The success of independent cinema at the Oscars is nothing new, but it's always a welcome sight. Sunday night's marginal triumph by The King's Speech over the studio's biggest heavy hitter, The Social Network, will have spread good cheer among the movie's many backers outside the studio system. The King's Speech is one of the moribund UK Film Council's last hurrahs, although there are quite a few forthcoming releases that will bear the stamp of the ill-fated funding body, such as Lynne Ramsay's We Need to Talk About Kevin, Terence Davies's The Deep Blue Sea and Andrea Arnold's Wuthering Heights.
That's quite a list and I'm not even sure it's comprehensive, but it illustrates a truism in independent film financing: the tougher the sell, the greater the number of investors. No studio would have gone near this because the project lacked brand recognition, wasn't part of a franchise and didn't offer clear merchandising opportunities.
And then, of course, there is Harvey Weinstein, the Oscar impresario extraordinaire whose apparently resurgent company did such a bang-up job distributing The King's Speech in the US. The film launched modestly in a handful of theatres last December and climbed from 43 to 700 theatres over the Christmas weekend, rising steadily after that. Heading into the final weekend before the Oscar nominations on 25 January, the movie played in 1,680 theatres, and by the time it emerged as the frontrunner on 12 nominations it was in 2,557.
It went on to gross more than half of its current $114m (£70m) running total in the so-called Oscar corridor between the day of nominations and the show itself. That's the Oscar bump in action and you see it with another success story, Black Swan, which amassed roughly one-fifth of its $103m running total in the same period. Both will continue to prosper now that they have gongs to their name. The King's Speech will go out as a PG-13, too, after Weinstein cut a few expletives from the original R-rated version. Colin Firth disapproves and thinks the movie should be seen "as is", and I wholeheartedly agree. Alas the gatekeepers in the US believe audiences must be protected from the brutal spectrum of the English language, even though they are happy to expose under-13s to a disgraceful level of on-screen violence week-in, week-out.
For some years now a movie's prospects outside the US have played a key role in assembling the financing and distribution. Central to this is the international pre-sale, whereby a company licenses distribution rights to a forthcoming project in return for a portion of the budget. In this regard kudos is due to FilmNation, the New York-based company run by the vastly experienced former Weinstein lieutenant Glen Basner. FilmNation handled international sales on The King's Speech and ensured it ended up in safe hands outside the US. To date the movie has grossed more than $130m outside the US, bringing worldwide ticket sales to around $245m.
Black Swan had a pretty tortuous route to the big screen, too, but when Fox Searchlight came on board as financing partner it knew a good thing and held on to worldwide distribution rights. It's been Hollywood's leading title in the international market for the past few weeks and so far has racked up $123m overseas and $226m worldwide.
These are astonishing and rare numbers for specialty film, but what's so gratifying is that because both movies got made for a price and were expertly released in the US and overseas, they're profitable. The rumour doing the rounds at the recent Berlin film festival was that Weinstein is plotting a sequel to The King's Speech called The Windsors at War. Harvey and his cohorts are keeping mum about that right now as they focus on this year's movies, which include Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe in the Oscar hopeful My Week With Marilyn.
