A source told Reuters on Wednesday that Amazon plans to scale back buying indie films to focus on more high-budget movies. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pictured above at the Golden Globes
Amazon.com Inc, which has made waves in recent years buying art-house movies at the Sundance Film Festival, is heading to the prestigious event this week with a long-term change in the works: It plans to shift resources from independent films to more commercial projects, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The move reflects a new phase in the online retailer’s entertainment strategy. Initially, Amazon worked on high-brow movies that would win awards, put it on the map in Hollywood and help it attract top talent.
Now, Amazon wants programming aimed at a far wider audience as it pursues its central business goal: persuading more people to join its video streaming service and shopping club Prime.
The change in the movie strategy parallels a similar shift in Amazon Studios’ TV operation, which is also moving to bigger-budget fare.
Amazon expects to go after films with budgets in the $50 million range at the expense of indie projects costing around $5 million, one person familiar with the plans said on the condition of anonymity. Another person confirmed the overall strategy, adding that the Culver City, California, studio is still working out the details on how much of its film budget will go to these bigger releases.
Amazon declined to comment.
When Amazon first launched its film studio in 2010, they focused on making a name for themselves by buying low-budget films that could win awards. They accomplished that goal last year when they won their first Oscars for Manchester by the Sea (above) and The Salesman
Amazon has at least one film in the running for the Academy Awards – the indie romantic comedy The Big Sick
The course change comes after Roy Price, who led Amazon Studios from its inception in 2010 and was a champion of projects with awards potential, resigned in October.
Price’s resignation came just five days after television producer Isa Hackett accused Price of sexually harassing her at Comic Con in July 2015.
Just hours after Hackett’s account was published in the Hollywood Reporter, actress Rose McGowan took to Twitter and claimed that Price killed one of her projects after she warned the studio against doing business with her alleged rapist, Harvey Weinstein.
‘I forcefully begged studio head to do the right thing. I was ignored. Deal was done. Amazon won a dirty Oscar,’ she wrote.
The dirty Oscar seems to be a reference to Casey Affleck’s Best Actor win for ‘Manchester by the Sea’ last year.
He took home that award despite two women accusing him of sexual harassment, with a clearly perturbed Brie Larson making no effort to hide her displeasure when she was forced to handover the hardware to Casey per tradition as the previous year’s recipient of the Best Actress award.
Amazon Studios is in flux after the October resignation of Roy Price (left). Just a few days before Price’s resignation, Rose McGowan (right) accused him of not believing her accusations against Weinstein
McGowan said she repeatedly told Price about her rape at the hands of Weinstein in order to stop him from doing business, allegedly buying Manchester by the Sea at the Sundance Film Festival
McGowan did not identify Casey by name, but the only other Oscars that Amazon has won are the Best Original Screenplay award for Kenneth Lonergan (also for Manchester by the Sea) and Best Foreign Language Film for the Iranian drama ‘The Salesman.’
Amazon picked up ‘Manchester by the Sea’ at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival for a near-record $10 million, and the film ultimately ended up netting the movie industry upstart six Oscar nominations and two wins.
Those accolades came in addition to the impressive worldwide box office of over $75 million, an impressive feat given the very adult subject matter at the center of the film.
It is unclear what role Weinstein played in the funding or sale of Manchester, but he has worked frequently with the film’s two leads – Casey and Michelle Williams – as well as the executive producer of the picture Matt Damon.
He did not however have a credited part in the production, and spent last awards season championing his own picture, ‘Lion.’
Albert Cheng, the studio’s chief operating officer, has stepped in as interim head and is in charge of television projects, while Vice President Jason Ropell runs the film division. Both report to Jeff Blackburn, a Seattle-based senior vice president who wields broad authority at the company.
It is unclear who will permanently replace Price.
On the film side, Amazon is not moving all the way into blockbuster territory. The TV group had offered $250 million just for the rights to a fantasy prequel series of ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ according to people familiar with the matter. That is a far more expensive project, representing a bigger change in direction than what the movie division is considering, one source said.
Nor is Amazon abandoning indie films entirely. But industry sources are unsure how active the company will be at Sundance this year. The festival’s lineup is not believed to have a standout like ‘Manchester by the Sea,’ which Amazon bought at Sundance for $10 million and which went on to win two Oscars. Amazon and rival Netflix Inc in general have pushed up prices for such prestige fare.
Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s chief executive, recently told at least one industry executive that it is business as usual at the movie studio, a person familiar with the matter said. At Sundance, that could mean multi-million-dollar deals for films destined for theaters, as well as small deals by a separate team – Amazon Video Direct – that offers more modest payments for a project’s online streaming rights.
Still, several filmmakers were surprised recently when the studio turned away a handful of projects with budgets up to $6 million, which they believed fit the mold of Amazon’s 2017 hit ‘The Big Sick,’ another person familiar with the matter said.
It was not immediately clear if their rejection was due to Amazon’s new priorities.