It’s “business as usual” at Fox Searchlight Pictures, despite the change in corporate parent, co-chairmen Nancy Utley and Stephen Gilula told an industry audience at the BFI London Film Festival Friday. The execs said that Disney CEO Bob Iger’s commitment to leave Fox Searchlight alone was reaffirmed when Iger and Walt Disney Studios co-chairmen Alan Horn and Alan Bergman watched Taika Waititi’s Adolf Hitler satire “Jojo Rabbit.” Utley, who described it as “a big test for me,” said: “They really...
Stephen
Gilula
Chairman
Gilula said the big test to see if he and fellow Searchlight chairman Nancy Utley would survive Fox’s 2019 acquisition by Disney is when they screened their movie “Jojo Rabbit,” about a boy in Nazi Germany whose imaginary friend is Adolf Hitler, and thankfully the top brass approved. It didn’t hurt that their specialty division had won four Oscars (including best picture and director) for “The Shape of Water” and two for best actress for “The Favourite,” starring Olivia Colman, and “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” with Frances McDormand, over the previous two years. In 2020, “Jojo” won an adapted screenplay Oscar for director Taika Waititi and five other nods, and Searchlight went into awards season with festival favorite “Nomadland,” helmed by Chloé Zhao and starring McDormand.
