Prolific director Steven Soderbergh (“Black Bag”) has made a career making mid-budget and smaller films, but is now sounding the alarm that the future of those kinds of films might be in serious trouble.
The filmmaker recently spoke with The Independent, where he revealed disappointment and a troubling revelation about the box office results for his latest film, “Black Bag,” as the spy thriller, budgeted at a reported $50 million, only was able to muster $37.7 million worldwide. This certainly isn’t a result folks were expecting, given the cast had Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, and “Bridgerton” heartthrob Regé-Jean Page.
That frustration was expressed by Soderbergh in the new interview, and he mentions speaking with a studio executive about the dire situation, where his concerns were echoed.
“This is the kind of film I made my career on. And if a mid-level budget, star-driven movie can’t seem to get people over the age of 25 years old to come out to theatres – if that’s truly a dead zone – then that’s not a good thing for movies. What’s gonna happen to the person behind me who wants to make this kind of film?…I know for a fact, having talked to somebody who works at another studio, that the Monday after ‘Black Bag’ opened, the conversation in the morning meeting was: ‘What does this mean when you can’t get a movie like this to perform?’ And that’s frustrating.”
Not only that, but he brings up his Oscar-winning films “Erin Brockovich” and “Traffic,” both released back in 2000, would have serious problems getting made without someone like Timothée Chalamet getting involved.
“‘Erin Brockovich’ wouldn’t get made today; ‘Traffic’ wouldn’t get made. Unless you get Timothée Chalamet, who, god bless him, seems to be interested in doing different kinds of movies. But that window is getting smaller and smaller for filmmakers to climb through.”
Audiences have indeed been less predictable than usual, as seen with how they recently reacted to extremely different releases such as “A Minecraft Movie” (a video game film while super popular was mostly rejected by critics) and Ryan Coogler‘s critical darling “Sinners” (now projected to be one of the most successful original films of the last decade and first horror film in 35 years to achieve an A rating from CinemaScore).
Soderbergh has been musing about various ideas for a follow-up to the star-studded pandemic thriller “Contagion” with screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, but it remains to be seen what he’ll tackle next after his dark comedy “The Christophers,” and we could likely rule out a sequel to “Black Bag” happening anytime in the foreseeable future.
