LOS ANGELES (NYT NEWS SERVICE).- One of corporate Hollywood’s most enduring double acts is calling it quits.
Steve Gilula and Nancy Utley, senior executives at Searchlight Pictures for 21 of its 27 years, who shaped global culture with Oscar-winning hits like “12 Years a Slave,” “Black Swan,” “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Slumdog Millionaire,” announced their surprise retirement Tuesday. They will leave the Disney-owned specialty studio by the end of June, adding to a conspicuous changing of the guard at The Walt Disney Co.
“You don’t want to be the show that stays on the air two seasons too long,” Utley said. “Get out while everything is still going well.”
She was joking — mostly. Searchlight has long been the gold standard of art film studios, packing its slate with diverse offerings long before Hollywood got the memo, and thriving in a changing marketplace — the DVD collapse, the rise of streaming competitors — even as once-formidable competitors like The Weinstein Co. imploded. If the latest Searchlight success, “Nomadland,” wins the Academy Award for best picture Sunday, as many expect, Gilula, 70, and Utley, 65, will have taken the top prize in four of the past eight ceremonies. That is a run unmatched by any specialty studio, even Miramax, which at its height won three best-picture Oscars.
Searchlight’s previous best-picture winners have been “The Shape of Water” (2018), “Birdman” (2015) and “12 Years a Slave” (2014). “Slumdog Millionaire” won in 2009.
At the same time, however, Sunday could mark a symbolic shift in Hollywood: If Searchlight loses, it will likely be to Netflix, which could win its first Academy Award for best picture for “The Trial of the Chicago 7.” Netflix has been chasing such a victory for years as the ultimate symbol of supremacy in Hollywood.
Searchlight has been rising to the challenge of streaming. “Nomadland,” from Chinese-born filmmaker Chloé Zhao, was released in theaters and on Hulu, a Disney streaming service. But competing with Amazon, Apple and Netflix — and their seemingly bottomless wallets — for talent and material has become harder and harder. That has made the art film market more precarious for traditional studios like Searchlight, which will now be run by David Greenbaum and Matthew Greenfield, the current presidents.
“Every time my contract was up, to be candid, I always questioned whether I had the intestinal fortitude to fight through the next set of changes,” Gilula said. “Ultimately, pride and loyalty kept me going. And there has always been another fantastic film in the pipeline. Well, maybe after ‘Shape of Water,’ maybe after ‘Three Billboards.’ But this is it. With ‘Nomadland,’ which has shown that we haven’t lost our edge at all, adapting quickly to the pandemic, there is a great feeling of fulfillment.”
Gilula and Utley are leaving amid a broader brain drain at Disney. Robert A. Iger, executive chairman, is departing in December after 26 years at the company. Alan F. Horn, the top creative executive at Walt Disney Studios, has been edging toward retirement, as has Alan N. Braverman, Disney’s top lawyer. Jayne Parker, Disney’s powerful human resources chief, will step down in June after 33 years at the company.
“The people you mentioned have contributed mightily — myself excluded; I’m not talking about myself in this regard — to the success of the company, and in doing so have groomed people behind them who will take over the mantle,” Iger said. “I try to ease people’s concerns as much as possible. It’s certainly way too premature to express concern.”
Searchlight was one of the assets that Disney acquired from Rupert Murdoch in 2019. Iger, who orchestrated the deal, heaped praise on Utley and Gilula. “It takes a really deft hand to bring these smaller but extremely high-quality films to market, and they have Ph.D.’s in it,” he said.
Does their retirement signal a change in direction for Searchlight? The mini-studio, which has about 100 employees, is beloved by fans of grown-up cinema, especially as Hollywood has leaned harder toward all-audience franchise films.
“No, not at all,” Iger said. “We haven’t been particularly vocal about this, but we intend for Searchlight to play a big part in supplying content, not just for theaters but for our streaming platforms. We are going to invest more and more. Expect more output rather than less.”
Searchlight’s coming films include “Summer of Soul,” a documentary about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival from Ahmir Thompson, better known as Questlove; Wes Anderson’s “The French Dispatch,” a comedy-drama-romance; and Guillermo del Toro’s “Nightmare Alley,” about a manipulative carnival worker. Searchlight also has six television shows on the way with stars and directors that include Keira Knightley, Yorgos Lanthimos (“The Favourite”) and Darren Aronofsky.
All have worked with Searchlight before.
“When I started in the American film industry in ’93-’96, I heard often the word ‘family’ to describe film studios: ‘We’re a family here’,” del Toro said. “In my experience, what they must have meant was the Manson family. But not with Searchlight. It is a true family, one that nurtures you.”
Del Toro, who wrote and directed “The Shape of Water,” continued: “I remember pitching them the story — it was a huge gamble! not something most studios would make! — and by the end I got weepy, and then they got weepy, and they said, ‘Go make your movie.’”
Zhao said she was impressed that Gilula and Utley met with her for an hour every week “for months” as Searchlight worked toward a pandemic-suited distribution and marketing plan for “Nomadland,” which stars Frances McDormand as a grief-stricken van dweller.
“I always hear horror stories about how, at some studios, once you finish your film, you don’t know where it is going — what is happening with it,” Zhao said. “Not only was I informed every week at Searchlight, I was allowed to be a huge part of making all of the decisions.”
Gilula and Utley agreed to a theatrical release, even though it was a money-losing proposition because of the pandemic. “They don’t say, ‘We have a system that works for us so that is how you are going to work,’” Zhao said. “They really listened to us and trusted us.”
Searchlight was founded in 1994 by Thomas E. Rothman, who is now Sony’s movie chief. At the time, specialty films — auteur-minded cinematic trinkets — were raking in money at the box office. “The Full Monty,” released by Searchlight in 1997, cost $3.5 million to make and took in $258 million worldwide (or nearly $430 million in today’s money). Over the years, market conditions changed markedly, particularly in the late 2000s, when an economic downturn dried up production financing.
As competitors like Rogue Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Picturehouse and Miramax faded away, Utley and Gilula kept Searchlight vibrant. Her specialty has been marketing, scripts and casting. He is a distribution ace who co-founded the Landmark Theaters chain in 1974. “There has never been a spreadsheet that Steve didn’t love,” Utley said dryly.
Aside from exquisite cinematic taste, the two executives, who both hail from the Midwest, are the rarest of species in Hollywood: genuinely nice people. Neither crave the spotlight. They are widely known in the film industry for campaigning for awards with integrity.
“Hopefully, we have set an example,” Gilula said, “showing that you don’t have to be the other kind of person to be successful in this business.”
Both insisted that Disney’s takeover of Searchlight (called Fox Searchlight while owned by Murdoch) played no role in their decision to retire.
“We were frustrated at Fox because Fox just didn’t have a streaming strategy and was very slow to react to marketplace changes,” Utley said, adding. “I think the transition to Disney has gone really smoothly, which is one reason I have all the faith in the world about the future of Searchlight.”
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