Focus Features: Putting A Bad Year Behind Them

With all the studio arm indie divisions closing shop, I’m crossing my fingers for the folks at Focus Features – they actually give a sh*t about filmmakers. We don’t need to mention what happened with the parent company, and today’s press release sort of camouflages the mediocre 2009 year that is still unfolding. When you add filmmaker Henry Selick and Shane Acker’s numbers and subtract Ang Lee’s and Sam Mendes’ box office grosses and all the P&A costs, I’m sure that Focus’ “eighth profitable year in a row since their inception” is based on the extra revenue from DVD/Blu-Ray sales and by no clear box office successes. With the half a dozen titles (mentioned below) in the 2010 pipeline, I’m thinking James Schamus’ division might have a year with shades of green.

Focus commenced the year with an indie film (Sin Nombre) that took in a 2.5 million take without expanding beyond 100 theater mark, Coraline made a chunk of change and turned a profit in the U.S alone, Thirst and The Limits of Control hardly made a dent, Away We Go and Taking Woodstock turned out to be big loses. 9 will have broken even and A Serious Man is heading that way as well – I guess Miramax and Paramount Vantage would remind them to be weary of Oscar campaigns. And their last release of the year, we’ll find out soon enough what they can salvage with Pirate Radio.

2010 will begin with Greenberg, which is set for a March release and perhaps a showcase in Park City. This’ll be odd for Noah Baumbach who is used to releasing films at the end of the year, not the beginning. Not known for distributing doc films, I think there last doc release was The Kid Stays in the Picture, they’ll be delivering Babies in April. I’m hoping they come back to the original, Studio Canal title of “Baby(ies)” which I’ve been seeing for the past couple of years on the Cannes Croisette’s billboards.

Schamus claims in the press release that “next year’s Focus slate follows one of the company’s best years ever” and I think that it’ll be the remaining four titles listed that garner the most in terms of revenue. The company have pegged Anton Corbijn’s The American with an odd pre-TIFF, September 1st release – that weekend prior is usually reserved to titles that get dumped or are directed by Rob Zombie. I’m expecting a change in dates Clooney as an assassin.

Roman epic adventure The Eagle of the Ninth will get a nationwide third quarter release – I’m betting that swords and sandals to perform well.

Ryan Fleck’s It’s Kind of a Funny Story could breakout and perform well if either the college crowd/young adults come out in droves, or if the popularity in The Hangover’s Zach Galifianakis maintains itself until the November set date.

The final title on the list is Sofia Coppola’s Somewhere. I’m pretty sure pre-sales for this titles were great, and you know they’ll be looking to preem this at Cannes. Speaking of Cannes, nowhere in the press release do we find a mention of Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Biutiful? I’m not sure how to read this omission – is this a vote of non-confidence?