Lai See | Ivanhoe Pictures bets on Crazy Rich Asians
Filming of Kevin Kwan's best selling debut novel Crazy Rich Asians is to start in Hong Kong later this year, before moving to Singapore, London and Paris. The book is an entertaining satirical exploration of the lives of the super-rich in Singapore, Hong Kong and the mainland.
An instant success for Kwan, the producers of the film are hoping it will bring them similar success since it will be their debut production.
The film is being produced by the recently formed Ivanhoe Pictures, which as the name suggests has a link to Ivanhoe Mines, which was founded and is chaired by Robert Friedland. Ivanhoe Pictures is a separate company but Friedland, who is providing the financial backing, is non-executive chairman.
The president and CEO is John Penotti who was a cofounder of the highly successfully indie filmmaker GreeneStreet Films. Its films included The Bedroom which was made on a budget of US$2.5 million but ended up grossing US$38 million and Swimfan which cost less than US$10 million but went on to make US$60 million. The third figure in the founding triumvirate is Beijing-based Ray Chen, the founder of Beijing Premiere Media.
"We pursued that book in the US because we think its going to be a great movie, and secondly because in some way it defines and justifies our mission at Ivanhoe Pictures," Penotti told Lai See.
Penotti, who spend some 20 years as an indie producer in the US, had become disenchanted with the model. It's a mature market and there's been considerable consolidation among the distributors. It was becoming harder for him to get a slot with the kind of films he wanted to make.
Since 2011, Penotti's been coming to Asia to learn about the industry and to develop contacts. He recognised the market conditions he recalled from the 1990s and early 2000s in the US in terms of the talent, ideas and distributors with visionary ideas for marketing films. "I smelled the same environment that I recalled earlier in the US and I felt alive again and thought to myself, 'I want to be part of this'."