Since fleeing Los Angeles in 2015 for Texas, where he grew up, Mr. Sonnier has cast himself as the producer willing to do features that others in Hollywood consider politically radioactive. In the past year, he has wrapped production on “Dragged Across Concrete,” starring Mel Gibson as a cop accused of beating a suspect, filmed a drama about militia members, and bought a script about a school shooting in which a female student wrests control of a gun and fights back.
Mr. Sonnier’s revenues from a film are a tiny fraction of those from a major studio release, but he is making money off his strategy by keeping production costs low and relying on word-of-mouth to turn his movies into sleeper hits. With a budget of $3.8 million, “Brawl” has turned a profit, says Mr. Sonnier. He says Cinestate did it by selling distribution rights to overseas markets on the strength of Mr. Vaughn’s “Wedding Crashers” fame, pocketing nearly $2 million for streaming rights from one online service and selling more than 40,000 DVDs in the first two weeks of release at big-box stores — a healthy performance in an age when few buy DVDs anymore.
Hollywood has occasionally targeted conservative moviegoers, releasing faith-based movies in specific neighborhoods or producing patriotic blockbusters such as “American Sniper.” The difference is that Mr. Sonnier is betting a whole company on a strategy of finding consumers he says are “outside the coasts,” marrying ideology with opportunism.
“The political climate brings a spotlight to these kinds of movies. We’re not shying away from that,” Mr. Sonnier says. “It’s funny that, in this moment in time, the movies we’re making are almost counterculture.”
Other studios don’t appear to be mimicking his approach, but some recent Hollywood moves seem to affirm Mr. Sonnier’s conviction that he’s tapping an underserved audience. The revival of the “Roseanne” TV series, starring the comedian Roseanne Barr as a Trump voter navigating various social issues, was part of a strategy at ABC discussed by executives at a meeting held the day after the election about how to entertain a broader swath of the nation.
The premiere episode’s top market was Tulsa, Okla., according to ABC, where it outperformed the national average by 60%.
[...]
“Sparrow Creek,” filmed in under three weeks for less than $1 million, Mr. Sonnier says, is part of a microbudget strategy he has used to profitable effect on previous movies “Brawl” and his 2015 Western, “Bone Tomahawk.”
When “Brawl” appeared on iTunes, the prison revenge movie shot to the top 10. The other titles in the iTunes top 10 at the time, “Spider Man: Homecoming” and “Wonder Woman” among them, had wide theatrical releases.
[...]
To pay the bills, he made direct-to-video shoot-’em-up films with Steve Austin, the wrestling champion.
One day, he dropped off Ms. Gerwig at an audition for Noah Baumbach’s art-house film “Greenberg,” he says, and met Mr. Austin for lunch on Sunset Boulevard. A fan approached the wrestler, had him autograph her arm and returned to show she’d had it tattooed. “Talk about walking in two universes,” he says.
The Austin features, with titles such as “Hunt to Kill,” taught Mr. Sonnier a simple formula: budgets under $1 million and foreign-rights deals that put the project in the black before cameras roll. He deployed what he calls a “Mad Libs” plot:
“A guy named Jim/John/Jack gets out of prison/wakes up from the dead/survives and comes back to his hometown/scene of the crime/where the bad guys are and kills everyone to save his family/save himself/save someone who can’t save themselves.”
He says: “As long as we stuck to the Mad Lib, the movie sold 300,000 to 500,000 units.”
I didn’t have to read any further than this:
“…Since fleeing Los Angeles in 2015 for Texas, where he grew up, Mr. Sonnier has cast himself as the producer willing to do features that others in Hollywood consider politically radioactive. ….”
I will be looking up the guy and his movies.
The “madlib profile” fits perfectly the vibe of Save the Cat written by Blake Snyder.
By and large the Hollywood cinema concerns itself with too much unwholesome material. Vampires, boxing, prisons, gangsters.
Or combinations of those genres.
At worst, he’s going after the long tail. The thing about the long tail is… it’s long. That makes it worthwhile. But if his target audience turns out be an invisible majority, this could be huge.
Low budget doesn’t have to be cheesy, but pandering always is. Anything written without conviction, or anything not thought through will be cheesy. Also, anything done with conviction but without skill or without talent will be cheesy. Christian content makes me cringe, and I’m not sure why. I see no obvious reason it has to be so bad, and too many possible reasons to settle on one.
I have no objection to “unwholesome” material if it’s done competently and with some novel twist.
As computing power gets cheaper and cheaper these low budget films can have the same effects as the blockbusters. I can see this as a great strategy.