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 chance for the impartial movie sector that he has supported for the previous 20 years.
“If there’s true disruption within the market, it signifies that not sufficient films are being made by the studios. There are nonetheless slots to fill and there’s all the time somebody who needs to observe a film,” Sutherland advised the Zurich Summit on Saturday.
“If the studios are making much less films, meaning we get to make extra films, after which we get to promote them. There’s an actual alternative for us to have an actual affect available on the market.”
Sutherland was talking in an onstage dialog on the Zurich Film Festival’s annual business conflab forward of receiving its Recreation Changer Award, celebrating his work getting hundreds of movies over the line.
Talking to 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 impartial 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. Except for a self-described lack of expertise for appearing, he stated his late father’s angle to the method of moviemaking had additionally performed its half.
“My father would all the time say, ‘As an actor, you give 100% of your self’… he refused to observe his films, as a result of he felt like solely 50% of what he would give was truly on the display,” stated Sutherland.
“That was fascinating to me, I spotted that I used to be way more fascinated by controlling the entire, fairly than controlling the half. In order that was my approach 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 certainly one 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 just a little unusual. My mother and father didn’t significantly 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 one of the best expertise I ever had in my life.”
Even then, Sutherland stated, it took him time to search out his “spot” on the company.
“I used to be purported to be within the expertise division, however I used to be not a pure match. And really what we do, the impartial, worldwide stuff, didn’t actually begin till round 2005, or a minimum of, didn’t begin to flourish, as a result of all the pieces was being made by studios,” he defined.
“I used to be thrown right into a division that was largely a servicing division for purchasers who had a challenge that they needed to do once they weren’t engaged on a giant studio film. However then the enterprise developed after the financial disaster in 2006 and much more of those films have been left to individuals 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 impartial challenge.
Glen Basner, Roeg Sutherland and Mike Fleming Jr on the Zurich Summit
Lengthy-time collaborator Basner steered 60 to 70% of the impartial 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 perhaps true,” Sutherland stated of Basner’s estimate, “however it doesn’t come from our group, it comes from our purchasers and we’re fortunate to characterize a number of the greatest individuals on the earth that give us the flexibility to ship the packages that you just finance. We’re nice middlemen.”
None of it might be doable with out long-time trusted financing companions equivalent to Basner, AGC Studios CEO Stuart Ford or worldwide gross sales maverick Vincent Maraval, he added.
“Our objective is to verify there’s a wholesome ecosystem within the market, to be sure that we deal with our purchasers and that we arrange films in an acceptable approach, 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,” stated 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 secure place in the event that they go into making a film with out having distribution in place.”
Sutherland stated pulling collectively the finance for early movies in his profession equivalent 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.
“While you’re that younger and don’t understand how something works, and type of studying on the fly, you simply type of belief the method. You don’t over complicate and overthink issues,” he stated.
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 educational curve, stated Sutherland, was studying to roll with the punches that come up within the means of pulling a challenge collectively.
“It’s just like the film Power Majeure. The avalanche goes to indicate 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 shield your loved ones,” he stated.
Wanting again on the raft of movies CAA Media Finance has helped to convey to fruition over the previous 20 years, Sutherland stated 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 tips on how to promote it, however it doesn’t occur due to us. Take Black Swan, very troublesome film to arrange, however its genius is Darren Aronofsky and Natalie Portman. Generally, it takes just a little little bit of assist to get individuals to know what the director’s imaginative and prescient is and for them to attach with it. However finally, we’re simply facilitators.”
He steered 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 individuals 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 crammed the hole within the price range via producer Brian Oliver, who had raised $8 million from Louisiana-based buyers 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.
Taking a look at more moderen historical past, Basner recalled how Sutherland had spearheaded the digital Cannes market, with Maraval, when the bodily pageant had been shut down as a result of Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“What have been we purported to do? Lick our wounds and say, ‘Oh God, the enterprise is useless. We will’t create content material’,” he stated. “Individuals have been caught at house. We had to determine a method to get films made. There’d by no means been a greater time for us to promote films. The one approach we may do this was to create these digital markets.”
“We might have weekly telephone calls with 500 individuals on it. We have been like, ‘How are we going to reorganize ourselves, and the way are we going to make it thrilling?,” he stated.
Sutherland added that the success of the initiative had been right down to the truth that the complete impartial neighborhood had come collectively.
“The one approach that we succeed is after we work collectively. Once we work towards one another, nothing good occurs. When my whole crew comes collectively and works with the complete impartial neighborhood and all of us come collectively, that’s after we’re profitable.”
Roeg Sutherland on the Zurich Summit
