Brave is the word that echoes more than any other in this awardsy time of year. It comes up at cocktail parties, as in “that studio was so brave to make that film.” Or at awards shows, where winners are always thanking their backers for their bravery.
This year you’re hearing the word a little bit less. And I think for good reason.
When director Brady Corbet stood up at the Beverly Hilton to accept the Golden Globe for best picture drama for his (truly bold) movie The Brutalist, he didn’t thank all the corporate entities that believed in him. No, he noted how the film “kept falling apart” and pulled no punches with the studio executives in the room. “I was told that this film was undistributable; I was told that no one would come out and see it. I was told the film wouldn’t work.” He asked executives to “please think about” why they don’t roll the dice on directors’ visions more. (Indeed, no U.S. distributor would come aboard his movie until it became such a force at Venice, when A24 couldn’t resist.)
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Emilia Pérez director Jacques Audiard, from the same stage, didn’t salute big corporations for their bravery, either, even though one of the biggest, Netflix, is distributing his film. Instead, he used his time in the limelight to thank the actors for their bravery and tell the audience to gird themselves for the Trump era.
A glance at the Oscar best picture list can make it seem like film companies are taking plenty of big swings. How else to explain all the audacious work coming at us this season?
But the facts are more squirrelly. And they tell of an unfortunate little truth in the entertainment business circa 2025: Even the risk-takers are scared.
Netflix, of course, has made big swings, taking a world-renowned auteur and, after seeing just a few minutes of his Mexico-set Spanish-language film, buying rights to the piece. It has gone on to become one of the most decorated non-English-language movies in Oscar history.
That film was Roma, in 2018. Netflix waited a lot longer to make a play for Emilia and spent less to get less. Roma was a ruminative black-and-white film with few fireworks, yet the company shelled out $20 million for world rights after seeing 12 minutes of footage. Emilia Pérez had far more obvious commercial potential, with rousing musical numbers, a violent thrillerish finale and an en vogue topic. Yet the company waited for a finished film and a warm Cannes reception before committing — and even then spent barely half that sum on just U.S. and U.K. rights.
Particular dynamics abide for each sale, of course. But for parallel snapshots of shrinking levels of courage, look no further. Roma’s financier, Participant, went out of business last year, by the way.
One of the best movies of 2024 to many eyes, the media-ethics thriller September 5, didn’t even have a distributor until Paramount Pictures, having seen it wow audiences in Telluride, decided it was worth a buy — even though its foreign-sales arm had already been selling rights for weeks.
This new caution is caused by a slew of factors, from consumers’ changing theatrical habits to the fact that the streamers fueling the risk for the better part of a decade are now getting past their growth phase. Apple spent $25 million to buy CODA at Sundance in 2021 — a huge gamble at the time — but hasn’t come close recently. Amazon’s backing of RaMell Ross’ Nickel Boys did take some guts, but the movie was deep in development at MGM before Amazon finished acquiring the company in 2022, and even this fall its theatrical commitment seemed shaky until noms arrived.
In what is perhaps the most telling sign of the straight-up fear about anything artistically or politically risky, No Other Land, the most recognized documentary of the past year and a favorite to win the Oscar … does not have a distributor. Still. Now. Three weeks before the Oscars. The film about Palestinian resistance to Israeli actions in the West Bank, framed by a friendship between a Palestinian activist and an Israeli ally, has attracted no buyer willing to take a chance. Netflix, the longtime distributor of buzzy international-minded docs like Icarus and The Square, wouldn’t touch it, and neither would Amazon, Apple or anyone else. Instead, marketing company Cinetic has helped the filmmakers self-distribute.
The Middle East is a third rail, you say. Sure. But that also misses the point. The fact that studios even have a third rail is what we should be worried about. Twenty years ago, Paradise Now — a comedy about would-be Palestinian suicide bombers — was backed by a Warner Bros. subsidiary. Now a documentary set in the same region can’t even land a small distributor.
And needless to say, traditional studios are no longer in the risk-taking game, with the two best picture nominees this year from those studios, Wicked and Dune: Part Two, both essentially franchise installments. You’d imagine this is an old story, but it’s not as old as you think. Just a decade ago, Paramount made Selma and Warner Bros. made American Sniper. One has a hard time imagining either studio making those films today. God bless Neon for picking up Anora and doing a mighty good job with it. But in another era, couldn’t you see big studios falling all over themselves to distribute a film as outrageously entertaining and slyly substantive as that one?
Two studio specialty divisions do merit props for betting the house again and again. Searchlight Pictures, a company that over the years gambled on a terrifyingly vivid depiction of slavery (12 Years a Slave) and an offbeat movie set in an Indian game show studio (Slumdog Millionaire), winning best picture with both, continues to aim high. That’s how A Complete Unknown and A Real Pain are the successes they’ve been. Focus Features has kept with its own genteel brand of risk, this year backing a British drama with a potentially taboo subject in Conclave and calibrated whimsy in the Lego doc Piece by Piece. And then there’s the ultimate specialty scrapper, Sony Pictures Classics, which this year is punching above its weight again with I’m Still Here.
A24, which has been a little more cautious than in the days of opening its checkbook for totally unproven, nameless gambles like Moonlight (literally its first original production), will still sometimes go for broke, as it will next season with a table-tennis movie from Josh Safdie called Marty Supreme that stars Timothée Chalamet. But by and large, risk — the idea of a company spending real money on a vision without an immediately obvious commercial upside — is dying. (Also, it’s no coincidence that some of the biggest risks come with the safety of The Last Movie Star.)
Economic realities govern some of these choices. Hollywood is no longer seen as the sexy pick for financiers with money to throw around. (There’s apps for that.) And the margins are thinner than ever as consumers spend their money elsewhere. Companies feel they need to pull back.
Yet the whole thing is also a bit of a vicious cycle. Companies take fewer risks, so audiences see fewer risky movies, so companies take fewer risks … and on it goes.
Plus, avoiding risk is silly. Netflix waited to buy Emilia until all its bases were covered and still got gobsmacked by the Karla Sofía Gascón scandal. You want no risk, open a savings account, as David Lynch’s John Ford character might have said in The Fabelmans. A movie that, incidentally, was a big risk.
I know, we should be grateful for the films we do have — for the fact that we live in a world with such a diverse range of quality material. Of course. But let’s take a second to call out the tentativeness of these Hollywood gatekeepers as well.
Because if they dragged their feet on The Brutalist, Emilia Pérez and September 5, maybe next time they don’t buy them at all. Or maybe those films aren’t even made. It’s great to salute the hook-and-crook ways these movies get to our screens. But it’s worth asking Corbet’s question too: Why does it take so many pirate tricks in the first place?
This story first appeared in a February stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe.
