Earlier this week on the New York Movie Pageant, IndieWire’s “Display screen Speak” podcast hosted Movie at Lincoln Middle president Daniel Battsek to speak about our favourite movies on the pageant and the state of the trade at this time. Battsek joined Movie at Lincoln Middle in Could after a historical past as a producer and acquisitions government. His previous credit embody Palace Footage, Miramax, Cohen Media Group, Nationwide Geographic Movies, and, most lately, as chairman of Film4 within the U.Ok.
Whereas the dwell dialog in fact gave us the prospect to make amends for NYFF, we additionally simply needed to ask about Battsek’s former days working alongside the likes of Charles Cohen and Harvey Weinstein. That included buying each the Coens’ “No Nation for Previous Males” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood” for Miramax — they usually had been scripts he obtained over the identical weekend, and greenlit by Monday.
Battsek additionally walks by way of how the pageant chased and landed sure titles — together with world premieres like “Gavagai,” “Anemone,” and “Is This Factor On?”
We additionally polled him for his ideas as a producer and pageant director on the compressed panorama for pageant acquisitions total — more and more out of festivals, movies are sitting in limbo awaiting distribution, particularly documentaries. So far as the financing and distribution panorama for indies, is there motive for hope? For despair?
Take heed to the episode within the audio beneath.
