Robert Lantos: Canada’s one true movie mogul, and perhaps its last & More News Here

Robert Lantos is making me wait

Summoned to his three-storey Serendipity Point Films workplace in Toronto’s Summerhill neighbourhood, I’m politely deposited in a nook of the white-stone foyer, going through a gold-coloured Elektra cappuccino machine that’s bigger than my fridge. I’m stationed right here no fewer than quarter-hour, simply lengthy sufficient to wonder if the delay is an old-school energy transfer, a rigorously calculated ploy to get journalists to admire the finer particulars of the constructing, or not one of the above – possibly Canada’s solely true (and perhaps last) movie mogul is only a busy man.

But if that is certainly a scene-setting trick, it really works: I’m given ample time to be aware of the gleaming lobby, the winding staircase, the entryway lined with Gemini Awards, Golden Globe plaques, autographed posters (Barney’s Version, Johnny Mnemonic), and the 1991 Genie Award for “Outstanding Contributions to the Business of Filmmaking in Canada” – an Air Canada-sponsored honour that Lantos accepted with a speech lambasting the airline for enjoying “imported sequels and unreleased turkeys” as an alternative of Canadian movies.

This is the Robert Lantos I anticipated to face over lunch: cigar-chomping chief of an empire throughout his days atop Alliance Communications, blustery impartial drive since establishing Serendipity Point Films in 1998. But at the moment, the 73-year-old is in a dialled-down temper. Once inside his third-floor workplace – which incorporates an expansive balcony overlooking downtown, images of well-known associates and household, and artwork given to him by the late Globe and Mail movie critic Jay Scott – the producer presents as reflective, laid-back, alarmingly chill.

Then once more, this could possibly be one other signature Lantos media-smoothing transfer. Go by way of the archives and learn each Globe journalist’s encounter with the person on Price Street (sure, that basically is the workplace’s handle), and you’ll discover a sample: anticipating worry and intimidation, we encounter heat mellowness.

Another factor that has remained fixed in Lantos Land: lamentations that the movie trade ain’t what’s was. In 2000: “The centre is owned and dominated by the Hollywood studios.” In 2016: “I don’t want this to be a pessimistic [article], but film means much less than it did.” And on today in late April – which occurs to be the primary non-virtual National Canadian Film Day in three years, in addition to the morning after Netflix’s inventory nose-dived after shedding 200,000 subscribers – issues actually ain’t what they was.

Which is difficult once you’re Lantos, who’s making ready for the discharge of essentially the most anticipated Canadian movie of the yr: David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future, which can make its world premiere at subsequent week’s Cannes Film Festival. While the fest is a coup – Crimes is the one Canadian title there this yr – it’s outdated hat for Lantos, who now has 10 Cannes-certified movies to his title, together with the back-to-back punch of Cronenberg’s Crash (1996′s Special Jury Prize) and Atom Egoyan’s The Sweet Hereafter (1997′s Grand Jury Prize). At the time, these movies appeared like dangerous sufficient bets. In at the moment’s pandemic-wracked movie world, Robert Lantos productions really feel like high-stakes gonzo gambles.

“Some great films will still get made, but they will be made against all odds, because the world is dominated by the streamers and what remains of the movie studios, which are essentially nothing other than superhero factories. Neither of them produce what I or you call cinema,” Lantos says whereas selecting at his salade niçoise. “If they do make those kinds of movies, it’s an afterthought. It’s so far down the priority list. So, what’s left?”

This is the query that Lantos faces with Crimes of the Future, a modestly budgeted sci-fi thriller that options high-wattage stars with worldwide enchantment (Viggo Mortensen, Kristen Stewart, Léa Seydoux) however no mental property or franchise potential. It does, although, boast loads of Cronenbergian body-horror freak-out enchantment, with dialogue (“surgery is the new sex”) that blood-gurgles, “extreme specialty audience.”

“To pull it all together in today’s environment was one of the toughest things I’ve had to do,” Lantos says, including that he prevented going to Netflix and its ilk for financing as a result of “the streamers have abandoned theatrical exhibition, and I’m not ready to do that. I’m not saying that I never will, but not now. So, I cobbled this together the old-fashioned way: piece by piece.”

Or, as Lantos places it later, he “ran around the world with my hat in hand. That’s the definition of an independent producer. It’s an elegant word for a beggar.”

For Crimes, that begging concerned going to distributors in Germany, France, Scandinavia, Belgium, Holland and the United States (the place the movie is being dealt with by savvy upstart Neon, of Parasite fame). There are additionally fairness investments, tax credit and a brand new subsidy system for productions capturing in Greece, which, in accordance with Lantos, “made all the difference.”

“I believe we were juggling 19 different financing entities on this film, and all have their own points of view and agendas, and that affects everybody else, and it can really drive you crazy,” Cronenberg says in a separate interview. “But Robert is a very good filter.”

He needs to be, provided that Crimes of the Future is Lantos’s fourth collaboration with Cronenberg – and one that the producer needed to gently nudge alongside for 20 years, ultimately prodding the filmmaker to revisit the script (initially titled Painkillers) three years in the past after letting it sit on a shelf.

“Robert phoned and said, ‘You haven’t made a movie in years. You should read Painkillers again,’” recollects Cronenberg, who mused about retiring in 2019. “But it has a sci-fi component, which I assumed meant that it would be outmoded by now. He said, ‘No, it’s more relevant than ever!’ Okay, I thought that was a good line. And he was right.”

In Canada, Crimes shall be distributed theatrically by Sphere Films, enjoying in cinemas “for however long there’s an audience,” says Lantos. The movie will open the identical day in about 500 U.S. theatres – an enormous summer-movie counter-programming guess for Neon, which is so excessive on Crimes that it flew Cronenberg and Lantos to Las Vegas for the annual theatre-owners convention CinemaCon. (The movie’s delightfully gross footage perplexed a few of the early-morning attendees, who’re extra used to salivating over superheroes and Minions.) But after three weeks in U.S. cinemas, Neon will ship Crimes to premium video on demand.

“Neon assures me that this is the right way to do this, because the theatrical release will in turn fire up desire to see the film,” Lantos says. “I’m used to theatrical, but I’ll see how it works.”

What doesn’t work for Lantos, no less than not but, are the monetary situations that include working with streamers like Netflix.

“I couldn’t today build a company like Alliance because streamers own the title lock, stock and barrel,” he says. “You might make a decent living yourself, but a company with 500 employees? You need a content library to support that. Streamers want to own the film forever, not for 10 years and the rights revert.”

Don’t cry too shortly for Lantos: He made $60-million when he bought Alliance to rival Atlantis Communications, which is how he affords his Price Street digs. And even again in Alliance’s heyday, the corporate made most of its cash in broadcasting, tv manufacturing and movie distribution, not movie manufacturing. “Being an independent producer,” Lantos says whereas overlooking the town, “does not lead to this.”

Indeed, Serendipity Point has skilled as many ups because it has downs, with vital hits (Barney’s Version, Being Julia), movies that received over each the media and the field workplace (Eastern Promises), and titles that did neither (Where the Truth Lies, Through Black Spruce, Remember). And in between, there have been the eagerness initiatives that spoke to Lantos’s household historical past – the Holocaust-backdropped dramas Sunshine and The Song of Names – that made the trade recreation one price enjoying, in any respect prices.

But if Lantos needs to maintain making movies – films that he believes Canadian artists should be afforded the chance to inform, and films that he believes Canadian audiences wish to see – it’s not simply streaming that he should deal with. The home assist techniques that Lantos has develop into a grasp at navigating have modified, too.

In 2000, Telefilm Canada suspended its “Fast Track” system, an automated funding program that allotted $20-million to $25-million a yr, or roughly 30 per cent of Telefilm’s annual manufacturing funds, to producers with favoured monitor information. At the time, Lantos and fellow producers Denise Robert, Niv Fichman, David Gross and Patrick Roy informed the National Post that such a transfer would threaten trade predictability and place an excessive amount of accountability within the palms of civil servants.

Today, all Lantos says about Telefilm is that the Crown company’s funding in Crimes of the Future was 14 per cent of the movie’s funds, “which was very helpful.” (Telefilm says it supported the venture with $200,000 beneath its 2019-20 improvement program, and $3.5-million beneath its 2020-21 manufacturing program; figures have been unavailable for its advertising and marketing program as “nothing has been signed.”)

Over a dessert of combined berries, the dialog turns to Bill C-11 (“Finally, it looks like there will be regulation, but that by itself is not enough – it’s how you interpret it”); whether or not his CRTC-quashed thought to begin a Canadian movie cable TV channel referred to as Starlight again in 2013 would work at the moment as a streamer (quick reply: possibly, but it surely wouldn’t be him working it); and the nation’s movie distribution scene nearly a decade after Alliance Films was acquired by Entertainment One, which itself was acquired by Hasbro in 2019 (“There are very few distributors who are actually marketing their movies as opposed to pushing a button and putting them on their platforms”).

What will get Lantos animated – in that heavy-duty mogul means – is his improvement slate, a extremely diversified lineup that features his most formidable venture ever: Rise of the Raven, a 10-hour sequence in regards to the 1456 Battle of Belgrade. Focusing on warrior Janos Hunyadi, a nationwide hero in Hungary, the place Lantos was born, the present could be the producer’s personal Game of Thrones. Lantos’s son, Ari, has been in Budapest for a yr engaged on pre-production, with capturing set to start (“in theory”) this July.

“We have 250 speaking parts. We bought 100 horses that we’ve been training for six months. But so many things can go wrong when you’re building the 15th century,” Lantos says. “It’s by far the most expensive production of my life. If I’d known all of this today, I’m not sure I would’ve done it.”

But as was the case so many different instances, Lantos couldn’t cease himself.

“It’s like an addiction,” he says. “How do you call it quits?”

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