Janet Yang, former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, has predicted major changes in the coming years to the way that films are distributed.
“Soon I believe artists and filmmakers will be able to own their own material,” said Yang, speaking on a panel at Hong Kong Filmart titled ‘International co-productions in an evolving film landscape’. “We will soon see a dissolution of the distribution companies that have been dominating Hollywood for so long, because there simply won’t be as much of a need [for them].”
“For me, the future looks like a lot more personal branding,” she said of how films will be released to the world. “YouTube is already the largest media company in the world. It will become more and more incumbent on artists to carve their own path and become their own ecosystem, and put things out there.”
“When I started in Hollywood, the studios were these monolithic beasts,” said Yang, whose three-year, three-term run as Academy president came to an end in August last year. “You were so happy if they dared to bless one of your projects; but then you delivered it, and you basically had no idea what happens afterwards. They did all of the distribution and marketing, and you don’t see it after that.
“In that way I feel very optimistic, because I think we’ll be able to make things, own them, distribute them on our own. There will be a lot more of people working with whoever they want to work with anywhere in the world.”
“The main reason we do co-production is to reach a broader audience, with input from different talents,” said panellist Shamin Yusof, CEO at Malaysia’s Skop Productions, which is teaming with Hong Kong’s One Cool Film Production on action thriller Black Ops. “It’s Malaysian IP, but we’re using their talents – our main featured cast, stunt directors and stunt actors are all from Hong Kong.”
“We’ve done co-productions before, but this is our biggest one yet,” added Yusof of the project. “It is refreshing to see our Malaysian talents working with Hong Kong talents. I thought the language barrier and work ethics would become a major challenge but we’ve found a lot of creative input that we can use in our films. We can see changes in audience perspective over the co-production films we’ve done.”
“It’s [about] trying to make your movie sustainable in different countries,” said panellist and Hong Kong filmmaker Peter Chan. “Not only Hong Kong but the whole world has a problem with its own domestic market – even Hollywood.
“Make sure your film has more than one domestic market, two or three is better,” he advised. “You need to put in elements from different countries so they feel the film belongs to that country. You need to find subject matters that are personal to you, but relevant to each co-production market that the film is aimed for.”
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The panel also included Singapore director and producer Anthony Chen, whose 2023 feature Drift was a UK-US-Greece-Singapore-France-China co-production.
“I enjoy being a producer, because I get to work with a lot of filmmakers – whether from my country, or within Asia – who are telling stories in a way I would not have made,” said Chen. “I enjoy challenging them, being that bounce board and seeing the ideas flourish.”
Producer Ron Dyens of France’s Sacrebleu Productions flew to Hong Kong straight from the Oscars in LA, where he had been nominated for best animated short film for Florence Miailhe’s Butterfly. Dyens won the Oscar for best animated feature film last year with Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow – another multi-country co-production.
“Co-producing has to be the first point in the DNA of a producer,” said Dyens. “Being a producer is to search for talent everywhere, not only in your country. If you open your antennas and search for talent, you have to go to different countries.”
“A lot of the barriers to crossing boundaries between nations have dissolved,” added Yang. “It’s very exciting; there’s a mentality of ‘We don’t belong to any one place, we belong to lots of places’. That’s a positive trend.”
Chen’s new film We Are All Strangers, which launched in Competition at the Berlinale last month, was not a co-production, with its funding coming solely from Singapore with the exception of a post-production grant from Saudia Arabia’s Red Sea Film Fund.
While saying he is still “bullish” about co-productions, the filmmaker sounded a note of caution. “I’m observing more and more films with more and more countries involved – nine, 10, 11, 12,” said Chen. “It inflates the budget; but I also see a lot of excess and weight. I’ve seen to the point where it’s just cutting small pizza slices, to work out where do we spend this money?’
“I’ve been in situations where there are too many people at the table. It’s very easy for you to shift the responsibility. I’m more about a prudent, ethical way of co-production. I’ve had good co-production relationships with respectful producers. Everyone is informed of what’s going on with the film.”
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