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From the "Biz" Archives: Dispatch from Europe: Danny Boyle's Sci-Fi Plans and "The Plague" Spreads Online by Wendy Mitchell
Danny Boyle is now genre-hopping as much as his fellow Englishman Michael Winterbottom. Boyle, who rose to worldwide acclaim with "Trainspotting," has followed up his edgy DV apocalypse story "28 Days Later" with a feel-good family film, "Millions." "28 Days Later" was, of course, a surprise smash hit for Fox Searchlight with $45 million grosses in the States, but "Millions" has been a tougher sell so far -- it's only nearing $5 million after eight weeks of release (part of that is to blame on timing, this would be a great Christmas season release but got stuck in a spring slot instead.) "Millions" isn't totally soft, of course, Boyle says it's a commentary on the consumerism of today's society. (The film follows two young brothers who find a load of English pounds just days before the country will convert to the Euro.) "'Millions is what I have experienced, a somewhat comfortable, consumer culture that we live in," Boyle said in an on-stage conversation with film critic Jason Solomons at the recent Raindance East Film Festival in London. "The one ideology that has survived is shopping... we do live in what I would say is a shallow age." Boyle is now plotting something completely different from either of those films. He's currently in the casting stage for "Sunshine," a bigger budget sci-fi film that he'll shoot at 3 Mills Studios in East London (where he lives). The film is set 50 years in the future, about a space ship on a mission to the sun. He says that the cast will be an ensemble, but he might have to get one star of "a certain level" to get enough funding. He expects the cast to be predominantly American and Chinese with perhaps one Brit actor. Also, Boyle still has a "Trainspotting" sequel in the works. "I want to do something a bit like they did with 'The Likely Lads' and 'Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads?,'" he says, indicating that the sequel could be set and shot 20 years after the original. "The idea is to take the same characters that people are really familiar with and see how they'd aged... what becomes of their lives when they hit their 40s and get male pattern baldness." The only problem is that his actors aren't aging as poorly as those hard-living characters would. "The actors look after themselves, they moisturize, they go to spas, they go to bed early" so Boyle says they may need to wait another 10 years to get the right look. "Alternately, we could get Colin Farrell to do all the parts," he joked. The film will be based in part on Irvine Welsh's "Trainspotting" follow-up "Porno," and the event that will reunite the group will probably be Begbie (Robert Carlyle) getting out of jail after 15 or 20 years. Screenwriter John Hodge has already done an initial draft. Boyle also has yet another film in the works as well, but he's not very forthcoming about details. "It's a planned adaptation of another book, it's in the shops at the moment but I can't say the name of the book," he says, before adding, "It's a beautiful book but we're probably not the right people to make it." Even though he notes it's a tough time to make films in England (with American funding losing value when converted to English pounds and tax rules changing), he says he can't imagine leaving the U.K. "I can't bear being away from Britain, really. I can't bear being in L.A., it never has changing seasons, everyday is like a photocopy of the day before." Plus, he's in no hurry to work on big Hollywood projects, citing his experience on a certain Leonardo DiCaprio project: "I learned with 'The Beach' that I'm a bit better lower down the radar." +++++ Speaking of lower down the radar, Greg Hall, a 23-year-old London filmmaker, is creating buzz with a feature film that he shot for just £3,500 (less than $7,000). His film "The Plague," about a weekend in the life of a group of four friends living on an urban council estate, played at the London Film Festival and won the Katrin Cartlidge Foundation Bursary at the Sarajevo Film Festival. The budget isn't the only remarkable thing about "The Plague"; its distribution is also unique. It follows another U.K. film, "This is Not a Love Song," as the second feature film released online for paid download. The film was released on Monday at itsallelectric.com, available for download for £4. Once downloaded (in Windows Media or MPEG4 formats), the film can be played as many times as the viewer desires, although it cannot be burned onto DVD. Neil Bedwell and Jon Mortimer, short filmmakers, started It's All Electric in April 2004. "There was nothing out there that spoke the language we were speaking and kind of supported the kinds of films we were making, the films that aren't funded, made on a shoestring but may have raw potential," Bedwell tells indieWIRE. In addition to what they see as a "multi-screen online cinema" that will show shorts and features, the company also publishes an e-zine about filmmaking and runs the 50 Quid Film Festival and other events. Bedwell and Mortimer met Greg Hall after seeing "The Plague" at the London Film Festival and thinking it would be a great way to launch their feature-film online distribution channel. "On the Web, you can put slightly unpolished films out and get a good reaction as long as you have strong stories," Bedwell explains. The other reasons that they were drawn to "The Plague" were that "it's a good film that was being talked about in the right circles -- Mike Leigh is a bit of a supporter -- and also the fact that the content to the film lends itself very well to a Web-savvy audience. It would be wrong to put a Ukrainian period drama on the web, because this is a youth-oriented audience." Getting director Hall on board was easy. "I think he was disillusioned after all this amazing film festival response when nobody was willing to stump up and get the film out there," Bedwell says. "He's got nothing to lose," particularly considering the film's low budget. Costs are obviously lower than getting a film print and self-distributing in theaters. Bedwell says that It's All Electric will give "a good percentage" of profits to the filmmakers themselves. Another bonus is that the company's deals are only concerning online distribution, so that if a film builds enough buzz through the Web, the filmmakers are welcome to get a theatrical distribution deal or distribute DVDs. The company heads up the marketing and creates the web infrastructure, obviously, including the major costs of paying for the bandwidth to transfer the 460 MB file. Promotion efforts will be mostly web, email, and street marketing, including some promotion during Cannes and other international outreach during May. The company hopes to get 10,000 people to download "The Plague" in three months, and depending on its success, they are talking with other filmmakers about continuing the platform with more feature films. Still, most people aren't used to paying for online content yet, so it's yet to be seen if the scheme can be successful (Napster has also said it may explore online film distribution). Bedwell hopes the low price point and the ease of use will make It's All Electric akin to the iTunes of the film world -- that it will be easier and more reliable to just pay for the download than try to find pirated material elsewhere. "I don't think audiences are ready to play for a short film download, but for something deep and rich and at good resolution, yes, I think they are," he says. "It's a small amount of money to pay to see something new." [ For more information, please visit http://www.itsallelectric.com. ] | |
