A lot riding on Les Misérables
WORKING TITLE AND UNIVERSAL have high expectations for musical-turned-movie with star-studded cast
LOS ANGELES — Early in the coming movie adaptation of Les Misérables, Anne Hathaway and a group of grimy factory workers sing about “another day dawning.” Will it be a better one? Or will their toiling bring “nothing for nothing”?
Working Title Films, which co-produced Les Misérables with Cameron Mackintosh, is confronting the same questions as it amps up an already aggressive awards campaign for the film. The all-star movie musical could pop at the multiplex, sweep into the Academy Awards and instantly recharge the company, which has had a bumpy few years. Or Les Misérables could end up like the 2004 adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera: lacklustre ticket sales, a few Oscar nominations, no wins.
Working Title was once one of Hollywood’s most reliable suppliers of classy commercial movies: Fargo, Billy Elliot, Elizabeth, Bridget Jones’ Diary, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Pride & Prejudice. But the company, which has 53 Oscar nominations and six wins on its résumé, has lost its way in recent years. It has still delivered the occasional gem — Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy was one — but misses have far outnumbered hits.
Like many specialty-film suppliers, Working Title was knocked off balance by a variety of forces. DVD sales fell off a cliff. Audiences started to reject romantic comedies, which had been one of its most dependable genres. (Adjusting for inflation, the company’s Love Actually, directed by Richard Curtis, took in $300 million worldwide in 2003.) Meanwhile, Universal Pictures, which pays Working Title’s script development costs and finances most of its movies, went through a management turmoil.
The upshot: Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner, Working Title’s chairmen, started to stray from what they did best. “We made small films with big budgets, and that is never good,” Fellner said, speaking of disappointments including the war drama Green Zone, the newspaper mystery State of Play and the period comedy Pirate Radio.
“We made some decisions that weren’t the right ones,” he added bluntly.
Les Misérables, along with Working Title’s much smaller-scale Anna Karenina, may well be a return to form for Fellner and Bevan. It’s still early, but Les Misérables, which cost a relatively cheap $61 million to make, is shaping up as both a blockbuster and a major awards contender. While some Oscar voters have been turned off by its length — two hours and 38 minutes — buzz from industry screenings has been overwhelmingly ecstatic, especially pertaining to Hathaway, who plays the dying Fantine.
Although a movie critic for The Hollywood Reporter gave Les Misérables a scathing review Thursday, the publication lists the movie as a “front-runner” in nine Oscar categories. Deadline.com deemed it “an instant major contender” after late November screenings in New York and Los Angeles.
The hyper-stylized Anna Karenina, which cost about $30 million to make, is having a rougher go of it. Bevan and Fellner hoped that pairing Keira Knightley with the director Joe Wright for a third time — they collaborated on Pride & Prejudice in 2005 and the critical darling Atonement in 2007, both for Working Title — would deliver similarly robust results. Reviews have been mixed, however, and ticket sales have been solid but not spectacular.
Anna Karenina will almost assuredly receive Oscar attention in categories like costume design, which could give it a box-office boost.
Working Title’s movies have always played better overseas than in North America. In the late 1990s, with the international success of films like its Dead Man Walking, the production company became known in Hollywood as the Miramax of Europe. Now, with the movie business growing increasingly global, Working Title’s knack for “speaking to an international audience,” as Donna Langley, Universal’s co-chairwoman, put it, makes Bevan and Fellner “crucial” partners.
Fellner and Bevan regrouped partly by leaning harder into some of their core creative relationships. They looked to Wright to make Anna Karenina, for instance. Curtis has a comedic drama coming in May called About Time, starring Rachel McAdams and Bill Nighy. “Tim and Eric create a very supportive and safe environment,” Wright said. “They’re taking creative risks, and that is extraordinarily important for the future of film.”
Les Misérables, directed by Tom Hooper, who won an Oscar last year for his direction of The King’s Speech, may not seem like much of a risk. It’s based on a wildly popular musical seen by an estimated 60 million people in 43 countries. Along with Hathaway, Les Misérables stars Hugh Jackman and Russell Crowe, among others.
But the movie, based on Victor Hugo’s monumental French Revolution novel, is “not a slam dunk,” Langley said. Musicals, much less period ones, can be box-office poison. The story is also quite bleak; its criminals, revolutionaries (and sewers) are starkly real on screen.
On the other hand, moviegoers may identify more than ever with the tale of haves and have-nots. And Bevan hopes a creative decision to have the cast sing live on set (instead of lip-synching) will engage audiences.
“It’s almost alive experience and brings a whole different dimension to this film, something that you haven’t seen,” Bevan said. “It adds a slight danger — more visceral, more exciting, more emotional.”