An Overnight Success?

After Warner Bros. orphaned `Home Alone’ and Paramount dropped `Speed’ only to watch Fox turn both into blockbusters, turnaround became a touchy subject for studios.

The potential for embarrassment—WB watched Fox Searchlight take the bows for the Oscar-winning `Slumdog Millionaire’ and Par saw Summit score a blockbuster with `Twilight’—prompts some studios to sit forever on projects they have no intention of making.

Overnight Productions, a two-year old Gotham-based production/financing shingle started by CEO Rick Schwartz, has found a way to take the sting out of the turnaround game, and it has gotten three production starts from pictures percolated by major studios. 

Overnight has just hired `Grey Gardens’ helmer Michael Sucsy to make his feature directorial debut on `Goree Girls,’ a film that will star Jennifer Aniston, based on the true story of an all-female country band in a Texas prison in the 1940s. The film spent the past several years being developed by DreamWorks.

Production begins in January, with Overnight financing, and Schwartz and Aaron Kaufman joining Aniston and her Echo Films partner Kristin Hahn as producers.

DreamWorks execs won’t have to worry about regretting one that got away, though. In addition to getting most of its development costs reimbursed, DreamWorks gets first crack at distributing the film. The addition of Sucsy—who directed both Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange to Emmy nominations for `Grey Gardens’—is expected to be the equivalent of catnip to actresses, and might give `Goree Girls’ a supporting cast around Aniston that will make DreamWorks glad it’s at the front of the line for distribution.  

It is the third Overnight film to come from a major studio. Overnight has a November start on the Darren Aronofsky-directed `Black Swan,’ a Universal-developed project that will star Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis; and it will start production October on the Jonathan Jakubowicz-directed `Southbound,’ a Warner Bros.-developed drama that will star Matthew McConaughey and Eva Mendes. 

Schwartz came up with his game plan after working for Harvey Weinstein and then with Graham King, and being a hands-on exec on films like `The Others,’ `Gangs of New York’ and `The Departed.’

He saw a niche to be filled on films he could line with substantial directing and acting talent, but still make for budgets between $15 million and $30 million—a range largely abandoned by tent pole-hungry studios. Schwartz plugged in with a network of private equity and high net worth individuals, who provided Overnight with a development fund and production financing that isn’t contingent on distribution.

The company isn't all about projects from other studios. It just completed the thriller `13’ with Jason Statham, Ray Winstone, Mickey Rourke and Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson. It began production this week on `Machete,’ the film that Robert Rodriguez is co-directing with protege Ethan Maniquis. Danny Trejo is playing the title character and Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Steven Seagal, Lindsay Lohan, Cheech Marin, Don Johnson and Jeff Fahey play supporting roles.

On the projects that came from studios, Schwartz said he’s been able to make deals that benefit those majors and his investors, who are eager to see results.  

`If a studio has a project it’s not making, they have been very open to creative deals, and hey, we still need distribution,’ Schwartz said. `As for the financiers, it’s a different conversation when you can go beyond the theoretical and say, here are the four movies you are investing your dollars in. It makes the conversation so much easier.'