aug 27, 2015 - Black Mass Producers on Johnny Depp’s Awards Plans

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Black Mass’ Producers on Johnny Depp’s Awards Plans, Tom Cruise’s Power and Why Relativity Failed
With three pictures releasing in three weeks, Brian Oliver and Tyler Thompson of Cross Creek Pictures take a breath to talk about handpicking their films, how 'American Hustle' got away and why producing with your own money is tougher: "We have to tiptoe along that razor's edge.

Thompson keeps a poster in his office for ‘Black Mass’ — which stars Depp as mob boss Whitey Bulger — that was signed by director Scott Cooper.

Johnny Depp reportedly dropped out of Black Mass, the Whitey Bulger biopic, for a while. What happened?

OLIVER It wasn’t really a Johnny Depp issue at all, it was more of a budget issue. We had a different understanding of what the gross and net budget was with our line producer and partners to where we couldn’t make it work with the budget that was provided to us. It wasn’t an issue of what Johnny was getting paid. It was more about the budget of the movie. We had to stop and regroup. Johnny always thought that he was still doing it, even when it fell apart. When it came around in its second iteration with Warner Bros., then it was a pretty easy process.

THOMPSON Black Mass is something we’ve been developing for 10 years. We owned the rights to the book.

OLIVER It didn’t really have a third act, then Whitey got caught [in Santa Monica in 2011]. Then it became a race to beat Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s [competing] project and a couple of other projects around town. Luckily, we sped to production.

Has Depp committed to doing awards-season promotion?

THOMPSON Yes. He said this is his favorite movie he’s ever worked on.

OLIVER He’s going to Venice and Toronto, and we’ll push him to do as much awards promotion as we can.

He’s had a few recent flops with The Lone Ranger and Transcendence. Are you worried?

THOMPSON It’s a return to form for him, and it’s the type of role you haven’t seen him in in a long time. He and [director] Scott Cooper had amazing chemistry.

OLIVER He’s playing a real-life scary sociopath, and he nailed it. With the past movies he’s done, people were probably questioning, “Were you scared to do a Johnny Depp movie?” But it’s been the opposite. Everyone wants to really see Johnny Depp do this role.

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