F r o m I m a g I n e e n t e r t a I n m e n t a n d s e I n e p I c t u r e s

How did you get into the international  
sales business?
It was a combination of who I am culturally 
— my parents were both Swiss — my inter-
est in other parts of the world and my love of 
movies. I would venture to say I was the only 
kid in high school who watched every Lina 
Wertmuller movie. At the same time, I was 
the captain of the soccer team. It was odd.
How many times have you been to Cannes?
I think it’s around 15 or 16. The first time was 
when I was studying in Paris for a year and 
getting my master’s degree through Middle-
bury College. I decided to write a thesis on 
independent film distribution in France and I 
wanted to get a job at the Cannes Film Festi-
val, so I worked as an intern handing out VHS 
tapes of movie clips to foreign journalists.
After running Lionsgate International, you were 
co-president of Paramount Vantage. Was it tough 
striking out on your own after you left Paramount 
in 2008?
Yes. When people look at where we are now, 
they say, “Wow, that was fast.” It didn’t feel 
that way. I learned a very valuable lesson in 
that I thought everything was going to come 
to me because of every job that I had, and 
every relationship. It was a rude awakening to 
find out that unless I had projects that people 
wanted, it wasn’t going to happen. You have 
to put yourself on an equal playing field. And 
that took us longer than we thought.
What was the turning point?
Launching Ender’s Game to foreign buyers at 
Cannes in 2011 was a serious highlight. That 
same Cannes, we had also started selling 
The Place Beyond the Pines and Parker. That 
was a huge moment for the growth of our com-
pany. There have been many other successes, 
including The Call and the upcoming Steve 
Carell comedy The Way, Way Back. We also 
jointly sell some titles with Lakeshore, includ-
ing I, Frankenstein, which opens in January.
There are high expectations for fall’s YA adaptation 
Ender’s Game. How did the movie come about?
Gigi [Pritzker] was a partner in the company 
and we talked about how we could help with 
the foreign piece and arrange financing. Odd-
Lot and [director] Gavin Hood had developed 
an outstanding script, and we created a sizzle 
reel. We sold out in almost every foreign terri-
tory, while Summit struck a domestic deal.
Do you think you can replicate the wild success of 
Twilight or The Hunger Games? Earlier this year, 
Beautiful Creatures failed to gain a foothold. 
Ender’s Game is a unique property with a leg-
acy. It’s a book that’s been around for 20 years 
and it’s back on the New York Times best-seller 
list. Part of it is the fact that it is required 
reading in middle schools across the country.
I don’t think people realize how well Drive, and now 
The Place Beyond the Pines, did internationally, 
where you consulted with foreign distributors on 
the marketing. Drive grossed $41.1 million overseas, 
compared with $35 million in the U.S. The Place 
Beyond the Pines has grossed $33.2 million globally, 
including nearly $15 million internationally. Why?
While Pines may feel very American, because 
it’s a saga about fathers and sons in upstate 
New York, it has a very auteur feel that makes 
it a great play overseas. And Derek [Cian-
france] is a very well-respected director com-
ing off of Blue Valentine. And there couldn’t be 
bigger stars than Ryan Gosling [also the star 
of Drive] and Bradley Cooper.
OddLot is financing Rosewater, which marks Jon 
Stewart’s directorial debut. The film tells the real-
life story of BBC journalist Maziar Bahari. Will you 
be selling it at Cannes this year?
We are introducing the project to select buyers. 
It is a poignant, personal true story from a great 
creative team, which includes Oscar-winning 
producer Scott Rudin, Emmy-winning creator 
Jon Stewart and our partners at OddLot. It’s a 
true story of family, faith and courage based on 
the acclaimed best-selling memoir Then They 
Came for Me. The project is a prestige film with 
thrills, emotion and tremendous power.
With the international box office exploding, what 
does it mean for Sierra?
The hunt for really good intellectual property 
is the driver. And rigor. You have to be rigorous 
and hardworking. And all the knowledge that 
I’ve been able to gather, all the jobs I’ve had, 
and all the learning, has given me the tools.
You’re fluent in five languages. What are they?
English and I picked up German because 
my parents spoke it amongst themselves. I 
learned the rest [French, Italian and Spanish] 
in high school and college. I just had the ear.
Any plans to learn Chinese?
Yes, with all my free time. (Laughs.) 
 
EXECUTIVE SUITE
PRESIDENT AND CEO, SIERRA/AFFINITY
Nick Meyer
The former studio exec hits the Croisette 
with Jon Stewart’s directorial debut, 
Jake Gyllenhaal’s Nightcrawler and  
a fluency in international film (and five 
languages) 
By Pamela McClintock
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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER  
41
scenes and Australian locations was sacrilegious, if  
not criminal. Perhaps even fans of what the director  
did with William Shakespeare’s Romeo + Juliet and Moulin 
Rouge! might have wondered if he was the right guy 
to take on the work most often proposed as The Great 
American Novel. 
But no matter how frenzied and sometimes distracting 
Luhrmann’s technique may be, his commitment to the 
material remains palpable, which makes for a film that, 
most of the time, feels vibrantly alive while remaining 
quite faithful to the spirit, if not the letter, of its source.
It begins gently, in patchy black-and-white that turns 
into a depth-enhancing color 3D frame that gives way to 
the famous green light at the end of Daisy’s pier. After 
we are introduced to Nick (Tobey Maguire), Luhrmann’s 
cultural collisions and dislocations commence as a 
synthesis of archival footage and CGI. A lad of modest 
means trying to find a toehold on Wall Street, Nick was 
at Yale with rich bruiser Tom Buchanan (Joel Edgerton) 
and has taken a little house in West Egg, Long Island, 
right across the bay from Tom and his wife, Daisy (Carey 
Mulligan), and in the shadow of the mansion owned by 
the elusive Jay Gatsby. At Gatsby’s parties the booze 
flows and the music plays. But no one ever sees the host, 
whose wealth is surpassed only by his mysteriousness.
Luhrmann and his ever-essential design collaborator 
(and co-producer and wife) Catherine Martin always 
seem extra-stimulated by such scenes, which involve 
ornate costumes, constant movement and music, 
which here imposes blends as unlikely as hip-hop and 
Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Whether you can abide 
some of the musical choices or not, the way Luhrmann 
and his music editors mix and match is ballsy 
and impressive.
In time-honored dramatic fashion, Gatsby’s entrance 
is delayed for a half-hour and, when the moment comes, there’s some-
thing in the way it’s shot combined with Leonardo DiCaprio’s I-own-the-
world smile that recalls the first time you see the young Charles Foster 
Kane in an earlier film about a fellow with more money than he knows 
what to do with. This moment shows how classically precise Luhrmann 
can be when he wants. Throughout, he photographs DiCaprio the way a 
movie star used to be shot — glamorously and admiringly.
After a number of roles that, however well acted, may not have been 
quite in his wheelhouse, DiCaprio feels just right as Gatsby; the glamour 
and allure are at one with his film-star persona.
Viewers will debate whether Mulligan has the beauty and the bearing 
desired for the part, but she lucidly portrays the desperate tear Daisy 
feels between her unquestionable love for Gatsby and fear of her hus-
band. Maguire’s slightly aging boyishness as Nick becomes tiresome  
by the film’s second half.
As for the use of 3D by Luhrmann and cinematographer Simon 
Duggan, it is probably the most naturalistic aspect of the film; only 
rarely do you notice it and yet it really does add something to the expe-
rience, drawing you in as if escorting you through a series of opening 
gates, doors and emotional states.
Cannes opening-night film 
Cast Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Carey Mulligan 
Director Baz Luhrmann // 142 minutes
R E V I E W S
The Great Gatsby
Baz Luhrmann’s frenetic anachronisms and use of 3D are at the 
service of a heartfelt interpretation of the novel
 
BY TODD MCCARTHY
T
HE CENTER HOLDS AMID ALL THE R AZZMATAZZ OF  
Baz Luhrmann’s endlessly extravagant screen adaptation 
of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s imperishable The Great Gatsby. As 
is inevitable with the Australian showman who’s never met 
a scene he didn’t think could be improved by more music, 
costumes, extras and camera tricks, this production begins by being 
over-the-top and moves on from there. But, given the immoderate life-
style of the title character, this approach is not exactly inappropriate, 
even if it is at sharp odds with the refined nature of the author’s prose. 
Although the dramatic challenges posed by the character of narrator 
Nick Carraway remain problematic, the cast is first-rate, the ambiance 
and story provide a measure of intoxication and, most important, the 
core thematic concerns pertaining to the American dream, self-reinven-
tion and love lost, regained and lost again are tenaciously addressed. 
At the very least, Luhrmann must be given credit for delivering a real 
interpretation of the 1925 novel, something not seriously attempted by the 
previous two big-screen adaptations (there was also a now-lost 1926 silent 
version). Paramount’s 1949 film suffered from threadbare production 
values and uneven performances, but Alan Ladd was a terrific Gatsby. 
The same studio’s second try, in 1974, felt suffocating; it had the wrong 
director in Jack Clayton, and Robert Redford was opaque in the title role. 
A 2000 television adaptation didn’t make a significant impression.
For many, the thought of Luhrmann tarting up such a revered classic 
with 3D, anachronistic Jay Z and Beyonce music, techno-spiced party 
Mysterious millionaire 
Gatsby (DiCaprio)  
parties with  
Daisy (Mulligan)  
and Nick (Maguire).
IN C
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THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER  
42
An Episode in the Life  
of an Iron Picker
Bosnian Oscar-winner Danis Tanovic adapts  
a notorious news story into a starkly compelling docudrama
 
BY STEPHEN DALTON
A case study of poverty and racism on the margins of modern 
Europe, An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker combines emotional 
force with aesthetic severity. After winning an Academy Award for 
his 2001 debut feature, the war drama No Man’s Land, writer-director 
Danis Tanovic spent much of the past decade in France. But he has 
now resettled in his native Bosnia-Herzegovina, where he shot this 
timely docudrama. Iron Picker will not be an easy sell to overseas 
audiences, but it is a compassionate work with niche appeal to Eastern 
Bloc glumfest gluttons who find the grim social realism of the Roma-
nian New Wave a little too happy-go-lucky.
The film’s slender script mirrors a real incident that became a 
national scandal in Bosnia, in which a dirt-poor family belonging to 
the persecuted Roma minority came up against a potentially fatal 
brick wall of state bureaucracy. Returning from his job foraging for 
scrap metal, Nazif (Nazif Mujic) finds his pregnant wife, Senada 
(Senada Alimanovic), in pain. After rushing to the hospital, Senada 
finds she has miscarried and urgently requires surgery to prevent 
septicemia. Unable to cover the cost of the operation, Senada and 
Nazif return home defeated. Their increasingly frantic appeals to pen-
niless relatives, hospital bosses and charities fall on deaf ears. Only by 
breaking the law can Senada cheat the system and save her own life.
In an inspired coup for cinematic naturalism, Tanovic contacted 
the real couple at the heart of this story and persuaded them to re-
enact their near-death ordeal onscreen. The couple’s winningly cute 
young daughters, Sandra and Semsa, also play themselves. Impres-
sively, so do some of the real doctors involved in the original incident.
Camerawork is hand-held and intimate, with a raw aesthetic that 
matches the harsh subject matter. At times we could almost be watch-
ing a Bosnian remake of Winter’s Bone.
Iron Picker is not a comforting watch, and it lacks the editorial 
context of a more conventional documentary, which might have 
made it more accessible to viewers outside the Balkans. That said, 
this is a universal human story at heart, a bleakly compelling family 
drama with a coldly furious edge of political protest.
Marche du film
Cast Senada Alimanovic, Nazif Mujic, Sandra Mujic, Semsa Mujic 
Director Danis Tanovic // 74 minutes
Devotees awaiting a return to the 
brilliantly idiosyncratic form of 
Takeshi Kitano’s best work, like 
Sonatine and Hana-bi, will have 
to keep hoping. But the maverick 
Japanese writer-director-actor 
known for his vicious set-pieces 
and macabre sense of humor 
eventually delivers lip-smacking 
pleasures in the slow-ignition 
yakuza thriller Outrage Beyond.
A sequel to 2010’s Outrage that 
picks up where we left off with 
the powerful Sanno crime clan, 
the film demands concentra-
tion. Kitano doles out reams of 
yappy exposition in the opening 
stretch and requires his audience 
to sift through a complex web 
of characters across two crime 
families, the police force and a 
government ministry. But the 
film becomes progressively more 
involving, breaking down volatile 
power structures, orchestrating 
crosses and double-crosses, and 
peppering the talky action with 
contained bursts of muscular 
violence and cruel comedy.
Much is made here of the 
erosion of traditional codes of 
honor and family loyalty, with 
disgruntled old-school mobsters 
being pushed aside for young 
hedge-fund hot shots. They run 
the Sanno organization much 
like a corporate entity, while the 
alter kockers grumble quietly 
about such things as meals no 
longer being served at execu-
tive meetings. It’s a droll vision 
of organized crime, and worlds 
apart from, say, the American, 
Italian or Russian equivalents. 
Leadership of the Sanno has 
been seized by silver fox Kato 
(Tomokazu Kiura) and his hot-
tempered underboss Ishihara 
(Ryo Kase), with the old guard 
forewarned that they need to 
pull their weight or be cut loose. 
Detective Kataoka (Fumiyo 
Kohinata), a manipulative agent 
on the organized crime beat, 
heads an effort to chop the 
Sanno down to size. His strategy 
is to seed friction within the fam-
ily, as well as between the Sanno 
and allied clan the Hanabishi. 
When Kataoka’s tactics fail to 
achieve the intended result, he 
steps up the offensive by spring-
ing Otomo (Kitano, using his 
acting alias Beat Takeshi) from 
prison. A former boss of a small 
family with ample reason to hate 
the Sanno, Otomo was last seen 
being stabbed and left for dead 
by a scar-faced rival. 
Having Otomo back on the 
scene is bad news especially for 
barking upstart Ishihara, who 
has much to fear. When the 
sharkskin-suited climber inevita-
bly gets his comeuppance, it’s in 
a gloriously comic death by base-
ball launcher, which is right up 
there with the most inventive of 
Kitano’s screen kills. That scene 
accelerates the body count of the 
film’s punchy final third, which 
makes up for its more effortful 
opening stretch.
As always, Kitano himself is 
the most eccentric presence, a 
playful smile creeping across 
Otomo’s face as he applies a 
drill to the skull of some hapless 
pawn. (Though in keeping with 
this film’s unusual restraint, the 
actual gore is held to a mini-
mum, mostly played offscreen.) 
Ultimately, Outrage Beyond is too 
convoluted and slow in cohering 
to break beyond a small niche 
internationally, but Kitano cult-
ists will eat it up.  
Marche du Film
Cast Beat Takeshi, Tomokazu 
Miura, Ryo Kase  
Director-screenwriter  
Takeshi Kitano // 112 minutes
Outrage Beyond
Leaner on violence than 2010’s Outrage,  
this sequel should find favor internationally among  
Takeshi Kitano’s culty fan base 
BY DAVID ROONEY
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Director-actor Kitano (under the alias Beat 
Takeshi) plays the redoubtable menace Otomo.
Alimanovic and her  
daughter play themselves  
in this re-creation of  
their family drama.
R E V I E W S
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Mainland China’s thirst for 
straight-up contemporary comedy 
has been demonstrated beyond a 
reasonable doubt if the runaway 
success of Xue Xiaolu’s Finding 
Mr. Right is any indication. Star-
ring Tang Wei, an actress once 
banned from Chinese media (the 
government reportedly objected 
to both the political message and 
the nudity in her film Lust, Cau-
tion) and riddled with conflicting 
messages about the state of the 
nation itself, the romantic com-
edy about the pregnant mistress 
of a tycoon packed off to Seattle 
to have a baby beyond the reach 
of the scandal sheets does nothing 
to tinker with the form and holds 
zero surprises. But its adherence 
to rom-com convention in an 
industry top-heavy with histori-
cal epics extolling the genius of 
ancient generals makes Mr. Right 
stand out among the crowd. Xue’s 
second feature is an exemplar 
of commercial filmmaking, and 
production help from a handful 
of Hong Kong pros gives it the 
polished finish the fluffy material 
demands. That polish and fluff 
helped the film become China’s 
Finding Mr. Right
Leading lady Tang Wei turns up the charm in this  
Seattle-set Chinese rom-com from director Xue Xiaolu
  
BY ELIZABETH KERR
The bratty and  
bullying Jiajia (Tang) 
undergoes a personal 
transformation.
R E V I E W S
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highest-grossing rom-com of all 
time with a box-office take of 
515 million yuan ($83.75 million).
Jiajia (Tang) flies to Seattle 
(neither the first nor the last ref-
erence to Nora Ephron’s Sleepless 
in Seattle) ostensibly as a tourist 
but in reality she’s there to have 
her married lover’s baby. She’s 
greeted at the airport by Frank 
(Wu Xiubo), a Beijing doctor 
without a license to practice 
in the United States, and after 
some setbacks makes her way to 
a maternity halfway house. From 
this point on Mr. Right deals in 
the rote: The lover lets Jiajia down 
at Christmas, she gets lonely and 
turns to fellow Beijinger Frank 
for company, feelings develop. 
Writer-director Xue has proven 
adept at manipulating emotion 
for dramatic effect, as she dem-
onstrated in the tearjerking Jet Li 
vehicle Ocean Heaven, and though 
there’s a great deal more comedy 
in Mr. Right, she does it again. 
Xue hits all the marks when she’s 
supposed to: We get irritated by 
Jiajia’s bullying, baffled by her 
materialism and exasperated by 
her treatment of Frank — all at 
preordained points in the narra-
tive. However, Katherine Heigl 
could take a lesson from Tang in 
how to win over an audience by 
sheer force of personality despite 
serious character flaws. Jiajia is 
so obnoxious at the story’s outset 
it would be easy to lose viewers 
by the 30-minute mark, but Xue 
wisely lets Tang be Tang and 
keeps us (mostly) invested in 
her journey. 
The Chinese title translates as 
“Beijing meets Seattle,” which in 
some ways is a better indication of 
the story’s trajectory. At its core 
the film isn’t really about find-
ing Mr. Right; it’s about Jiajia’s 
growth as a person. In the end, 
Finding Mr. Right is as much a 
dissertation on 21st century social 
dynamics as Sleepless was.
Marche du Film