For Sean Baker, it’s theatrical or bust.
Paychecks from streamers can be tantalized in front of him, but when it comes to his original work, not only is about making works for the cinema, but shooting on celluloid, too.
“We shouldn’t abandon the medium which created this artform,” Baker tells us on this episode of Crew Call, on why he opted to shoot Anora on film.
“We shot it on film, we shoot it for the cinema and that’s how we want people to see it.”
“Theatrical means everything to me,” Baker tells us, “I consider home entertainment to be an afterthought.”
“NEON allowed me a long theatrical window,” he adds. Anora landed on digital and PVOD after a 60-day window on Dec. 17 following its Oct. 18 theatrical release.
“With each film, I fight for a longer theatrical window and hopefully, the next time I get way over 90 days,” says the filmmaker about the demands he expects for his works for bidding distributors.
“We tell Glen (Basner) at Film Nation, FilmNation tells whoever picks up our film.”
“For me as a filmmaker, I’m trying to fight for the future of film,” Baker adds.
Since winning the Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, Anora has been on a tear, notching five Golden Globe noms, and as recently as this week a DGA nomination for Baker and SAG nominations for Best Feature Cast ensemble, Best Actress Mikey Madison and Best Supporting Actor Yura Borisov. With a reported production cost of $6M, Anora with a global gross of $32.4M worldwide is hands down Baker’s highest grossing movie of his career.
We talk with Baker, and his producers Samantha Quan and Alex Coco about cracking the original high class stripper-Russian oligarch son romantic comedy, which Cannes Film Festival jury boss Greta Gerwig likened to the “structures of Lubitsch and Howard Hawks,” the story’s origins, intentional divisive ending, and discovering Anora herself, Mikey Madison.
Listen to our conversation below: