 |
| Live photo of me screaming about how much cultural power Disney has |
In 2014, then-presidents of Fox Searchlight Pictures (the arthouse division sister company of 20th Century Fox) talked to Variety about the creative impetus behind a studio that had produced multiple Best Picture Oscar winners and countless box office hits. "You take creative gambles under pretty rigorous budget guidelines. The constraints on the budgets allows us a lot of freedom on how we can distribute the movie, so it is liberating in a lot of ways," Gilula declared.
A few years earlier, Utley sang the praises of having Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life made at the studio to Deadline Hollywood. "This film is daring; it’s not a traditional three-act narrative. Not everyone appreciates the movie, but those who do are absolutely evangelical about it," Utley observed, "Its originality and audacity rattles people and is getting attention and gaining fans."
"Originality and audacity" were often in high supply at Fox Searchlight, while the studio often admirably backed diverse filmmakers. In the final four months of 2014, for instance, Fox Searchlight Pictures put out four movies. Three of them were directed by Black filmmakers and two were directed by women directors. That year, Fox Searchlight supplied North American theaters with eight theatrical releases, the same amount of titles Fox Searchlight delivered in 2010. In 2017, the year Searchlight's slate included The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, the arthouse studio got 11 theatrical releases onto the big screen.
Then Fox Searchlight, like so many News Corp. entities, was bought by Disney in March 2019. Rechristened Searchlight Pictures starting with the February 2020 feature Downhill, Searchlight's theatrical slate for 2026 includes four movies. Two of them are sequels to features greenlit and produced before the Disney merger. The announcement of Searchlight's 2027 slate now featuring a Family Stone sequel reflects the chilling reality of studio mergers and how Disney has butchered a once vital source of theatrical arthouse films.
For starters, why is Searchlight releasing multiple sequels in a single year? Ready or Not 2: Here I Come and Super Troopers 3 launched in 2026 under this banner, bombed, and mostly looked like Disney execs trying to applying their "franchises, franchises, franchises!" mentality to a studio that once distributed Malick, Mira Nair, and Tamara Jenkins movies. Last years Searchlight slate included a War of the Roses remake (The Roses), a Family Stone legacy sequel is on the way.
Like with Disney's bastardized version of 20th Century Fox now limping along as a home for Avatar, Ice Age, and Planet of the Apes, Disney's exploitation of Fox Searchlight reflects corporate cowardice. Executives the Mouse House long fired took chances and risks on making Ready or Not, The Family Stone, and other notable 20th Century Fox/Fox Searchlight movies. The Disney brass don't have the guts to pursue such original fare. However, they will exploit the hard work and creativity of other artists. A Love, Simon Hulu show is a great idea. Making a new original theatrical film in the vein of Love, Simon, no can do. The Family Stone 2? Yes! Letting Searchlight executives nurture and finance artists who could make the next original film that echoes The Family Stone? That's an automatic no no.
Yes, Searchlight still releases some two (sometimes three) original theatrical releases at the end of the year. Not only do these titles exist, but they're often some of my personal favorite movies of the 2020s, like Poor Things, All of Us Strangers, and The Testament of Ann Lee. This year, Wild Horse Nine and Behemoth! are the two original Searchlight releases getting the big-screen treatment. The immense artistry of Things and Ann Lee is indisputable. However, pre-Disney merger, Fox Searchlight released eight original movies a year, including giving major Sundance acquisitions theatrical releases.
Limiting Searchlight to only two or three original movies, all crammed into the final six weeks of the year, is not a sustainable business model. Searchlight's Disney form must return to releasing movies of all shapes and sizes year round.
Here's a "fun" fact too about the new version of Searchlight: Disney's version of the arthouse studio has drastically whittled down the amount of women-directed movies it puts out. Searchlight has put out 29 theatrical-exclusive titles since Downhill's February 2020 debut. Of those, only four (Nomadland, Nightbitch, The Testament of Ann Lee, Theatre Camp) were either directed or co-directed by women (and I'm being charitable putting Nightbitch in there, since it was dumped to a handful of theaters, had no reported box office numbers, and is now considered "A Hulu Original"). Only roughly 15% of Searchlight's theatrical releases over the last six-and-a-half years were helmed by folks belonging to marginalized genders.
Fox Searchlight was not perfect with gender representation in its theatrical output, not by a long shot. Its eight 2015 films, for instance, had no women-directed titles. However, it's worth noting that, in 2017, three of its movies were helmed by women, 75% of Searchlight's women-directed output for the entire decade. Black women filmmakers once helming multiple titles for the studio, like Amma Asante and Kasi Lemmons, have "mysteriously" vanished after the Disney/Fox merger. Perhaps if a Black lady director has an idea for Belle 2: The Belle Awakens, Disney executives will consider them for a Searchlight Pictures gig.
Not only has Disney's version of Searchlight limited the overall number of movies released each year, but it's also tremendously constricted who gets money, promotional energy, and easier access to movie theater screens. As usual with any corporate merger, marginalized lives (especially when they're not white) pay the highest price.
What's bizarre is that other major studio arthouse divisions like Searchlight Pictures have been consistently releasing movies year-round during the 2020s. Focus Features, the arthouse sister studio to Universal Pictures, has been dropping tons of new releases (even more annually than it did in some pre-COVID years), which has offered up more chances for the studio to deliver massive hits like Obsession. When you have more times up to bat, you have more opportunities to score home runs. That sounds like a better idea than cramming your only three annual theatrical releases in the final six weeks of the year.
Anyone who's read my pieces for a prolonged period of time knows me and Sony Pictures Classics (the arthouse counterpart to Columbia Pictures) don't often see eye-to-eye. However, the studios constantly putting out new titles into theaters during every corner of the year. This approach has delivered some recent hits, like I'm Still Here and Becoming Led Zeppelin. While Sony Pictures Classics gets international titles and documentaries to the broader public, Disney is busy shoving Fox Searchlight Pictures into the same M.O. as its big, mainstream-skewing labels (Marvel Studios, Pixar, etc.). Specifically, the Mouse House is making Searchlight akin to Marvel and Pixar in emphasizing both as few annual releases as possible and tons of sequels.
Amusingly, this approach isn't even delivering major box office hits to Disney. Adhering to "FRANCHISES! FRANCHISES! FRANCHISES!" is proving to be a bad move when you're dealing with an arthouse studio and not Star Wars movies. Super Troopers 3 and Ready or Not 2: Here I Come were both bombs. Among this year's titles hailing from arthouse studios, Ready or Not 2 will end up below Sundance 2026 acquisitions Buddy and The Invite. Super Troopers 3, meanwhile, couldn't even crack $7.5 million in its North American run, putting it behind Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, I Love Boosters, Tony, and the documentary Epic: Elvis Presley in Concert.
Boiling things down to the most basic cynical capitalistic impulses, letting Searchlight acquire original indies certainly seems like it would produce better box office results than Ready or Not or Super Troopers sequels. Indie and arthouse hits are built on delivering the unexpected (see: Obsession, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Marty Supreme). Orienting your arthouse label largely around legacy sequels is antithetical to that. To boot, putting out more titles a year would give a studio more chances to deliver those kinds of sequels. Focus Features putting out so many movies a year produces bombs like Black Bag (an artistically awesome movie with a killer score, FTR), but also ensures hits like Hamnet, Conclave, and Obsession are possible.
Conglomerates like Disney aren't about logic, common monetary sense, or even (God forbid) doing good things for art. They're about making sure executives never look foolish or made a bad call. Thus, Disney's still committed to those live-action remakes of old animated films even after Snow White and Moana cratered financially. Even after a summer where audiences shrugged their shoulders at arcane brand names, the Mouse House is gearing up to spend countless millions on a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie. And Searchlight Pictures is still dedicated to further sequels of pre-Disney merger 20th Century Fox/Fox Searchlight Pictures movies.
Much like city councils ignoring wide swaths of citizens who hate invasive Flock cameras or the U.S. government ignoring increasing public support for Palestine, the bourgeoisie ignore reality to ensure their pockets are lined further. Relying on sequels and "safe" franchise fare makes shareholders and Disney executives happy. Thus, that's the mold this once-prosperous arthouse studio must inhabit under Mouse House leadership. A corporate merger didn't open up new exciting horizons for Fox Searchlight Pictures. The quality films emerging from this era of Searchlight (like my beloved Poor Things, All of Us Strangers, and The Testament of Ann Lee) are testaments to the artists behind those films flourishing despite countless obstacles in their respective paths. Quality films managing to get released with the Searchlight Pictures logo can't erase the larger problems plaguing this studio as a result of its Disney ownership and pointless consolidation.
So prepare, dear readers, for Little Miss Sunshine 2, 2 Napoleon 2 Dynamite, Black Swan 2: Here We Go Again, Return to Cedar Rapids, and Martha Marcy May Marlene: Attack of the Clones, and other legacy sequels at the expense of original films. Bask in the regurgitation of the past at the expense of new art tapping into the present. And cheer for when David Ellison gets his hands on Warner Bros. I'm sure he'll treat that studio as well as Disney's handled Searchlight Pictures.
No comments:
Post a Comment