair’s knack for versatility has helped them emerge as a surprisingly potent industry force.
But maintaining that relevance in a fickle business currently beset by great change may prove as tricky as Beast’s effort to evade the jealous Gaston. In the months ahead, Mandeville’s success will depend on an increasingly fragile balance of personal taste and corporate imperative.
Certainly it would be hard to argue with its winning streak in 2017.
“Beauty” began when Disney executives asked Lieberman and Hoberman to develop a longgestating script, initially conceived as an adventure-drama, as a musical instead.
A budget upward of $150 million meant a new kind of gamble, for both Hollywood and Mandeville. But the material was handled with just the right mix of verve and darkness by director Bill Condon and newly hired screenwriter Stephen Chbosky. Boosted heavily by the presence of Emma Watson, the bet paid off, to the tune of $1.3 billion in global box office.
“Stronger,” based on the reallife story of Boston Marathon Bombing victim Jeff Bauman, was more organic. Lieberman and Hoberman heard about the survivor from an agent — Bauman had yet to even write a book. Mandeville worked with him on that and then hired director David Gordon Green. They then set up the project at Amazon Studios. (Like most producers with studio deals, Mandeville can shop a project elsewhere if its home company doesn’t want it.)
And though “Stronger” has underperformed commercially, it gained raves for its candid look at the complexities of patriotism. Star Jake Gyllenhaal also has generated Oscar buzz for his portrayal.
But it’s “Wonder” that may be the most surprising of the bunch — a feel-good charmer about a boy with facial differences, based on R.J. Palacio’s best-seller.
Tipped off to the novel just as it was being published, Lieberman and Hoberman soon met with Palacio, who granted them the right to shop it more than five years ago.
Then the rejections came. Few in Hollywood had heard of the book, and no one thought a film adaptation could be a hit. Mandeville struggled to crack the story, too, with many top screenwriters telling them they should consider gimmicks such as not showing the boy’s face until the end.
But the demurrals helped, because in the meantime the book was gaining popularity among millions of middleschoolers. Soon Julia Roberts, who’d read the book with her family, was calling Mandeville to be in it.
Made for $20 million, “Wonder” has just crossed $115 million in U.S. box office. It’s the kind of movie studios don’t make much and the kind of hit the American film business rarely sees.
In fact, a studio didn’t make it. The film was passed on by Disney despite the family-friendly appeal. Making films for $20 million, no matter the word-ofmouth potential, just doesn’t ignite Burbank like it used to.
“Wonder” ended up at Lionsgate, a so-called midmajor and a company that will still take swings on original films. (Disney still collects a percentage of revenue due to its overall deal with Mandeville.)
Humble beginnings
Mandeville began humbly. Hoberman founded it in the 1990s after a turn as president of Disney’s motion-picture unit. In 1999 he hired Lieberman, still in his mid-20s and fresh off an apprenticeship in the hustle-heavy part of the business known as foreign sales. The pair soon would move to Hyde Park, another production company, then reformed Mandeville in 2002.
What began as a mentorprotege relationship between the two men eventually would evolve into a more equal partnership. Lieberman and Hoberman found themselves bonded by the difficulty of their mission: create a slate of movies that could pack in audiences without sacrificing taste or even critical favor.
The pair endured their share of early missteps (2004’s dramacomedy “Raising Helen”). But they soon found their footing, and in a two-year span between 2009 and 2011 had the “Muppets” reboot, the surprise smash romantic comedy “The Proposal” and the seven-time Oscar nominee “The Fighter.”
In a movie-producing business populated by yin-and-yang partners, Hoberman and Lieberman are in fact very similar. Products of similar upper-middle-class Jewish upbringings, in L.A. and Cleveland, they have a knack for doing the heavy lifting on sets and a shared sensibility that might be described as quality-minded commercialism.
Some rival producers have wondered how Mandeville pulls off its bursts of productivity, but its little secret is that, because of overlapping tastes, Hoberman and Lieberman are rarely in the same city at the same time. Each takes lead where a film is shooting and tags out for the other when necessary.
All the while they are trying to balance their taste with the needs of a studio — especially a highly purposeful studio like Disney.
Uncertain future
Still, challenges abide. The future is generally uncertain for studio-based producers that follow their own taste; most major movie hits these days are highly calibrated, topdown affairs. Big film companies certainly always will need roll-up-their-sleeves types to execute a brand vision like “Beauty.” But will they embrace earthier entities that enjoy making throwbacks like “Wonder”?
Not lost on industry insiders is that two of Mandeville’s three 2017 movies weren’t made at Disney — a ratio that could widen even further once Disney acquires the vast pipeline of studio 20th Century Fox. Disney’s larger direction will strongly influence whether Mandeville re-ups with the studio when its current deal expires later in 2018.
Lieberman said he sees plenty of reason for optimism — for instance, that Disney’s planned streaming service makes room for riskier projects.
Mandeville also is continuing with some bigger-budget branded fare — it is behind development of “Prince Charming,” Disney’s latest catalog-mining effort, with Chbosky writing and potentially directing. It is a darker and not, at this point, definitively a musical tale, yet one that all parties hope rekindles the “Beauty” spark.
But Mandeville is really pushing its stack to the middle of the table with “The Aeronauts,” a 19th-century fact-based story of a rival scientist and hot-air balloonist that it will shoot in 2018 — with a budget more on the Disney end of the spectrum but hardly its franchise appeal. The studio tellingly making the film? Amazon.
Hoberman and Lieberman said all they can do is keep acting on what moves them and let the industry chips fall where they may.