The Casting Ouch

Casting is undoubtedly the single biggest challenge facing independent film and TV producers these days. With the veritable gold-rush of content production, brought on by the booming streaming era - where more content is produced than there is demand for, actors have never had it so good. If you can get into a series that runs into multiple seasons then you're on to a winner. And so is your agent. Why bother with that little low-paid indie movie, that might not even close its financing any time soon.

The building blocks of film packaging start with the script, for sure - and as Alfred Hitchcock said, the top 3 ingredients for a great film are 1. The Script. 2. The Script and 3. The Script. But who is telling this to the sales agents and buyers looking for the value proposition to take to markets? That is why you don't find script reading booths at film markets.

Mike Medavoy, in his book 'You're Only as Good as the Next One', he talks about his 5 point system called 'The 5 Basic Approvals', which were: 1. Script, 2. Director, 3. Producer, 4. Budget and 5. Principle Cast. Once these were all in pace the project could proceed.

There is a simple equation at film markets that goes something like, cast + poster + genre = sale. I'm not even sure how many scripts are even read as a percentage of deals done. But I expect it is some way under 100%.

But how important is cast still to actual audiences?

I'm not a statistician - (but you can look here for that if you want a more analytical approach: https://stephenfollows.com/do-you-need-a-famous-actor-to-get-your-film-into-cinemas/) but I would say that it's far less than buyers might imagine.

Sure, some kind of cast is important for many reasons, but the overall ingredients are different now to the blockbuster days of the Planet Hollywood trio of Arnie, Sly and Willis. There are a few exceptions of course, and the level of cast 'required' is quite genre driven, as you can see illustrated in Stephen's linked report. The Rock is a good example of a pretty bankable action star. But how many Rock's are there?

Back in the day stars were MOVIE stars (in that they didn't do TV) and the metric of success was the opening weekend box office, and the opening weekend box office alone. Now, if a movie opens on Netflix or Amazon, nobody knows for sure how well it's doing. Or cares. So how do we apply bankable metric value to actors in a world where anything goes in terms of model and platform?

Take Anya Taylor Joy, as an example. I think of her as being one of the top star actresses of our times, but can she open a new movie in cinemas on the strength of her name alone? I think not. People think of her mostly as the star of The Queen's Gambit, a NETFLIX TV series. And, as previously there was generally an aloof mysterious air around the stars of old Hollywood, nowadays, with Instagram etc., some stars are seemingly meshing with the world of online 'influencers', so the lines are indeed blurring. It somehow dilutes their power as 'movie star'. Consider the difference between ATJ and a star of old like Elizabeth Taylor.

With the massive surge in long-form TV drama, actors and stars are popping up left, right and centre on our small screens. Big names are opening their movies on Netflix, possibly with more creative freedom promised to them, but often the films themselves are pretty forgettable. There are some incredible actors out there doing amazing work, but take them to a theatrical sales agent and they will say that they won't 'move the needle sufficiently'. Miles Teller is phenomenal in The Offer, but can he open a new movie in cinemas? Same goes for Matthew Goode, who was outrageously good in The Offer.

In my mind, audiences like to have some familiar names and faces in their films and series, but it's more like a sort of a 'comfort blanket' than thinking 'I literally must watch anything they are in'.

In horror movies, cast is so irrelevant that, even if a star is present, their faces don't even appear on the posters. They just need to be scary. Like a rollercoaster at a theme park.

A series like The White Lotus is a great example of cast being relatively unimportant. A fantastic award winning series, but does that suddenly mean that Alexandra Daddario is a bankable movie lead? These actors seem to blend so seamlessly with the unknowns in the cast and we, as the audience, root for the unknowns just as much as the knowns.

Franchises have replaced blockbuster actors in the main these days also. Marvel, DC, Lord of the Rings etc. Big brands and IP. Again, the budgets are there for big names but it hardy matters who is playing Superman when the character is already the star. How many actors have played Batman? The character always wins out in the end. Who is going to see Avatar for the cast?

Personally speaking I'm far more interested in genre and script/concept than I am about who is in something. Knives Out boasted a great ensemble cast but I would still have loved it with a different cast, I'm sure. I don't even need to know who is in the second one to know that I want to see it, although I did love Daniel Craig and Ana de Armas in the first one.

I went to see Ticket to Paradise, admittedly, because of the pairing of Roberts and Clooney, but if either had been cast with someone else I probably wouldn't have. I don't want to see Triangle of Sadness because Woody Harrelson is in it - I want to see it because the concept looks delicious. I decided to go to see Decision to Leave because of the director alone. I don't even know that cast from Adam.

If anything, the demographic who is most cast-insistent is the older, 60+ audience. They will go and see something because Timothy Spall is in it or Helen Mirren, Kristen Scott Thomas, Bill Nighy or Judie Dench. It doesn't even matter if the rest of the cast is entirely unknown, as long as the lead is one of these actors. 'Living' is a really good example of this.

And then there is the good old-fashioned ensemble cast - like the Marigold Hotel films. Always a winner, where the sum of the casting parts are somehow greater than the whole. Here lies an opportunity for the independent producer, so long as the budget can stretch so far as multiple, if not substantial, names. Fisherman's Friends is a really good example of this - and the audience lapped it up - it was a huge success. But, on paper, who was the bankable name?

And then there are the breakout films without bankable names, such as Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Whale. Make a good enough film (if you can finance it without the big names) and they will come.

As there is such a scarcity of 'bankable names', please let us just accept good actors, suitably cast in roles that they will excel in, and scatter from the table these outdated metrics of the mythical bankable name.

Who even is a bankable name these days anyway? It strikes me that actors values have more in common with cryptocurrency, having only a perceived value in the mind of those willing to buy/pay.

What is to be the future for independent film packaging? Adding more and more executive producers and co-production partners to the project, sticking the whole beast together with so much sticky-back-plastic that the film can hardly maintain any semblance of shape with its multitude of masters and investors, barely regaining any sort of singular vision, all in the attempt to fund the thing sufficienty enough to attach enough names to push it into the pre-sales zone?

Recently a producer said to me that attaching key cast to a film in 12 months was really good going. As a newbie to development, I have to say that the process is akin to doing claymation animation, only far, far slower. No wonder producers have a dozen projects spinning like plates at any one time, as at least then you can tweak a couple of plasticine moustaches on any given day.

"There are pictures with stars that work and just as many that don't. And no star can save a bad picture. It's the picture, the whole picture that has to work. Never trust a star to open a film that doesn't work" - Mike Medavoy