Could ‘The Goldfinch’ Financing Deal Be A Template For Hollywood’s Return To Mid-Budget Dramas?
By Ben Pearson/Sept. 9, 2019 5:30 pm EST
The Goldfinch, from Brooklyn director John Crowley, is a $40 million adaptation of a popular novel – exactly the level of film that we often complain doesn’t get made anymore these days. Vulture has a long, detailed breakdown of how The Goldfinch got made; the full piece is worth a read, but the short version goes like this.
When Crowley and the producers pitched the project to WB and told them how much they needed to make the film, the studio balked at the initial budget. After those budget talks broke down, Crowley’s agent proposed an unorthodox solution: what if the studio partnered with a streaming service to raise the money to make the movie? This isn’t the type of thing you see every day, because studios often bank on a film’s post-theatrical life for more profits in the long run by licensing it out to cable channels or streaming services. Typically, Warner Bros. movies would go straight to the WarnerMedia-owned HBO, and The Goldfinch deal was made well before HBO Max was announced.
As for Toby Emmerich, chairman of Warner Bros. Pictures Group, several people close to the production of The Goldfinch told Vulture that Emmerich had high praise for the new deal:
