I’ve been in a really ominous mood all day. I thought it was just because the sky is grey and I’ve been been listening to this Belong EP, which basically sounds like a prolonged death rattle, but now that I’m reporting the second major story about people losing their jobs in the past couple of hours, I’m starting to feel like it’s not just me. The whole internet feels like the last scene of Madam Butterfly today––death now fills the air.
Anyway: the news. Warner Brothers has shut down its two remaining, dueling indie arms, Warner Independent Pictures and Picturehouse. Warner’s COO Alan Horn released a statement basically saying that the shell of New Line will handle all low budget fare going forward, and claimed to be “confident that the spirit of independent filmmaking and the opportunity to find and give a voice to new talent will continue to have a presence at Warner Bros.”
So. What about acquisitions? Will Warners be sending one of the ten New Line employees left standing to Cannes next week, or will they just cede that game to the other indie arms and focus on the cheap genre fare that the new New Line is allegedly committed to churning out? What about the WIP and Picturehouse movies already in the can and on the shelf––like Picturehouse’s remake of The Women, or WIP’s anti-climax waiting to happen, Towelhead? Your guesses are as good as mine. I’m just hung up on the fact that Funny Games was the last WIP release. Funny Games killed a studio!
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This all sound like Warner Bros. is just trying to consolidate their off-shoots and better their business prospects for the inevitable economic recession (or Depression!) I don’t think it has anything to do with the quality or the performance of the movies that WIP or Picturehouse released. I know– I’m sounding like a WB shill, but I suspect that New Line, WIP and Picturehouse will all still basically exist but they just won’t have a separate name to call themselves.
It’s like one of things that Starbucks is doing because they over-expanded– instead of serving different blends of coffee every day, now they’ll just serve the same blend, over and over again, day in, day out, with no green on their coffee cups. (That’s right– I shamelessly made a Starbucks Coffee reference.)
Besides, this is better than Time/Warner/AOL/Fox News Corp./Viacom, all on one banner! It’s the lesser of two evils.
Do you really think that a company owned by a Major Hollywood studio is actually an “Independent” producer that releases “indie” movies?
Does it really seem like I said that?
You suggest Haneke is responsible for the demise of some pseudo-indie affiliate. Either we don’t have the same sense of humor, or I mistook your gossips for a news blog…
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[...] like a prolonged death rattle, but now that I’m reporting the second major story about people losing their jobs in the past couple of hours, I’m starting to feel like it’s not just me. The whole [...]
[...] its acquisition of the poisonously atrocious Alan Ball film Towelhead (another blogger disagrees, citing Funny Games instead), at least a few other observers have more official diagnoses from the murder scene.For starters, [...]