Hollywood could also be grappling with painful change however for Roeg Sutherland, co-Head of CAA’s Media Finance division and its Worldwide Movie Group, the disruption represents a possibility for the unbiased movie sector that he has supported for the previous 20 years.
“If there’s true disruption within the market, it implies that not sufficient films are being made by the studios. There are nonetheless slots to fill and there’s at all times somebody who desires to look at a film,” Sutherland advised the Zurich Summit on Saturday.
“If the studios are making much less films, which means we get to make extra films, after which we get to promote them. There’s an actual alternative for us to have an actual impression in the marketplace.”
Sutherland was talking in an onstage dialog on the Zurich Movie Pageant’s annual business conflab forward of receiving its Recreation Changer Award, celebrating his work getting a whole lot of flicks over the road.
Chatting with FilmNation Leisure Founder and CEO Glen Basner and Deadline’s Co-Editor-in-Chief Movie Mike Fleming Jr, Sutherland gave a candid and vigorous perception into his journey to turning into one of many key movers and shakers within the unbiased movie financing world.
He revealed he had by no means been tempted to observe his mother and father, Donald Sutherland and Francine Racette (who was within the viewers), or half-brother Kiefer Sutherland into appearing. Brothers Rossif and Angus are additionally actors. Other than a self-described lack of expertise for appearing, he mentioned his late father’s perspective to the method of moviemaking had additionally performed its half.
“My father would at all times say, ‘As an actor, you give 100% of your self’… he refused to look at his films, as a result of he felt like solely 50% of what he would give was really on the display screen,” mentioned Sutherland.
“That was fascinating to me, I noticed that I used to be rather more excited about controlling the entire, somewhat than controlling the half. In order that was my manner of justifying not appearing, despite the fact that I might have by no means gotten a job as an actor.”
His roster of jobs earlier than discovering his calling at CAA, ranged from film PA to movie editor and an especially transient stint as stand-in for Marlon Brando.
“That lasted all of 35 seconds,” he recalled of the latter gig, revealing Brando had kicked him off the set for speaking whereas the actor was attempting to study his strains between takes. It was bruising expertise, given Brando had been one in every of his life lengthy idols, in an admiration instilled in him by his mom.
Sutherland credited his father’s agent Ron Meyer with giving him his first break in CAA’s legendary mailroom.
“It felt a bit unusual. My mother and father didn’t notably love brokers. Rising up, the neighborhood of actors and artists round them weren’t at dinner, let’s consider, celebrating brokers,” he recalled. “I believed they have been sending me to jail, however it turned out to be the very best expertise I ever had in my life.”
Even then, Sutherland mentioned, it took him time to seek out his “spot” on the company.
“I used to be alleged to be within the expertise division, however I used to be not a pure match. And really what we do, the unbiased, worldwide stuff, didn’t actually begin till round 2005, or not less than, didn’t begin to flourish, as a result of every part was being made by studios,” he defined.
“I used to be thrown right into a division that was largely a servicing division for shoppers who had a undertaking that they needed to do once they weren’t engaged on a giant studio film. However then the enterprise advanced after the financial disaster in 2006 and much more of those films have been left to folks like us to go work out financing on.”
Some 20 years later, CAA Media Finance is the go-to for a lot of producers attempting to place collectively an elevated unbiased undertaking.
Glen Basner, Roeg Sutherland and Mike Fleming Jr on the Zurich Summit
Lengthy-time collaborator Basner advised 60 to 70% of the unbiased movies efficiently launched over the previous 20 years, had been supported in some form or kind by Sutherland and the Media Finance crew. Sutherland runs the division with fellow Co-Head Ben Kramer, additionally a perennial determine at main festivals and markets and who steers the dealmaking and operations with Sutherland.
“That’s possibly true,” Sutherland mentioned of Basner’s estimate, “however it doesn’t come from our group, it comes from our shoppers and we’re fortunate to symbolize a few of the greatest folks on the earth that give us the power to ship the packages that you just finance. We’re nice middlemen,” Sutherland responded.
None of it could be potential with out long-time trusted financing companions similar to Basner, AGC Studios CEO Stuart Ford or worldwide gross sales maverick Vincent Maraval, he added.
“Our goal is to ensure there’s a wholesome ecosystem within the market, to ensure that we deal with our shoppers and that we arrange films in an acceptable manner, that not solely respects their wants and their needs, but additionally the wants and needs of the movie financing neighborhood with worldwide distributors and whoever could also be financing,” mentioned Sutherland.
“Generally it’s worldwide offers. For essentially the most half, it’s piecemeal, with a international gross sales agent being a part of it, and promoting off worldwide territories, bringing in an fairness investor, ensuring that the fairness investor is in a protected place in the event that they go into making a film with out having distribution in place.”
Sutherland mentioned pulling collectively the finance for early movies in his profession similar to Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, starring Mickey Rourke, and Kathryn Bigelow’s The Damage Locker, had been a part of his studying course of.
“Whenever you’re that younger and don’t understand how something works, and sort of studying on the fly, you simply sort of belief the method. You don’t over complicate and overthink issues,” he mentioned.
The Wrestler, ©Copyright Twentieth Century Fox. Courtesy Everett Assortment
“Vincent Maraval advised me, ‘We’re going do The Wrestler.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, we’re going to do The Wrestler.’ Now, I might ask him about 400 questions on how a lot he can pre-sell, how a lot we’re going to have the ability to borrow towards the territories that he doesn’t presell, and the place am I going to have the ability to discover them at 4 o’clock within the morning when we have to signal a deal?”
An enormous a part of the training curve, mentioned Sutherland, was studying to roll with the punches that come up within the strategy of pulling a undertaking collectively.
“It’s just like the film Power Majeure. The avalanche goes to point out up sooner or later in time, after which it’s a query of whether or not you run off the balcony or, you keep there and defend your loved ones,” he mentioned.
Trying again on the raft of movies CAA Media Finance has helped to convey to fruition over the previous 20 years, Sutherland mentioned he and his crew would by no means search to take credit score for a movie’s existence.
“We assist the neighborhood get the instruments to know learn how to promote it, however it doesn’t occur due to us. Take Black Swan, very tough film to arrange, however its genius is Darren Aronofsky and Natalie Portman. Generally, it takes a bit little bit of assist to get folks to know what the director’s imaginative and prescient is and for them to attach with it. However finally, we’re simply facilitators.”
He advised that Black Swan had gotten misplaced in translation within the conversations between the director and the financiers. The problem had been that the screenplay learn like a drama, whereas Aronofsky’s imaginative and prescient was for it to be a psychological thriller.
“It wasn’t on the web page, so folks didn’t see it routinely. They’re like, ‘Is he going to inform us it’s a thriller after which ship a drama?” recalled Sutherland.
He stuffed the hole within the funds by way of producer Brian Oliver, who had raised $8 million from Louisiana-based traders on the time.
“He’s like, ‘Roeg, I’m going to make 4 horror films.’ And I’m like, ‘No, you’re not, you’re going to do Black Swan,” recalled Sutherland.
“That labored properly for him,” he added, saying Oliver had made $70 million on the again of his funding, after the movie grossed $329 million worldwide.
newer historical past, Basner recalled how Sutherland had spearheaded the digital Cannes market, with Maraval, when the bodily pageant had been shut down because of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“What have been we alleged to do? Lick our wounds and say, ‘Oh God, the enterprise is lifeless. We are able to’t create content material’,” he mentioned. “Individuals have been caught at residence. We had to determine a strategy to get films made. There’d by no means been a greater time for us to promote films. The one manner we might do this was to create these digital markets.”
“We’d have weekly telephone calls with 500 folks on it. We have been like, ‘How are we going to reorganize ourselves, and the way are we going to make it thrilling?,” he mentioned.
Sutherland added that the success of the initiative had been all the way down to the truth that your complete unbiased neighborhood had come collectively.
“The one manner that we succeed is once we work collectively. Once we work towards one another, nothing good occurs. When my complete crew comes collectively and works with your complete unbiased neighborhood and all of us come collectively, that’s once we’re profitable.”
Roeg Sutherland on the Zurich Summit
