There’s nothing that angers Hollywood executives more than a small-budget film finding huge box office success. The fact that there are currently two inexpensively-produced films raking it in at the box office has turned into a full-on catastrophe for many studios. These are the same studios who just want to make sequels, remakes and anything with a known IP. Those studios will cut $150 million checks for Play-Doh: The Untold Story or Avengers 7: Nobody Wants This. But those studio heads would have balked at the very idea of spending $750K to make Obsession, or $10 million for Backrooms. Well, Tom Cruise’s CAA agent Maha Dakhil is getting studio lashings for admitting what should be obvious: that the success of Backrooms and Obsession is amazing for the film industry and that directors Kane Parsons and Curry Barker are ushering in another age of exciting, small-budget films which speak to a younger audience.
Maha Dakhil just can’t catch a break. The outspoken CAA super-agent who represents everyone from Tom Cruise to Natalie Portman to Anne Hathaway, recently told attendees as part of a Forbes Iconoclast Summit in New York on June 3 that filmmakers don’t necessarily need film executives to execute their vision.
“We are seeing that we don’t even need studios to green-light ideas. We just need talent and courage,” said Dakhil who, we are told, was referencing the breakout hits “Obsession” and “Backdoors” which have prompted all sorts of chest-beating within a Hollywood desperate for any hopeful news about the future of moviemaking.
Well, it turns out Dakhil’s comments rankled some actual studio executives, some of whom sit on the greenlight committees for major studios. Says one: “Is Tom Cruise going to self-fund? Is the Church of Scientology going to pay for everything he does? How do you make ‘Digger’? Who pays for that?”
“Digger,” of course, is Warner Bros.’ upcoming Cruise movie that costs anywhere from $125 million to $200 million, depending on who you ask. A Warners rep says the budget of the Alejandro González Iñárritu-directed, black comedy is $125 million, while a studio insider says it is “pushing a $200 million, which is insane.” Either way, it represents a figure that can only be approved by a … studio. Asks another top manager, “Does CAA really want her out in the world talking like that?”
But other veteran execs involved with the breakout projects have been publicly making the rounds praising the films on panels, and even chastising Hollywood studios, with no blowback. Jason Blum, an executive producer of “Obsession,” likened Barker and Parsons’ films in a recent talk at the producers guild to nothing less than the ’70s new wave of cinema.
And Peter Chernin, the former Fox exec turned producer who co-financed “Backrooms” with A24, told “The Town” of the big studios, “You can’t just live on sequels, you can’t just live on IP… [the major studios] should be taking risks.” (Chernin also told CNBC of any impending copycats, ″I guarantee you 80% will be failures… Your job is to innovate… not to just jump on a bandwagon.”)
One unintended consequence of the back-to-back success of “Obsession” and “Backdoors” is the casting of a spotlight on Hollywood’s generational divide. Across the industry, on the Monday after “Backrooms” opened, boomer studio honchos sat down with their younger millennial and Gen Z staff and earnestly asked their advice on how to harness the power of YouTube. To some, it feels like a classic bandwagon moment that a generation of top executives will undoubtedly squander.
One meme that was making the rounds featured a suited executive standing over his assistant with the line: “My boss making me find the next Kane Parsons or Curry Barker by EOD.”
The thing about Tom Cruise’s agent speaking positively about Obsession and Backrooms is that I can pretty much guarantee that Cruise agrees with her. Tom Cruise is Mr. Hollywood, and while he loves a big, costly studio production, he absolutely supports ALL unique filmmakers, even the young guys working with indie budgets. I bet Cruise has already called Parsons and Barker to congratulate them. That’s what it should be like, rather than all of this sniping and jealousy. ALL of the studios should have seen Obsession and Backrooms’ success as a hugely positive moment for the industry as a whole.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
