In its first year of business, producer-financier Topic Studios struck gold with best picture winner Spotlight. A decade later, they were back at the Academy Awards with A Real Pain, Jesse Eisenberg’s little movie that could.
That film ran the awards race for over a year, starting with a standing ovation at the Sundance Film Festival (notable because American audiences, unlike the French, prefer to keep their seats) and culminating in a supporting actor Oscar win for Kieran Culkin.
It was a proof-of-concept moment for Topic, which spent the past 10 years establishing itself as a go-to stop for filmmakers with films like Spencer and Theater Camp. After nearly every distributor passed on A Real Pain, Topic chose to solely finance the feature, eventually selling it to Searchlight Pictures out of Park City.
“It was such a beautiful story. The script was incredible but despite that, there were a lot of people that weren’t sure what it would really be, and how commercial it could be,” says Topic CEO Michael Bloom. “It is a hits business, after all, and if we had crystal balls, it would be a lot easier.” Now, Topic is re-teaming with Eisenberg on his next film, a musical comedy, this one with A24. Says Bloom, “It may sound a little hokey, but I wanted to create a company by artists for artists, because they’re just not a lot of that in the business today.”
Fresh off its big year, Topic will be on hand at the Cannes Film Festival with Splitsville, the latest from filmmakers Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin, who worked with Topic on their debut 2019 comedy, The Climb. Ahead of the fest, Bloom talked to THR about the joys of reteaming with filmmakers and how to stay afloat as an indie outfit amid the ebbs and flows of larger Hollywood.
You had a great year with A Real Pain. Now that you are on the other side of it, what are some lessons learned?
We prefer to get in earlier so that we can really have a hand in shaping the thing and driving to the right outcomes, both creatively and financially. A Real Pain in an interesting way, which we didn’t really predict it from the jump, embodies all of those things we could hope for in a project. We had an instinct about this and about backing Jesse, who had a way of telling the story that was so deeply personal to him, that we thought if we can actually make the movie that we see on the page, this is going to be a really profound piece of work. There’s always execution risk, but it’s one of the things where I’m really confident betting on ourselves. There are so many variables when you’re making a movie, it’s always stunning to me that movies actually turn out well, just because of all the things that could potentially go wrong.
How do you decide what to produce and finance and what to just finance?
When we started out, because it takes a couple of years to build one’s own slate, we were mostly financing. We got very fortunate that our first film was Spotlight, and that put us on the map and gave us a little bit of cred. I would say our preferred approach is to produce and finance, and with the financing, sometimes we will fully finance, as we did with A Real Pain, and other times, depending on the type of project or the size of it, we will co-finance with others. We love to produce, because I like having our hands on the steering wheel. I’m willing to put more money in if we have more control of the outcomes and if we can also protect the filmmakers’ vision. We’re fine having a more passive role, but you’re betting on someone else’s ability, and that can be tricky.
You do a lot of repeat business with filmmakers. How do you maintain those relationships as the filmmakers and films grow?
If you’re going to build a company like ours, you need to be willing to bet on up-and-comers. With the big studios obviously tilting towards big IP and the middle kind of getting washed out, I felt like there was a big opportunity. With Mike and Kyle, we came to know them early and they had success with The Climb. We did a first-look deal with them because we wanted to give them a big sandbox to play in. With Jesse, we had such a wonderful experience on A Real Pain that with this next film, we were hoping we were going to put the band back together. There is also Molly Gordon. We did [her directorial debut] Theater Camp, and now we’re doing another movie with her called Peaked with A24. We like finding talent earlier in their career, so that we grow with them. There are a lot of measures of success that anyone can look at when you’re building a company. To me, having someone like Jesse choose to come back and do his next movie with us — there isn’t a better validation.
While your company has been in operation, there have been several prominent indie outfits that have come and gone. How do you make sure to stay afloat?
Financial discipline. It’s inherently a very risky business and, obviously, not everything’s going to work. In our case, we’ve been fortunate that more has worked than it hasn’t. We believe deeply in our ability to pick the right projects that we think will be not just great creatively, but also commercially. And then we structure the deals in a way where, ideally, we have significant financial upside and the downside is somewhat mitigated. Now, you can never have all reward and no risk. That doesn’t exist, but we have carefully calibrated how we view opportunities and pursue them. We feel like we have a good finger on the pulse of what’s working in the market, what audiences want in particular. You really have to have conviction, and the best one can do is love the material and really feel confident in the folks with whom you’re partnering. I’ve tried really hard to not get too far out over our skis, so that, in success, it’s wonderful, and if something is less than successful, we don’t get hurt too badly.
As independent financiers who sometimes partner with major studios for distribution, how do you handle when those studios’ org charts and mandates change?
It is impossible to predict where the pendulum is going to be at any given time because the mandates of the companies change from time to time. The people change, their tastes change, and the market shifts. It is nearly impossible to control for all of those variables. And so the best one can do is stay focused on the things that are in your control. If you’re trying to thread a needle for a specific buyer or the market at a particular time, or trying to time something, there’s no way you can ever do that. And so to me, the only thing you can do is really believe in what you’re doing and have confidence that you will find the right homes for these things, despite the fact that the people in those places may be different or their mandates may change.