Writer

Assuming that Becky Johnston has in fact already been hired, she'll need a few months to draft and polish a script.  I would think that the search for a director is being done concurrently so we should be getting news on who they chose soon.  Salt 2 could conceivably be ready to start production by the summer for a 2014 release -- which would mean Angelina will have 2 big blockbusters that year.

I still think she could do Cleopatra before Salt 2 since that already seems to be close to having both a script and a director.  I am a bit surprised that none of Ang Lee's recent interviews mentioned his possible involvement in the film -- which likely means he's declining to comment because talks are still ongoing.

From THR

Angelina Jolie's 'Salt' Sequel Hiring 'Prince of Tides' Writer (Exclusive)

2:59 PM PST 12/10/2012 by Borys Kit 

 

Becky Johnston is in negotiations to work on the follow-up to the 2010 spy movie for Columbia Pictures.

 Columbia Pictures is still working to put Salt back on the table
In a move signaling continued interest in a sequel to the 2010 Angelina Jolie spy movie, the studio is in negotiations to hire Becky Johnston to work on the script.
PHOTOS: Angelina Jolie's Top 10 Red Carpet Looks
In the original, Jolie starred as a CIA officer who discovers she is a Russian sleeper cell agent with a mission to assassinate the U.S. president. Salt grossed $293.5 million worldwide, so Columbia in 2011 hired the movie’s credited writer, Kurt Wimmer, to pen a sequel.
Earlier this year, however, reports surfaced that Jolie didn’t think his script was up to snuff and had not committed to the project, which is being produced by Lorenzo di Bonaventura and Sunil Perkash. Johnston's hiring caps off an almost year-long search for a scribe who could reconceive the script with a take that satisfied all parties.
PHOTOS: Showbiz Kids: 17 of Hollywood's Most Famous Offspring
UTA-repped Johnston is a left-of-center choice for the project as her most notable credits are the character dramas The Prince of Tides (1991), which starred Barbra Streisand, and Seven Years in Tibet (1997), which starred Jolie’s fiance Brad Pitt.
Johnston did work on Wonder Woman as well as Brad Bird’s San Francisco Earthquake project 1906 and has the Colin Firth-Emily Blunt drama Arthur Newman awaiting release next year.
Email: Borys.Kit@thr.com



Directing Actors ‏@directingActors

Columbia Pictures is still at work on a sequel to SALT (2010) but Angelina Jolie has still not committed to part 2.

From Movieline

By: Brian Brooks || December 10, 2012 07:45 PM EST

Angelina Jolie's 'Salt' 2 Picks Up New Writer

Angelina Jolie is one step closer to another helping of Salt as Columbia Pictures hits the negotiating table with Seven Years in Tibet writer Becky Johnston.
Naturally with the 2010 original grossing $293.5 million, including $118,311,368 in the U.S., the studio has incentive to get a Salt 2 underway, especially with its irreplaceable star, Angelina Jolie, threatening retirement in the not-too-distant future.
Columbia hired the first Salt's writer Krut Wimmer to write the sequel, but Jolie had apparently scoffed at the script and had not committed to a re-do, according to THR. The studio searched for a replacement who could re-style the story that will satisfy all involved.
Johnston's other credits include The Prince of Tides (1991) as well as Wonder Woman and Brad Bird's San Francisco earthquake story, 1906.
Johnston's participation will be a departure from her previous work, though there's at least one connection. Seven Years in Tibet, released 15 years ago, starred Jolie's future partner, Brad Pitt.
[Source: THR]


From FSR

New ‘Salt 2′ Writer Spent ‘Seven Years in Tibet’

In Development By Scott Beggs on December 11, 2012 | 

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Columbia/Sony is still trying to make the Salt sequel a reality by hiring Becky Johnston. It’s an interesting choice and a pleasantly surprising one considering Johnston’s career legacy in adult dramas — particularly Seven Years in Tibet and The Prince of Tides. There’s no doubt that she’s a smart screenwriter, and it was a smart move for Columbia.
Admittedly part of that is from how indirect it is. They’ve hired an Oscar nominee with a great skill for character building to take on an action follow-up. That’s unexpected to say the least.
Of course, the goal here is to please star Angelina Jolie who wasn’t happy with the earlier version of the story turned in by Kurt Wimmer. If Johnston has the right take on the spy thriller, there’s a great chance that we’ll see Salt 2 put into production in the relatively near future.

From the AV Club

Angelina Jolie to retire from career of marrying Brad Pitt to focus on Salt sequel

by Sean O'Neal December 11, 2012

Angelina Jolie is looking to branch out from her long career of marrying Brad Pitt and return to acting as an august-years lark, hanging up her bridal veil and toddlers and instead picking up a gun to run around with anew. Fortunately for audiences who may be confused as to why Angelina Jolie is running around with a gun these days, as opposed to marrying Brad Pitt over and over again in weddings of ever-escalating splendor, she's at least doing so under familiar circumstances by returning to the long-in-development Salt sequel. The Hollywood Reporter says that Becky Johnston has been hired to draft another take on the screenplay—a script that original writer Kurt Wimmer had already devised but that Jolie rejected, likely because it did not feature enough scenes where Angelina Jolie gets married to Brad Pitt.
As Johnston is best known for movies like The Prince Of Tides and Brad Pitt's Seven Years In Tibet, she's an obvious choice to draft the Angelina Jolie super-spy action film, given that she knows the importance of family and Brad Pitt. Anyway, last time we came up with plenty of possible sequel titles (Salt And Battery, Salt With A Deadly Weapon, Salt 2: Off The Table, 2 Salty 2 Saltier, Salt Licks Everyone, Salt: In The Wounds, Salt 2: Sodium Chlor-DIE, etc.), but these, too, didn't have nearly enough allusions to Angelina Jolie marrying Brad Pitt, so here are these: The Salt That Binds, For Better Or Salt, Holy Saltrimony, Salt 2: Do You Take This Pepper?, Meet Me At The Salter.

Pajiba's Rich Bad Screenwriters

How to Make $1 Billion at the Box Office With Almost No Talent Whatsoever

By Dustin Rowles

Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant, two of the (lesser talented) guys behind “The State” and “Reno! 9/11” before selling their souls in exchange for unearned cash (and lots of it) are releasing a book today called Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too! It’s a semi-serious self-help book for screenwriters, not about how to make a good film, but about how to make a commercially successful one. In other words, how to cheat the system.

Clearly, Lennon and Garant have a lot of experience in making incredibly shitty but very popular films that appeal to moviegoers barely smart enough to count out their ticket money. Garant and Lennon are so proud of this ability to write films for dumbshits that they want share screenwriting advice to all those out there, not who want to make good films, but who want to make lots of money by appealing to the lowest common denominator. Chapter One: “Follow elementary school-children around the playground, write down what they say.” Chapter Two: “Check the toilet before flushing. Write the first thing that comes into your mind.”

Sadly, Lennon and Garant have no sense of responsibility. They’re more interested in contributing to the glut of Paul Blart: Zookeeper-type movies than they are to actual comedy. In fact, for all of you who have given Lennon and Garant a pass for years because of their work in “The State,” it’s time to revoke it. They’re no better than the guy behind Big Momma’s House. If there were a Hollywood equivalent of the Lehman Brothers or Enron Executives it would be people like Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garrant, screenwriters who want to make money at the expense of those paying to see them, as well as at the expense of the overall deterioration of comedy. They don’t make movies; they make high-concept trailers.

In short, they’re assholes. Sadder still, Garant and Lennon aren’t even using their Hollywood capitol to make the occasional decent film. The next two they have lined up are a Steve Carr film (Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Daddy Day Care) and another family movie with Vin Diesel, like one of their biggest hits, The Pacifier. They just don’t care.

But they are not alone. In fact, among terrible screenwriters whose movies have made massive fortunes, Lennon and Garant are only at number six (these are domestic totals, only, and in the United States, that writing duo fell short of the $1 billion advertised in their book title). Still, they’re not even the best at capitalizing on being shitty screenwriters, although I’d argue that they are the worst among the top six (just not the most profitable). So, if you really want to make money as a screenwriter in Hollywood, I would ignore Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too! and glean tips from these untalented but successful screenwriters:

1. Ted Elliot and Terry Rosio ($2.4 billion): Worst Offenses: The second, third, and fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movies, Godzilla, Treasure Planet, Small Soldiers, National Treasure: Book of Secrets and The Legend of Zorro.

Advice: Convince a huge star like Johnny Depp to give up his dignity to star in a film about a amusement-park ride.

2. Akiva Goldsman ($1.5 billion): Worst Offenses: The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, Practical Magic, A Beautiful Mind, Lost in Space, Batman and Robin, and Batman Forever.

Advice: Make friends with Ron Howard.

3. Ehren Kruger ($1.02 billion): Worst Offenses: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Reindeer Games, Scream 3 and Blood and Chocolate.

Advice: Convince someone to allow you to write the screenplays for already established franchises. Write them further into the ground.

4. Alfred Gough & Miles Millar ($880 million): Worst Offenses: I Am Number Four, Herbie Fully Loaded, Shanghai Knights, Lethal Weapon 4 and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. (They also produced “Hannah Montana: The Movie).

Advice: Take someone else’s characters and ruin them (see also, the last five seasons of “Smallville”)

5. David N. Weiss ($870 million): Worst Offenses: Daddy Day Care, Are We There Yet?, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius and The Rugrats franchise.

Advice: Write to your own intelligence level. If you have the intelligence of a 7th grader, write movies for 7th graders.

6. Thomas Lennon and Ben Garrant ($701 million): Worst Offenses: Taxi, The Pacifier, Let’s Go to Prison, Herbie: Fully Loaded, Balls of Fury, and Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

Advice: Just stop giving a shit.

7. Don Rhymer: ($639 million): The Big Momma’s House franchise, Deck the Halls, Santa Claus 2 and Surf’s Up.

Advice: Find excuses to make your male characters wear fat suits.

8. Stephen SommersVan Helsing, The Mummy, The Mummy Returns, and The Jungle Book.

Advice: Find someone willing to put millions of dollars into marketing budgets to obscure the fact that you write (and direct) terrible, terrible films.

9. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer ($361 million): Worst Offenses: Vampires Suck, Disaster Movie, Meet the Spartans, Epic Movie, Date Movie, Scary Movie 2-4 and Spy Hard.

Advice: Take scene from the films of the other crappy but successful films and make them even worse by adding flatulence, stereotypical gags, and pop-culture jokes that were old the day after the spoofed movie was initially released.

10. Allan Loeb ($315 million): Worst Offenses: Just Go with It, The Dilemma, The Switch and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

Advice: Convince studios to hire you by threatening them with billion dollar disability lawsuits if they don’t hire you because of your brain damage.

KFP2 writers

Jonathan Aibel & Glenn Berger Talk ‘Kung Fu Panda 2’

By Drew Taylor, The Playlist

Unlike another sequel opening in theaters nationwide this weekend (which, come to think of it, does feature a humanistic animal as one of its characters), “Kung Fu Panda 2” actually delivers on the chop-socky fun of the original. With an even more epic scope and a darker sensibility, both thematically and visually, “Kung Fu Panda 2” is a really enjoyable animated treat. In our review of the film, we commended the use of 3D as it’s one of the rare instances where it adds pizazz to the picture and we liked the deeper notes found within the story .

We got to talk to the film’s scerenwriters Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger earlier this week about the challenges that go into making an animated movie, the influence of newly installed DreamWorks Animation creative executive Guillermo del Toro, what Charlie Kaufman contributed, and their epic-sounding “Candyland” movie for Universal.

The Playlist: You guys wrote the original film as well as the sequel – were there stories left over from the first film that you were really looking to explore?
Glenn: If you’re asking if anything from the first movie was a direct influence on the second movie, then the answer would be the dad being a goose. That was something that was a function of many things – when we came to the project there was a goose that ran the restaurant and Po was a waiter there, and one of the first things we suggested was that the goose be his father, which in the world of animated movies where animals talk, inter-species parenting didn’t seem like a big deal. It seemed like a funny but subtle element of the movie that we weren’t going to make a big deal of.

But when we went to China, in doing research for the second movie, we were very surprised by the response. Almost everyone that came up to us asked us – “How can a panda’s father be a goose?” And we realized that it struck a chord with people, it wasn’t just idle curiosity, which led us to a core idea of the sequel, which is Po, against all odds, becomes the dragon warrior. What could go wrong? What kind of conflict could a sequel offer if his dreams came true? The answer became – he may be the dragon warrior – but he doesn’t know who he is and who his parents are and he must come face-to-face with the fact that the goose may not be his father. So he’s got to find out who he is and along the way face a bigger threat than he did in the first movie; so that’s a pretty direct path from the original to this movie.

When you went to China, what were you trying to get out of those trips?
Jon: We got different things than the rest of the crew that we went with. We also went with Jen[nifer Yuh] the director and Melissa [Cobb] the producer and the amazing production design team. I was looking at my photos from the trip recently and Glenn and I have all of these photos of us eating and in front of the Great Wall of China. And then I looked at the thousands of photos that the production designers took and it’s of bricks and walls and streets and, for the artists, to actually see buildings that are hundreds of years old and if you see the movie – the palace and the textures and all of that, they actually had to design and they took their inspiration directly from the walls and streets of China. For us, it was more about soaking up the atmosphere and imagining these spaces and what these characters would do in these places. For us it was just an inspiration for the writing and the culture.

It used to be, in animated films, that the story department would storyboard everything, what is the approach now? Is there already a story in place or do you come up with it from scratch?
Glenn: On the sequel, everyone on the art department and story department were busy enough finishing the first movie. Jon and I, because of what you can and cannot change in the process of making a movie like this, about six months before the release of the first one, we started thinking about the sequel. Which isn’t to say that everyone was so confident that it was a hit and there was definitely going to be another one, but [DreamWorks Animation CEO] Jeffrey Katzenberg thought he had something special and wanted to be prepared. And certainly the easiest and cheapest way to explore a second movie is to hire two writers to start thinking about ideas.

The first thing that we did was start wondering what audience questions there were – what could you do with this character that you haven’t already done? Is his story over? Are there ways that we can put this guy on a bigger emotional journey? So we started to come up with concepts and then we’d come back from time to time and pitch it to Melissa and Jeffrey and then we would pitch to the story team. And Jen was head of story on the first movie. So she and other board artists were responding to our ideas and giving us feedback, and it would go back and forth over the course of months. At some point, John and I got the go-ahead on the story and were about to go off and write the script and Jen is now the director, which is pretty cool because we all had the shared experience of the first movie and she had been involved in our pitches along the way. It was definitely collaborative and not the old school Disney way of the board artists doing the whole thing and gag writers coming in and adding some verbal humor. I guess this was a new model of having a script first.

Jon: Also, for us, being the second movie, we know all the story artists and know how they work and they know how we work. So it sort of very ego-less collaboration where there are some scenes where we would write the pages and someone would be told – “Storyboard these pages and stick to them very closely.” Other times we would say, “This is a very rough idea for a scene” and they would take that and go completely somewhere else with them. And they would come back to us and we would get transcriptions of the storyboards and we would rewrite the dialogue, and it would go back and forth, especially on the big action scenes. There’s not much point in scripting an action scene and having Po go “Look out” or “Get them!” So instead we’d say “Here’s a big action scene and the goal of Po and the Furious Five is to do this, and the obstacle is this, and the emotional beats are this and that’s what it needs to accomplish. And anyone can feel free to figure out how that happens.” Sometimes you’d get something crazy back, like the rickshaw chase, which Jen the director boarded herself. We would take that and add gags to the middle of it. So it’s a great collaboration and I think it makes the action scenes incredible and lets us throw jokes into them at the same time.

Glenn: There’s the stereotypical conflict between board artists and writers, which is board artists want everything to be conveyed visually and the writers want everything to be conveyed verbally and I don’t know if that was ever true but it’s definitely a generalization. But the biggest satisfaction we’ve had on the second movie is that we’ve had verbal jokes that board artists wrote and John and I have been in the position of defending to keep in and we’ve pitched visual jokes. And, again, since we’ve all worked together for so many years and there’s a level of trust and collaboration, it’s truly a joy and a benefit to the movie.

Guillermo del Toro was brought into the DreamWorks Animation fold while you were working on this movie, did he offer anything specific to the story?
Jon: First of all, he’s just amazing to work with because he brings an incredible positive energy where, if you’re working on something for three or three-and-a-half years and he comes in and says “This is good and we just need to push this forward.” He gives you that sense of confidence. And the other thing that he really helps with is making sure that we were hitting proper emotional beats. Sometimes he would say, “No, you’re rushing past that, you want to complete the thought and let the audience feel a certain emotion and let them feel that before moving on.” And in many ways it’s a philosophical thing but then it would get down to it and he would say, “You’re holding this for 8 more frames.” So he’s bringing his skills as a director, and also editorial skills, but he brings so much more to it with his experience as a storyteller.

Glenn: The other thing, given his body of work, is that he’s really funny. You wouldn’t necessarily look at some of the darker, gorier movies and think, “This guy’s got a great sense of humor.” But it’s true. We’d be in editing with him and he’d be throwing out gag ideas. That’s also a nice benefit of him.

It was reported that Charlie Kaufman was brought in to help with the script – what was his actual involvement like?
Glenn: He was in about a year ago to look at the peacock scenes and we all met with him and said, “Look at this scene, that scene, and see if you can tweak the dialogue.” And he did. But as is anything that happened a year ago, things change and I think it’s fair to say there’s not much of that left.

It goes without saying that even in your live action stuff, like the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” movies, there’s a fair amount of animation. Is your approach the same as when you’re doing animation?
Jon: I would say something like ‘Chipmunks’ is more akin to live action writing in the sense that, in live action writing, you write three or four drafts and then it goes into production and that’s usually the last you see with it. It’s off, it’s fed into the machine, and the writer isn’t particularly involved. But animation is being written up until the final few months, so it’s far more involved, especially in the ‘Panda’ films where we’re not just writing, we’re co-producing. So we’re involved in editing, recording sessions, meeting with the story artists, pitches; it’s far more all encompassing, I would say. And I wouldn’t say there’s much difference in the process of writing an ‘Alvin’ movie and writing a live action movie that has no CG elements at all.

You guys are doing “Candyland” next, right? What is your approach to the movie?
Jon: Yes, we are writing that right now for Universal with Kevin Lima directing.

Glenn: That’s a live action movie with visual effects, closer to “Lord of the Rings” or [Tim Burton‘s] “Alice in Wonderland.” When we first met with Kevin Lima and we had this weariness that most people have when they’re approached about a Candyland movie, instantly went away when he showed us artwork and explained his vision, which was much like, we attempt in “Kung Fu Panda” – you take something that could be considered childish or silly and you take it really seriously and say, “What if there was an operatic, ‘King Lear’-like civil war in a kingdom that just happened to be made completely out of candy?” And you take the action sequences seriously and you take the comedic elements seriously and there’s a real emotional journey the characters go on. Having just done that, twice over, with a giant plush panda, we thought “Maybe we could try it again with candy.” We were excited about the challenge and hopefully we can pull it off.

Jon: Also, when we’re writing a character we never think – is this character animal, human, CG, is it Alvin, is it Po – you’re just thinking what would this character do and not how that character is realized. Eventually you might have to worry about that if you’re dealing with limitations of animation but when it comes down to the writing, it’s just a character and you can’t worry.

Is it nice working with Kevin, since he has a background in animation? [Kevin Lima directed the animated films “A Goofy Movie” and “Tarzan” for Disney, as well as the animation-heavy “102 Dalmatians” live action film and “Enchanted.”]
Glenn: That’s been amazing. He’s been super-helpful and he’s been very pleased that we’ve been so open. Jon and I have been a team for so long so it’s very rare that we let someone into that partnership, but because of his animation background and the fact that we speak the same language and he’s working on storyboards while we’re working on the script, so we’ll get feedback. It’s been basically a microcosm of our DreamWorks experience, but just the three of us, which has been really fun.

“Kung Fu Panda 2” is in 3D. Were you ever writing to that specific experience that 3D provides?
Glenn: We really didn’t think about it too much as we were writing, we just thought that the same people that did the totally amazing action sequences in the first movie are back doing this movie, and totally on top of it. Our job was to make sure that the character motivations and the comedy and emotions were still there.

Jon: As you’re writing, you do think, “Here’s the big cannonball battle, that’ll be awesome in 3D.” But you’re not changing the battle because it will be in 3D. The other aspect of it is that 3D can really be used to draw the audience in and I think in the beginning there was a lot of 3D in the last three years, sometimes the 3D would be pushed so much to convince the audience they were getting their money’s worth that instead of pulling you into it, everytime there was some amazing thing in 3D, you’d say “Oh right this is in 3D!” What’s so great about “Panda” is that at the end of it, you’d even realize you were watching a 3D movie, but in a good way, because I think the 3D pulls you in without ever breaking the third wall (fourth wall?) I think the 3D does this really well this time.

You talk about the continuum between the first film and the sequel; have you started to work on the third film?
Glenn: We have not. I know Jeffrey has said publicly that he’d like more time between the second and third movies, so we’ll see. If asked, we’d be delighted to keep working on it. I just don’t know what the timing of the third one would be. I also know that DeamWorks have announced their slate for the next number of years, so the next ‘Panda’ would be years off.

“Kung Fu Panda 2” is now playing in theaters nationwide.

Drew Taylor posted

United Talent Agency Signs Angelina Jolie -- As Writer And Director Client

By MIKE FLEMING | Friday March 11, 2011 @ 8:48pm EST
EXCLUSIVE: Angelina Jolie has just signed with United Talent Agency, which will represent her as a writer and director. She doesn't have an agent for her acting work. The signing comes after she made her writing/directorial debut on a Bosnia-set feature that is in post-production. That untitled film was financed and produced by GK Films. She clearly wants to do more in that area and UTA becomes Jolie's first agency representation as a filmmaker. She continues to be represented in all areas by longtime manager Geyer Kosinski and attorney Robert Offer.

"Angelina has a distinct and powerful creative voice, and having read her work and seen parts of the film she's directing, we're very certain that she's entering a new and fruitful phase of her extraordinary career," said UTA partner Rich Klubeck, who's leading the team of agents representing Jolie's film making pursuits.

(UTA also represents Johnny Depp and Owen Wilson)

THE 10% SOLUTION?

How and when talent agents help the indies.

BY SHARON SWART

It might seem like a violation of the indie filmmaker ethos to ask a major Hollywood talent agency for a helping hand, but that’s how little films like Crash got made recently. Creative Artists Agency’s independent group was behind the 2006 Oscar winner.

“Crash is one of our best examples,” says Kevin Iwashina, who is among the roughly half dozen agents working in CAA’s indie unit, by far the largest of the breed. “The agency was involved in everything from finding the material to arranging attachments like Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock to ultimately getting the movie financed and selling it in Toronto.”

Indie divisions like CAA’s, sometimes referred to as an agency’s “packaging” or “financing” department, are now an integral part of every major talent agency. They’re not only there to help the agency’s clients get passion projects made; they’ve become revenue centers in their own right, with some serving as a gateway for the ongoing influx of financiers looking to invest in film. Indie units can offer a project access to talent and credibility, and they can help make connections for filmmakers and producers who are newer to the process. “I think [the indie divisions] are especially valuable when you don’t have a producer who can do the same thing packaging-wise,” says Sideways and Family Stone producer Michael London, who admits he’s never set up a project via an indie division.

But if enlisting a behemoth like CAA to put your film together sounds like a quick and easy solution to talent and financing woes, think again. Producers and agents interviewed for this article all stressed that collaborating with an agency’s financing division doesn’t relieve the producer of his or her primary responsibility to attach talent and generally push the project forward. “The agencies are excellent at making introductions and identifying financing — they know the foreign distributors and equity fund sources,” elaborates producer Michael Pierce, who is currently in Luxembourg working on Michael Radford’s indie crime drama Flawless, starring Michael Caine and Demi Moore. “But it’s up to you to do something with those contacts. The producer has to consummate the relationship by identifying projects that these financing sources would be interested in” and then put the financing puzzle together.

Crash writer-director Paul Haggis describes the process by which his film attracted its supporters and finally secured financing. “Kim Hodgert at CAA deserves a lot of credit for getting Crash made,” he says. “She championed the project and pitched it to any talent agent who would listen. [CAA agent] Rick Nicita read it, believed in it and sent it to Don Cheadle with his strong recommendation. Once Don came on board as an actor and producer, we became a reality in the eyes of a lot of other actors. At that point Kevin Iwashina, Manny Nunez, John Ptak and the other folks at CAA helped pull together the myriad of deals. It still took us another year to assemble the cast that got us the money, but without CAA’s support the film would still be a script on the shelf.” Iwashina further explains that CAA — which helped create Bull’s Eye Entertainment, Crash producer and financier Bob Yari’s company with Cathy Schulman — brought in DEJ to co-finance with Bull’s Eye.

“It’s never easy to make a movie, and it never will be,” says Arianna Bocco, a former Miramax acquisitions exec who launched the Gersh Agency’s indie division a year ago. “There’s this notion that if you get your script to a packaging agent and they like it, your movie is going to get made. It’s always a challenge. Filmmakers have to have a conviction and a confidence, but they also have to be realistic. It’s a balance. You’re either going to be the next big director or that stalker calling the agency.”

WILLIAM MORRIS’S CASSIAN ELWES, RENA RONSON, JEROME DUBOZ AND PHILIP ALBERSTAT.

All indie agents will tell you that what gets you through their door is the quality of your script, plus some kind of validation from a trusted professional — be it talent, an attorney, a veteran producer or another agent within their agency. “We rarely take on a script without some attachment,” says William Morris Independent co-head Cassian Elwes. “Ninety-eight percent of the projects we work on already have directors or a star involved.” Adds UTA’s indie division co-head Jeremy Barber, “The single most important thing is not to overstate what you have.” In other words, if Charlize Theron isn’t firmly attached, don’t insinuate that she is. Also, if you’ve written a good script, it doesn’t necessarily make you a filmmaker. “It’s incredible how many people think they are a filmmaker without having done a short,” says UTA’s other indie co-head Rich Klubeck, a former executive at Jersey Films with producing credits including Garden State. “It’s easy to get us to watch shorts. We watch them all day long.”

These may seem like basics, but all agents polled can’t stress these points enough. “It’s like how every level of Hollywood functions — it’s a personal relationship business,” says ICM packager Shaun Redick. “We all get massive amounts of query letters on e-mail saying, I’ve got this great script... We delete them as if they’re spam.” He urges those who want to cut through the clutter to get their project submitted by “somebody we know, somebody whose taste is meaningful to our business.” When Robin Wright Penn came to her agents at CAA with the script for Sorry, Haters, says Iwashina, “we all read it and fell in love with it,” and eventually got InDigEnt to bankroll the film.

ICM’S HAL SADOFF.

From small, digitally shot projects to studio-level films, most agencies say they’ll look a wide range of budget levels. WMI co-heads Rena Ronson and Elwes, a team since 1998, have made distribution deals for completed films with budgets as low as $100,000, but when it comes to raising financing for projects, they prefer not to work on “anything less than $1 million, unless it’s totally non-union.” “Bigger-budget projects are maybe easier in some ways because they can support a bigger cast,” admits Bocco, “but it’s not so much about the budget as it is about matchmaking. I take a more in-house producer’s approach to it. I can because I’m at a smaller agency.”

ICM’s indie division chief Hal Sadoff, who hails from the banking and finance world, says he prefers a minimum budget of $5 million when it comes to putting together financing for a film. “It’s about time management and resources.”

UTA’S RICH KLUBECK AND JEREMY BARBER.

Elwes, who notes that WMI worked on 32 films last year, adds, “We have to assess what the risk/rewards are, what to spend our time on and how we bring prestige to our agency and clients.”

A-lister stronghold CAA, which one would presume might scoff at the little pictures, also is open to a range of projects. “We can finance and package at any budget level,” says indie team member Roeg Sutherland, citing films financed from $300,000 and up, and from documentaries to multimillion-dollar features. Among the recent docs CAA has helped finance are Sundance competitor The World According to Sesame Street and a lottery doc to be made by Spellbound director and CAA client Jeff Blitz. Former Cinetic Media partner Micah Green — who exited attorney John Sloss’s financing and sales company Cinetic last year and moved to Los Angeles to join CAA — adds that another Sundance doc, God Grew Tired of Us: The Story of Lost Boys of Sudan, was handled by the agency for sales. Plus, he says, CAA helped get client Nicole Kidman on board as narrator.

That brings us to the almighty T word. Can an agency such as CAA promise indies access to their talent? “We can offer the opportunity,” says Sutherland, who notes that the agency’s A-listers “usually won’t read anything unless they have a pay-or-play offer.” And even then, of course, there are no guarantees. “If we get a script to George Clooney, we can’t say what he’ll do until he’s read the project.”

However, having a project vetted and endorsed by an agency’s indie packaging department — which, in CAA’s case, also represents a large number of people able to bankroll production — could make an actor’s rep more disposed to take an indie film seriously, says Green. “Talent agents take comfort in the financing group’s support of the material,” he says. “We can get a movie going versus development.” Conversely, working with a specific agency’s packaging department doesn’t mean you can only work within that stable. ICM’s Sadoff, among other indie agents, says he wouldn’t limit the projects he helps package to his agency’s clients.

Of course, stacking a project with multiple agency clients does mean more opportunities for the agency to collect more fees. When it comes to the various costs involved in engaging an agency’s services, packagers say that their fees are tailored to the project and don’t vary wildly from agency to agency. The standard 10 percent is charged on commissionable elements (writer, director, actors who are clients) as well as a packaging fee if the film was financed with the help of the agency. Packaging fees are generally calculated at a small percent of the budget (1 to 2 percent) with a floor. Agencies normally represent films they package — as well as select completed films — for domestic distribution and place them with a foreign sales agent, if necessary. The sales fee, a percentage of the sale price, can vary depending on the type of film and the rep. While several years ago sales fees hovered well under 10 percent, that figure is now considered pretty standard. Some agencies admit to charging less than 10 percent, and some have asked for more, particularly when selling documentaries where the minimum guarantee might be lower than that of a narrative feature. Says CAA’s Green, “We can’t talk about specific fees, but they’re not onerous. We take a long-term approach in terms of fees and picking material to work on. We want to make sure that investors keep returning to the table.”

“I’m not interested in setting up financing so people can just collect fees,” adds Endeavor’s independent packaging agent, Graham Taylor. “It’s about the artists owning their films and truly benefiting when the films work. People have the misperception that packaging is only about attaching talent and finding financing. It’s a much lengthier process. It’s about development and taking it all the way through ancillary markets. Even on the indie side, you have to be connected to the marketing and distribution for the life of the film.” Taylor says he tries to build possible sequels, TV applications, stage adaptations, game and mobile content options into deals. “We’re not myopic about packaging,” he says. “I’m more interested in what works creatively for the filmmakers. We combine our clients with other agencies’ clients. I think I push that more than others. I try not to be precious about it; I’d just like to see more films get made.”

AGENCY	INDIE AGENTS	RECENT CREDITS
CREATIVE ARTISTS AGENCY 9830 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, California 90212-1825 Phone: (310) 288-4545 Fax: (310) 288-4800	Micah Green, Rick Hess, Kevin Iwashina, Emanuel Nunez, John Ptak, Roeg Sutherland, Bart Walker	Crash, Brokeback Mountain, Good Night, and Good Luck, Syriana, The New World, Lord of War
ENDEAVOR 9601 Wilshire Blvd., 3rd Floor, Beverly Hills, CA 90210 Phone: (310) 248-2000 Fax: (310) 248-2020	Graham Taylor, Modi Wiczyk	The Air I Breathe, The Good Night, The Flock, Stephanie Daley, Harsh Times, Nine Lives, Down in the Valley, Be With You, Babel
THE GERSH AGENCY 41 Madison Ave., 33rd floor, New York, NY 10010 Phone: (212) 997-1818 Fax: (212) 997-1978 232 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210 Phone: (310) 274-6611 Fax: (310) 274-4035	Arianna Bocco	Alone With Her
INTERNATIONAL CREATIVE MANAGEMENT 8942 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA 90211 Phone: (310) 550-4000 40 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10019 Tel: 212-556-5600	Hal Sadoff, Shaun Redick	Flyboys, It’s a Boy Girl Thing, Danika, Last Time, Unknown, You Kill Me, Fragile, TV Junkie
UNITED TALENT AGENCY 9560 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, CA 90212 Phone: (310) 273-6700 Fax: (310) 247-1111 Email: indiefilm@unitedtalent.com	Rich Klubeck, Jeremy Barber, Stuart Manashil	Friends With Money, Right at Your Door, Science of Sleep, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, The Night Listener, Hustle & Flow, Junebug, Thumbsucker, Factotum
WILLIAM MORRIS AGENCY 151 El Camino Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90212 Phone: (310) 859-4000 Fax: (310) 859-4462	Cassian Elwes, Rena Ronson, Jerome Duboz, Philip Alberstat	Thank You For Smoking, 16 Blocks, Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Hard Candy, Bobby, Half Nelson