When we encounter prostitutes in the movies, they're almost invariably destitute, sick, absurdly dressed, and roaming the red light district in search of a client or a fix. That may well be accurate for a majority of women in the profession, but the rarely-glimpsed high-priced call girl is just as much of a curiosity. After he finishes The Informant with Matt Damon, Steven Soderbergh will direct The Girlfriend Experience -- a look at the life of a prostitute who commands a fee of $10,000 a night and earns over $1,000,000 a year. The filmmaker dropped a hint about this project over a year ago, but now plans for the movie are coming together, and we have a lot more details.

The movie, written by Ocean's Thirteen scribes Brian Koppelman and David Levien along with Soderbergh, will be shot over 14 days this fall, in the same improvisational style Soderbergh used for Bubble. It will also follow Bubble's controversial pattern of a simultaneous theatrical and DVD release. According to the Variety story, Soderbergh is considering casting an adult film actress, instead of a Hollywood star, in the lead role. The title refers to encounters where men pay not only for sex, but also for the woman to act like the perfect girlfriend in the experience.

Dear Lord, Soderbergh is prolific: if his two (already-completed) Che Guevara movies hit their 2008 release dates (they're premiering at Cannes), and The Informant and The Girlfriend Experience stay on track for 2009, he will have directed 13 movies in a 10-year span. The man loves to work. This new project is particularly intriguing since it looks like it might give us a well-researched look into a world that I, at least, know virtually nothing about. And it might also confound the usual arguments for why prostitution is a Bad Thing...

Steven Soderbergh is one of the busiest directors in the game. He's also one of the hardest to pin down, mixing the big-budget Hollywood films with independents better than almost anybody. This summer he'll bring us Ocean's Thirteen, which the prescence of Al Pacino has moved to my "must-see" list. ("I think we're going out strong," says Soderbergh about the end of the Oceans series. Fingers crossed!) He's also preparing to start shooting back-to-back movies about Che Guevara, with Benicio del Toro starring as the famed revolutionary. And he's talking about the second film in the controversial series he started with Bubble.

You might remember Soderbergh caused quite a stir with theater owners early last year when he unveiled his ultra low-budget Bubble as a simultaneous cinema, DVD and pay TV release. Soderbergh cites Bubble as one of his best filmmaking experiences, and he disagrees with those who consider it a commercial failure. "It's hard to judge how it went because we were never able to expand beyond the Landmark Theatre chain, which is only 50 screens," he says. "We weren't able to open as wide as we wanted because other theatre chains weren't interested in playing the film. The good news is we sold a lot of DVDs." He claims they broke even on the project. "Considering what an odd movie it is, is great. And we've got five more to go. To my mind, it's all just one giant film being made in six segments."

The next segment will also be a day-and-date release across all formats, and will be about "super high-end call girls" in New York, who make upwards of $2000 an hour. (I'm in the wrong business!) Soderbergh is using non-actors for this new project as well. As for alienating theater owners, Soderbergh says "Lord of the Rings went out day-and-date in the US all over the street. It's happening now; it's just underground." There's more with Soderbergh, including lots of interesting talk about digital projection and what it means for the future of cinema here.

Despite the insistence of theater owners that the multi-platform "super release" of Bubble was a complete disaster, 2929 is trying again with another niche film. Magnolia Pictures (a company that is under the 2929 umbrella) will release Herbie Hancock: Possibilities in theaters (just NY and LA) on April 14 and have it out on DVD four days later; the movie will air on Mark Cuban's HDNet TV channel on April 23. The film is a documentary that both explores Hancock's past and offers a detailed look at the recording of his most recent album on which folks like Sting, Annie Lennox, and Christina Aguilera appear.

While this film and its release schedule seems likely to affect only a tiny group of people (who, admittedly, will be incredibly happy), the small audience isn't a problem for 2929. According to Magnolia's VP of home entertainment Randy Wells, despite Bubble's "failure" at the box office, the total take from the theatrical and DVD sales, combined with PPV income, was about $5 million. Though that number is small compared to the profits pulled in by major studio releases, it's a huge success when one considers that the movie only cost about $1.5 million to make. Additionally, Wells maintains that releasing films on DVD and PPV or cable while they're still in theaters dramatically reduces advertising costs because the various releases can "draft" off of one another's hype.

Comcast and IFC Entertainment will today announce their deal (first outlined by Karina a month ago) to simultaneously release independent films in theaters and on television, via video-on-demand. Kicking off on March 24 with American Gun, the agreement will have films in theaters across the nation (in IFC's theaters as well as in Mark Cuban's Landmark Theaters; negotiations are on-going with other chains) while they are being offered to Comcast subscribers in 22 major markets for $5.99/viewing. Despite the fact that the agreement lacks a DVD element, Comcast's reach is dramatically greater than that of the HD Channel on which Bubble aired, and there's a good chance that Comcast/IFC's films will be seen by a much larger audience than Soderbergh's film.

Because VOD is very hard to pirate, and because Comcast could theoretically pick and choose the markets in which these films are offered, it's hoped that the Comcast/IFC approach will be less threatening to supporters of traditional distribution than the Bubble experiment. IFC actually quietly test the system with a day-date release for C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America this month, and the film, despite being available via VOD to Cablevision subscribers, has done record business in IFC theaters - this, too, should suggest to studios and theater owners that the approach is not necessarily a death knell for exhibition. Among the two dozen or so films IFC and Comcast will release are I Am a Sex Addict, Three Times (by Taiwanese master Hou Hsiao-hsien, whose work is virtually impossible to see in the US), and The Russian Dolls, which stars Amelie's Audrey Tautou).

Look, the fact is that fans of independent film want to see these movies - to some degree, this is going to work. Day-and-date releasing is not going away, and it's time for theater owners and studios to stop whining and, instead, figure out how they can get involved, and use the approach to their advantage. Times change. Deal with it.

When Steven Soderbergh released Bubble simultaneously (more or less) in theaters, on TV, and on DVD, I opted to rent the DVD. This was due more to laziness than anything, but it did give me a chance to listen to the audio commentary where Soderbergh and fellow director Mark Romanek discuss the philosphy behind the movie, which was shot using non-professional actors who ad-libbed much of their dialogue. Soderbergh also used only available light for scenes and worked without monitors. I immediately grew affectionate toward the movie itself, the concept behind it, and the way it was released. I would go on, but Karina pretty much echoed my sentiments with her review.

Josh Oakhurst has transcribed much of the commentary on his blog, and you can read it here. It's not as funny as Soderbergh's commentary for Schizopolis where he interviews himself and insists the last half of the movie is an homage to the inside of his mouth, but for a movie as unique as Bubble it's nice to get some real insight into the mind behind it all.

[via HD for Indies]

After months and months of buildup to its multi-platform release, Steven Soderbergh's Bubble opened in 32 theaters. And, on that all-important, buzz-filled first weekend, it made just $70,664. Ouch. Though of course Mark Cuban, whose 2929 Entertainment is behind the DVD/HD/theater release technique, tried to convince anyone who would listen that the low returns were of little consequence, theater owners clearly felt otherwise. In fact, they were so sure that the $70,664 spelled disaster for the entire simultaneous release concept that they actually released a public statement, crowing over the movie's failure. Yeah, that's classy. John Fithian, president of the National Association of Theater Owners, just wanted to make sure everyone knew that "the movie has performed very poorly," even with all of the free publicity granted it by the press. In other words, "Suck it, Cuban!"

There's a strange mix of movies in this week's roundup: three big studio flicks and one movie from a couple of big names opening on a small scale, trying to cause a lot of trouble. The quick version: Annapolis is bad, but Big Momma's House 2 is much, much worse; Nanny McPhee is at the very least alright, while Bubble is weird and possibly fascinating. For details and links, read on.

• Annapolis: Man, James Franco is really having a tough month - first Tristan & Isolde opened to resounding disinterest, and now Annapolis is being roundly panned. Virtually every review compares the film unfavorably to An Officer and a Gentleman, and the criticism rarely stops there. The New York Times' Stephen Holden calls it "a trailer tricked out with protracted boxing sequences and an undernourished romantic subplot," and others are equally unkind, calling the movie things like "forgettable," "cobbled together," and "all clichés."

• Big Momma's House 2: In what I'm sure comes as a absolute shock to everyone who's had the pleasure of seeing a preview for Big Momma's House 2, it's not very funny. In fact, included on the New York Post's list of things that are "more amusing" than this movie are not only Fletch (you don't say), but also open heart surgery. Yeah. It's really, really bad.

• Nanny McPhee: Reviews for this one are mixed. Though most critics think it's solidly OK, a few - including our man Mick LaSalle - find it really rather wonderful. Pretty much everyone, whether they like the movie or not, praises Emma Thompson's calm in the title role, which they all describe as "the anti-Mary Poppins." (Is that a good thing? What the hell is wrong with Mary Poppins?)

• Bubble: It may not be opening wide, but Bubble is nevertheless a huge deal this week because of its multi-media release schedule. Is it worth sitting through, either in the theater, on TV, or on DVD? Well, there's some disagreement over that. Though a handful of critics find it ponderously dull (writing at CNN, Paul Clinton describes it as the equivalent of "a movie about the phone book"), many others - including Roger Ebert and our own Karina - think that it's oddly thrilling. The great thing is that, if you're sort of interested, there's no need to risk $10 to see how it is. Instead, just flip over the HDNet tonight and see what you think.

 

Steven Soderbergh – who shot to fame 17 years ago, when sex, lies and videotape took the 1989 Sundance Film Festival by storm – won a Best Director Oscar for Traffic and immediately used his newfound Hollywood clout to cast George Clooney in a remake of Andrei Tarkovsky's Solaris. That didn't turn out so great, and some of us – well, okay, probably just me – spent one or two sleepless nights worrying about Steven Soderbergh's career. Though he'd surely never speak to it, perhaps Soderbergh was worried, too, because after the lackluster reception to 2004's Ocean's 12, he went out looking for a kick in the ass. So let's get the business part out of the way: Bubble is the first of six films that the director plans to make, on high def video at a budget of about $250,000 each, for Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner's 2929 Entertainment. 2929, in turn, plans to release all six films on DVD, in theaters, and on HD Net cable – simultaneously. Going in, it's hard to brush off the worry that the deal – and, particularly, its emphasis on technology and speed – might dictate, or at least influence, the way Soderbergh approaches his form and content. What's immediately striking about Bubble, however, is its apparent lack of desire to conform to ... anything. Bubble is not a commercial film, and as such, it in some ways seems like the ideal test case for 2929's simultaneous distribution gambit. If there's any film in today's marketplace that needs to blow its wad all at once to get noticed, it's this.

I just got word that IFC Films is about to launch a new distribution banner, aimed at releasing films in theaters and through On-Demand cable TV, simultaneously. The program will be called First Take, and to it IFC has already attached six films: CSA: The Confederate States of America, Caveh Zahedi's I Am a Sex Addict, New York Film Festival favorite Three Times, American Gun, Russian Dolls, and Sandra Oh-starrer and my early vote for Title of the Year, Sorry Haters. First Take hopes to release an additional 20 films this year. The basic idea is that by closing the window between theatrical and cable on these types of niche releases, films that would have only shown on the coasts can get a nationwide release.

What do we think about this? Is this a more or less viable plan than the cable/DVD/theatrical simultaneous release program that Mark Cuban and Steven Soderbergh are launching this week with Bubble?

In an interview recently with Coming Soon, Steven Soderbergh chatted about a variety of subjects, including Bubble and the Ocean's films, but the most interesting tidbits concerned Che, his Che Guevara biopic starring Benicio Del Toro. According to Soderbergh, he and an unnamed writer (presumably Peter Buchman) are still working on the script, which he describes as "just now starting to get close, I think, to...the way we want." Interestingly, despite the fact that he's made major story and scope changes from the direction original director Terrence Malick wanted to take the story - Soderbergh's Che is "a war movie," set in both Boliva and Cuba - Soderbergh says that "stuff" from Malick's work on the project may actually survive. One assumes that has to mean writing (Malick and Del Toro wrote a screenplay draft together) or story details, since as far as I know Malick never shot anything for the film.

Though shooting isn't set to formally begin until next year (Next year?! Dammit), in an effort to get in ahead of a planned refurbishment, the team will actually shoot for about a week at the UN this month before shutting down again and finishing the script.