Getting a movie made in Hollywood is hard enough, but trying to make an independent feature is becoming all but impossible, even for the likes of proven entity Todd Solondz. After a career consisting of off-beat, but beloved films like “Welcome to the Dollhouse,” “Happiness,” and “Wiener-Dog,” Solondz is now struggling to get financing for his latest effort, “Love Child,” despite the commitments of Elizabeth Olsen and Charles Melton who signed on to star back in February of this year. Speaking in a recent interview with Vulture, Olsen admitted that getting the film made is proving more challenging than she initially thought.
“I’m not a producer on it, but I’ve never hustled more for a movie that’s having a hard time getting made,” Olsen said. “There’s so many things I could say about that in private. It really comes down to having really responsible budgets. But not every movie can be made with favors for crews, right? You can’t ask crews to be paid a really shitty wage. So I don’t know. I find it all to be really frustrating right now, specifically for film.”
“Love Child” is said to follow a clever, Broadway-hungry eleven-year-old named Junior who’s strangely consumed with his mother. It seems like something right within Solondz’s wheelhouse, but studios don’t seem to be warming to it and it does require a bigger budget than he’s worked with before.
“It’s really the first feature I’ve written that actually has a plot,” Solondz said in a profile featured in The New Yorker back in September. “It’s a very Hollywood movie.”
Even though Solondz may describe it that, Hollywood doesn’t seem to be accepting it as such. He’s been trying to get the project on its feet for seven years, with Penélope Cruz and Edgar Ramírez, as well Rachel Weisz and Colin Farrell both attached at different points to take the parts now held by Olsen and Melton. Having been in Marvel for so long, Olsen is now flexing her talents in the independent sphere with projects like this year’s “His Three Daughters,” which was acquired by Netflix following its premiere at TIFF in 2023. Actually getting a studio to back a film going into production, however, is not something Olsen expected to be so daunting.
“I just have to remember that there are studios that do quite a range — Searchlight being one of them,” said Olsen to Vulture. “But every project I want to do usually is a little adjacent to a genre or whatever, and everyone wants to know, ‘What’s that genre?’ I don’t know what the hell the genre is for ‘His Three Daughters.’ I find it funny and find that it has a lot of heart. Maybe it’s a dramedy. What is that even? I find that that question is part of raising the money, and it’s so boring.”
While she couldn’t share too many further details on “Love Child,” Olsen did put out a notice to the press for assistance, one IndieWire is happy to oblige.
Olsen said, “If anyone’s writing about this interview, if you guys want to make a big, bold notice that says, ‘Todd Solondz needs money to make a movie,’ that would be great!”
If any studio executive happens to be reading this, do Solondz a favor and cough up some dough.
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