A couple of months ago, fantasy writer Patrick Rothfuss found himself in the middle of a bidding war over the film rights to his novel The Name of the Wind. Another company (20th Century Fox Television) had previously optioned the rights, but failed to bring anything to air, and by the time the rights reverted back to Rothfuss in July, the book—which is actually the first installment in his planned Kingkiller Chronicle trilogy—had become a monstrous bestseller. July was a busy month for him, as he recounted in a lengthy blog post last week: meetings were had; pitches were pitched.
And on Thursday, the fruits of that process came to bear: Lionsgate and Rothfuss agreed on terms for a deal that plans to bring the Kingkiller Chronicle world to TV, movies, and videogames.
Unless you're the type of person who prefers the business of entertainment to entertainment itself, you might not care—after all, the third book in the trilogy still hasn't come out, and there likely won't be anything to watch or play for years to come. But you probably should care, because this represents far more than just another pickup for Lionsgate. Rather, it's possibly the final step in the studio's surprising evolution from indie purveyor to horror maven to franchise-gobbling powerhouse. With Hunger Games ending this November and Divergent stuck at a shambling run, Lionsgate needed a hot new property to build their future around; consider Kingkiller its Phase 3.
It’s the exact right move. The bloom is off the dystopian-YA rose, and while Lionsgate has released some of the best genre pictures in the past five years, moderate hits and cult favorites like Kick-Ass, Sinister, and John Wick don’t transform a midlevel studio into a power player. But if you make a cross-platform deal to bring in a gargantuan franchise—Rothfuss' series has sold more than 10 million copies to date and it’s not even finished yet—you can keep funding mid-market genre fare like The Descent while becoming a destination for grown-up fantasy a la Game of Thrones, which is more popular than ever. It's essentially the corporate version of George Clooney's famous "one for you, one for me" philosophy—and extends even to critically acclaimed pictures like Sicario, which opened wide this weekend.
’Twas not always thus, though. Twenty-three years ago, Lionsgate came into this world pushing indie flicks and Oscar bait, and enjoyed a fair bit of success doing so. Plenty of studios and distributors aspire to that very status, and cling to it once they attain it; but not Lionsgate. Two decades of talent-spotting, partnerships, and shrewd acquisitions brought them from the art house to the horror house to franchise-peddling juggernaut—and these are the movies that did it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GJ9OTI4GSY
****Pushing Hands (1992)****
Lionsgate's first film was also the directorial debut of Ang Lee. It was a modest beginning for the studio, grossing just $150,000 in the United States.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4I75Rvb0zo
The Pillowbook (1997)
Peter Greenaway’s picture became Lionsgate’s first release to crack the million-dollar mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1duitd-N1Us
Buffalo ’66 (1998)
Vincent Gallo's watershed indie wasn't Lionsgate's only standout that year—1998 was one of the company's most important. That November, LG released Gods and Monsters and The Red Violin on the same day; they would garner the first Academy Award nominations and wins (Best Adapted Screenplay for Gods and Monsters, Best Original Score for The Red Violin) for the studio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20CRw3XdETA
Dogma (1999)
Kevin Smith’s first and only partnership with Lionsgate became the studio’s first wide theatrical release—and its biggest hit up to that point, making more than $30 million.
Amores Perros (2000)
Alejandro González Iñárritu (Birdman) made his feature film debut under the Lionsgate banner with the critically acclaimed Amores Perros, which earned an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film and launched Iñárritu’s career.
Cabin Fever (2003)
Lionsgate jumpstarted the career of another young auteur by releasing this, Eli Roth's first movie. It became the studio’s second-highest earner to date, and put Lionsgate at the vanguard of the Hard-R “torture porn” horror trend.
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
After 12 years in operation, the studio had a financially explosive year. Michael Moore’s incendiary documentary earned $119 million, making more on its own than the cumulative total of any single year in Lionsgate’s history. That year, the studio also released the first movie in the Saw franchise, which cemented the studio as the driving force in horror cinema during the mid-2000s.
Crash (2005)
Paul Haggis’ movie, while not necessarily remembered fondly, won the Academy Award for Best Picture—making it the first and only Lionsgate venture to receive the honor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13BiV4sIMGM
Diary Of A Mad Black Woman (2005)
2005 was also the year Lionsgate studio began its (very lucrative) partnership with Tyler Perry. Diary Of A Mad Black Woman was the first of 15 Perry projects released by the studio.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8KtYRALe-xo
The Expendables (2010)
The ’80s-action-heroes-kicking-ass flick was the studio's first original franchise blockbuster since Saw—and the second time a Lionsgate movie broke $100 million at the box office.
Hunger Games (2012)
The studio shattered its 2010 financial performance, thanks to the young adult movie boom and its merger with Summit Entertainment. The first movie in the Suzanne Collins series started the year by making $400 million—a figure not even the Lionsgate/Summit flick The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 could match with its own $292 million.
