Anthony Bregman founded New York and Los Angeles-based production company Likely Story with Stefanie Azpiazu in 2006 and the company’s credits include Sing Street, Foxcatcher, Enough Said, In The Heights, and TV series Living With Yourself and Modern Love.
Three films premiered at Sundance this year: John Carney’s Flora And Son, which was made with FilmNation and Fifth Season and sparked a headline deal with Apple, which will debut the film on its platform with a theatrical component later this year; William Oldroyd’s Eileen, which was made with Fifth Season and acquired for North America by Neon who have set a December release; and Nicole Holofcener’s You Hurt My Feelings with A24 and FilmNation.
Bregman started out in entertainment as an assistant to producer Ted Hope at Good Machine, working on films including Sense And Sensibility and Eat Drink Man Woman, working his way to head of production at the company.
He subsequently co-founded This Is That with Hope and Anne Carey, producing Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Friends With Money, among others.
His most recent productions include Robert Salerno’s horror thriller Here After, which shot in Rome in March and April; Finally, “a small film in Israel and Egypt written and directed by Tom Nesher” which Likely Story is producing with Israel’s 2-Team Productions. “It’s in the spirit of Y Tu Mama Tambien and is about young people discovering themselves through their confusing sexuality. It’s very powerful,” says Bregman.
Ahead of the UK premiere of You Hurt My Feelings at Sundance London and a keynote address on July 7 at Picturehouse Central, Bregman spoke to Screen about Likely Story’s expansion plans, recent productions, navigating the US writers’ strike and the future of independent filmmaking.
How is the US writers’ strike, and the prospect of possible actor and director strikes, impacting your production plans this year?
We shot a raunchy female-focused sex comedy in Toronto in May/June. We were going to shoot later in the year and when it became clear the bond companies weren’t bonding anything past June 30 because of the contract expiration of the DGA and SAG-AFTRA at that point, we thought we could either shoot it now or later.
When you’re able to make a movie, you better do it because if you don’t then who knows if it’ll ever come together. Who knows when the strikes are going to be over and what the availability [of talent] will be at that point and whether the people who are ready to finance your movie [now] are going to be ready to finance your movie in six months or whenever the strike’s over.
There are too many questions, so we felt we could pull up the start date and shorten our four weeks of pre-prep/financing and eight weeks of pre-production into four weeks of financing and prep and go-go-go. That was rough but I think it was worth it and now we have a great movie in the can.
We’ve made one movie since the start of the WGA strike, but we have a lot of things that are on hold right now. We have TV series, we have features that are set up and features that are independent, and we’re on ice. We’re going to release the two that are coming out later in the year – Flora And Son and Eileen – and we’re hoping all the work stoppages will be behind us, so cast and crew can get on the road and promote the hell out of those films.
How are you juggling the specialty films and TV series Likely Story has always made and also raising money to making more commercial films?
We’ve always had our specialised business, and we continue to make many movies in that business. The more commercial pipeline is our newest venture. We’re looking at the kinds of movies that the studios used to make that got us excited back when we were younger and just starting to appreciate movie-going.
There’s been a period of the last 10 years or so when studios have been making movies based on these existing brands, whether it’s Marvel, or DC, or Jurassic Park, or Harry Potter or James Bond, or Fast And Furious and obviously they’ve done very well with those movies. But I look at the studio landscape and say where are the Back To The Futures, the Die Hards? I’m talking about the big studio films that are appealing to wide audiences but at the same time could feel fresh and updated and zeitgeist-y – at least they did back when those originals came out. I’m hungry for those movies as a viewer and I think there’s an opening for them as an independent producer.
If you look at the future of artists who are making really interesting work in the specialised sphere, that is someplace they can go. The specialised business or the auteur business or whatever you want to call it has always shifted to areas where the opportunity to tell interesting stories has opened up. Like TV series, which has opened up to real artistry in the last 10-15 years. It feels like there’s a new pathway now in the studio business that studios left behind.
So you’d like to help artists make that kind of film?
Yes. And work with the same people we work with now and find ways into those larger brand-adjacent movies that can be updated in an interesting, fresh way. I see it being done already and obvious example of that are the Matrix-adjacent Everything Ever All At Once and the Agatha Christie-adjacent Knives Out – both of them artistically excellent movies that worked on every level, including with audiences.
Are you talking to financial partners to line up the commercial slate?
Yes. We’re lining up those movies and we were already developing a few. Some of that development has been hampered by the strike. But while the strike is happening we’re using that time to set up the financing structure to develop and produce those.
What kind of film might fit the bill?
One that we made last year was Do Revenge which debuted on Netflix last September. It’s really fun. This was in effect a dry run for this idea. Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, who wrote and directed Someone Great for us, came up with this idea with Peter Cron, a producer at Likely Story. The impetus behind it was, where are the teen movies that feel dangerous like Cruel Intentions and Heathers? We set out to make that type of high school movie, and it worked gangbusters. Making that film kind of opened our eyes to the idea of these brand-adjacent films as a more comprehensive pursuit.
What are some of the TV projects Likely Story has been involved with?
We did a series called Living With Yourself with Paul Rudd at Netflix. We did Modern Love Season 2 at Amazon which John Carney was the showrunner on. We have a comedy series, American Classic, with Kevin Kline at MGM+ and we’re waiting for the strike to resolve so we can finish writing the scripts for that. We have other things set up elsewhere.
You’re an indie veteran and you had a first-look deal with Netflix. How do you see the role of streamers in your world?
They’re very much part of what we do and honestly, they came by just when the indie financing options were drying up – both with the mini majors and the sales/equity financing. We made a lot of movies with Netflix and a series with them too. We made movies with Jennifer Kaytin Robinson [Someone Great and Do Revenge], Nicole Holofcener [The Land Of Steady Habits], Tamara Jenkins [Private Life] and Charlie Kaufman [I’m Thinking Of Ending Things], Bob Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman [Things Heard And Seen], and Alice Wu [The Half Of It]. In another time we’d be making those with the mini-majors. Netflix stepped up at a time when we kind of couldn’t put them together with the usual partners.
How do you see the landscape now for fresh, unknown indie filmmakers and their original stories?
One pathway is to look at the strike as something that can be leveraged by true independent films because SAG is giving out waivers, and the WGA does not seem to be picketing those films, so long as the agreements have been set up beforehand and the writers aren’t writing during the strike. I think that the unions may be looking at the independent producer as a brother/sister-in-arms, in the sense that independent producers share the same gig employment hardships that they do – and are even worse off, since independent producers don’t get residuals.
On this film we just finished shooting, we knew the strike was happening, so we planned for it beforehand: all the rewrites and the options and purchases, everything. When the strike was called, we worked within WGA guidelines. True independent films are the only films that can go right now.
What do you want to see from the theatrical distributors to make them consistently viable partners?
I’m very inspired by the distributors out there – the stalwarts like Focus and Searchlight and Sony Classics, and the daredevils like A24 and Neon, and some newer companies just starting out. If your film has a shot at a market, there’s plenty of genius at work. I do wish that someone could make the darker and more dramatic films feel exciting for audiences again. I mean look at Tar — an incredible film that made – what, $6m? Why did that film underperform, when on the other hand, the lighter Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris made $17m with the same distributor? Is it the audiences? Is it the films? Is it the marketing proposition?
Do you feel there are enough theatrical distributors out there?
There are a handful out there right now, and they’re very good at what they do, but a handful of specialised distributors doesn’t provide enough churn to make the specialised business thrive. With only so many slots available, they fill up with the cream of the pedigreed crop – the Wes Andersons and Alexander Paynes – because how can you say no to those? But the specialised business also needs the flukes and weird risky gambles that can allow new visions to emerge. To resuscitate the business, we need more risk taking, and for that we need more slots, and for that we need more distributors.
Look at Sundance: there were a few high-profile sales but how many movies didn’t sell, or sold for a number that didn’t justify their budget? It’s scary to think of the long-term implication of that happening – to investors, to producers, to filmmakers.
Are dramas in peril? Are audiences willing to return to the theatres to see them?
The high cost of production is a huge problem. Not all movies share the same economics. Clearly, a drama needs economics that can work for the audience for a drama, whether that’s compensating in terms of cast or finding ways to make things cheaper. I don’t really know how to solve it, but hats off to the folks who made Past Lives — they did everything right.
You’ve alluded to the deals at this year’s Sundance and the Institute is going through cost cutting, like many others in Hollywood. How do you see the role of Sundance Film Festival these days?
There’s still no better place to make your films stand out than at Sundance. Part of their mission is not only to promote the movies that are going to make money and have stars in them but also to bring people out from obscurity to give them a platform so that they can be seen by everybody in the industry, and that’s what Sundance continues to do. There’s no better value proposition for a small movie than Sundance in terms of in terms of the movie itself and in terms of the careers of everybody who’s working on that movie.
What would you say to young filmmakers these days who are trying to make a career?
It’s always been incredibly difficult for a new filmmaker to break through. Even in the days when The Brothers McMullen came out of nowhere, there were still 100 other films that didn’t come out or that didn’t kind of get the same level of attention because they weren’t in the right place at the right time.
The element that feels really essential right now is for a movie to feel fresh, something that we haven’t seen before. It doesn’t have to be crazy but it needs to be something that’s not a duplicate of something that you’re getting somewhere else cheaper. A new experience is gold.
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