After Slamming Studios and Streamers at Locarno, a Less Frenetic Ted Hope Reflects on the Strikes, Indie Industry Ways Forward
04.08.2023 - 19:09
/ variety.com
John Bleasdale Guest Contributor Locarno can’t get enough of Ted Hope. Five years after receiving the festival’s Raimondo Rezzonico Award, the producer of modern indie classics such as “The Wedding Banquet” and “The Ice Storm” shook things up yesterday at Locarno’s StepIN think tank with an Out of the Box keynote, a sweeping blast on the state of the industry. It resonated hugely with senior European industry executives who are often now battling the very same issues which Hope zeroed in on.
“It was an exercise in overload,” the former Amazon exec told Variety the day after he gave the 40-minute talk. He used 150 bullet points distilled from his Substack, and talked entertainingly at one and the same time. “It’s hard to engage people in this conversation, if you don’t do something like that.
It gives me a lot of ammunition for my Gatling gun.” On Friday, Hope delivered a masterclass. Global media didn’t want to wait that long to capture more of his take on the need for an indie cinema reset. Hope began as an independent producer fostering the early careers of such filmmakers as Ang Lee, Todd Soldonz and Hal Hartley.
“I arrived at the perfect moment when the international sales market was blossoming and was very U.S.-centric,” he said, with bracing honesty. He moved on to head Amazon’s original film production, overseeing prizewinning features such as “The Salesman” and “Manchester by the Sea”. “I worked at Amazon for five plus years.
Their leadership principles were things I had already decided were how I like to lead my life. They build out of first principles,” he told Variety. But now Hope feels the independent film sector is in bad shape: “It’s reached a point where you can start to see that the business goals of
.
The website popstar.one is an aggregator of news from open sources. The source is indicated at the beginning and at the end of the announcement. You can
send a complaint on the news if you find it unreliable.