HOLLYWOOD LIMBO
Even good movies can languish on the shelf
On paper, it must have looked like a movie that couldn’t miss. The director is a well- regarded Oscar- winning European veteran. It’s based on a critically acclaimed U. S. novel. The handsome leading man has starred in one of Hollywood’s most successful comedy franchises. The beautiful leading lady, his co- star in two different hits with multiple Oscar nominations, enjoys both critical cachet and massive box- office clout from some of the decade’s biggest blockbusters.
Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence starred together in Silver Linings Playbook ( earning Lawrence Oscar and Golden Globe wins) and again in American Hustle. He’s topped the box office with the Hangover franchise, she with The Hunger Games. So you might think pairing them again would be an easy, winning deal.
And yet Susanne Bier’s new film Serena has attracted minimal buzz, limping into Canadian theatres more than two years after it was shot. This seems especially cruel given that Lawrence’s other movie in theatres — the latest Hunger Games instalment — may become the year’s highest- grossing film. Cooper has a likely lock on an Oscar nomination for his lead role in another of the season’s mostanticipated releases, Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper.
Moviegoers who see these familiar faces on the Serena poster may be perplexed. Yet Serena shares its sad lot with many films that lost their lustre as they languished in post- production limbo.
In the case of Bier’s movie — the Danish director’s second and most ambitious English- language effort — things went wrong when the independently financed production failed to attract a major distributor. It continued to garner poor reception within the industry as it underwent several recuts. As one top buyer who passed on Serena told The Hollywood Reporter, “The film was so edited, it made no sense.”
Given how difficult it is to finance and mount any production, filmmakers may be forgiven for believing they are in the clear once the movie is shot. But for many movies, that’s when the problems really begin.
I Love You Phillip Morris, a daring comedy that had a rapturous reception at Sundance and Cannes in 2009 and should have heralded a comeback for star Jim Carrey, took nearly two years to make it into theatres due to legal issues over its distribution rights. Margaret, a weighty drama by playwright and filmmaker Kenneth Lonergan starring Anna Paquin, was shot in 2005 but released only in 2011 after years of litigation between its backers and battles over the final cut. As for the sharp- witted teen slasher flick All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, seven years passed between its high- profile sale at the Toronto International Film Festival and its U. S. release in 2013.
Before succeeding back on home turf with Goon and The F Word, Canadian director Michael Dowse experienced a similarly long delay with his first project for a Hollywood studio. A 1980sset ensemble comedy starring Topher Grace and Anna Faris that was shot in 2007 for Universal under the original title of Kids in America, Dowse’s film hit a roadblock at a fateful early screening.
“We basically had a film that everybody really liked,” Dowse says from his home in Montreal. “Unfortunately, it was given the kiss of death by an executive at the studio — we were DOA after the first preview. Even though we spent a lot of time and effort fixing things, that one incident put it on the shelf.”
Dowse says Universal had several issues with the film, though Grace has suggested the problems largely stemmed from the young characters’ cocaine use. The movie stayed on that shelf for nearly three years as its producers searched for a new taker. Having since moved on to other projects — the Showcase series The Foundation and a big- screen sequel to his 2002 cult fave Fubar — Dowse found himself in the odd position of doing reshoots years after the situation had originally soured. The movie would ultimately be released in March 2011 as Take Me Home Tonight.
A spell in Hollywood limbo need not always have a tragic outcome. In some cases, it has even given a heroic air to movies that may have once seemed doomed.
David Hughes, a British journalist and screenwriter who recounts Hollywood’s most tortuous production processes in Tales from Development Hell, cites the 1985 dystopian fantasy Brazil as one such famous example.
“Sometimes you just need to trust the artist and maybe give them enough money to finish the job,” Hughes says. “Or enough rope to hang themselves, as the case may be.”