Oren Aviv and Robert Simonds Seek to Reverse Engineer Star-Driven Middle Movies

The company will focus on movies in the $20-$80 million range

Robert Simonds’ new next generation film and TV studio, which has just named Oren Aviv as president and chief content officer of its film side, is out to fill the void between low-budget  indies and $200 million blockbusters.

“We’ve been talking about what opportunities there are in the marketplace that the shift had provided us,” Aviv tells TheWrap about his decision to join the company. “What Bob has done is create a strategy that takes advantage of a real vacuum in the industry, and that is the movie that people think of as the middle movie. It’s the star-driven mid-budgeted movie that’s proven to be successful but has only been made by the majors a couple of times a year.”

Also read: Oren Aviv Joins Robert Simonds’ Newly Launched Studio as President of Motion Picture Group

“What [the majors] have consciously and intelligently done is they have taken their resources and they have decided to play to their global competitive advantage,” Simonds adds. “They’re going to make fewer, more expensive movies every year. And there are 70 movies every year missing from the major studios’ slates in this range that we’re making movies”

Without a development department, the company will “reverse-engineer” films based around a particular star’s strengths, working with them to come up with a concept or an idea before hiring writers and directors to execute it.

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It’s how the company’s TV arm came up with and produced “State of Affairs,” the political thriller series which marks Katherine Heigl‘s return to TV with a November premiere date on NBC. The same model will be used on films budgeted in the $20-$80 million range.

“It’s getting a movie star to act like a movie star,” Simonds says. “We’re the wrong partner for the star if it’s a genre or a cool art movie. Those are movies that they should make and that deserve to be made, but that’s not what we’re built for.”

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Simonds names recent mid-budgeted hits like “The Other Woman,” “Ride Along” and “Neighbors” as well as “The Proposal,” which Aviv worked on at Disney, as examples of the kind of movies the new company is seeking to make.

The company has deals in place with AMC Theatres, Regal Entertainment Group, Cinemark and Carmike to distribute their films theatrically.

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