When to Get Excited For a Film

The announcement of a film version of "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" being scripted by J.K. Rowling a few days ago will almost certainly result in a big budget feature film reaching theaters in a few years. However, most of the time when a Hollywood studio announces that they've picked a writer to work on a script, it's far from certain that the film in question will actually move forward. So the question is, when does a film become a sure thing that you can start getting excited about? Let's look at the life cycle of the studio film.

When you first hear about a film, it's usually the announcement that a project is in development. A producer has optioned the rights to a book or television show or board game. Sometimes a director or actor will attach themselves during this stage, especially when they're the driving force behind a project, but usually it's the writer who gets onboard first, to turn the idea into a saleable script. The script is then used to secure financing for a film, often through pitches to the studio executives to convince them to pay to make the movie. This is called getting a greenlight, and then the film moves into pre-production.

Should you start getting excited when your favorite property makes it to this stage? Yes, and no. A greenlight means that the producer can start putting all the elements of a film together, hiring the cast and crew, and working on all the pre-production materials that plan out how the movie is going to be made. This is the stage where scheduling is hammered out, and the big decisions about budgeting and talent are made. This is all exciting stuff, so this is usually when the hype starts up. Fans start hunting around for rumors and often some of the talent involved will talk up the project to get more people interested.

However, this is also the stage where things can still change, and change drastically. Scripts get rewritten, often multiple times. Directors and actors are hired, but they can also drop out of projects "due to creative differences" or simply if pre-production is taking too long and they're committed to another films. For the blockbusters, a release date is often announced during this phase, a good sign that everything is on track and a studio is committed to getting the film done. However, things can still go off the rails. Disney pulled the plug on "The Lone Ranger" temporarily over budgeting concerns, a decision that delayed the start of production by several months. The film ultimately still got made, but because of the change in scheduling, it killed another project - a remake of "The Thin Man" at Warner Bros that Johnny Depp became unavailable for.

Once production actually starts, it can usually be treated as a point of no return. The money is being spent on sets and costumes and salaries. Scenes are actually being filmed. It takes something really drastic to halt a film at this point, such as an accident or an illness taking the talent out of commission, or financiers withdrawing funds, which happens with smaller independent films occasionally. "The Man Who Killed Don Quixote" is a good example, a Terry Gilliam production beset by endless difficulties which was finally shelved when the actor playing Don Quixote was injured. Because the film wasn't completed, it triggered a multimillion dollar insurance claim, Gilliam lost the rights to the film, and it remains in limbo to this day.

Studio films that get through production and post-production face few barriers to reaching their audiences. Even awful films will usually be released, though they often dumped in quiet weekends without much advertising, or in the worst case scenario will go straight to DVD. Independent films have to secure distribution, though. These are the titles that that play festivals looking for a buyer, that get snapped up by the Weinsteins or Sundance Selects or Fox Searchlight to play the art house theaters. Once a film is owned by a distributor, they decide when it gets released. And sometimes they hold on to them for a while.

A 2007 horror film, "All the Boys Love Mandy Lane," had a warm reception at festivals but was stuck in limbo for over six years because the company that ended up with the rights to distribute the film went out of business. Occasionally this happens to studio films too, though much more rarely because there are different deals and obligations involved. Still, when MGM went bankrupt, it stranded finished films like "Cabin in the Woods" and "Red Dawn." Some enterprising filmmakers, like Shane Carruth of "Upstream Color," have started handling distribution duties themselves to avoid these delays.

So when should you start getting excited about seeing a new film in theaters? Usually once it rolls into production, but if you want to be absolutely safe, wait until they start marketing it, because then it's clear that the film will get a release soon. You can make very good predictions about the fates of films in pre-production, but except for a very few high profile blockbuster franchise films, it may not happen the way you think it will. A movie I was looking forward to, "Jane Got a Gun," went from a Lynne Ramsay directed feature with Jude Law to a Gavin O'Connor directed feature with Ewan McGregor. And now I'm not anticipating it so much anymore.
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