‘Resident Evil’ and the Tightrope of Relaunching Old IP

0:04Matt Belloni:It is Thursday, September 10th. The plight of the international film studio can be a tough one these days, especially with the U.S. studios consolidating, getting bigger, the global streaming services sucking up audiences and attention. But it helps if you control intellectual property. That's certainly true of Konstantin Film, the largest and one of the oldest German film and TV studios. Thanks to a rights deal in the 90s, Constantine controls Resident Evil based on the Capcom game from Japan. First movie came out in 2002 and there have been seven of them. Most of them hits. The next one arriving next Friday via Sony and directed by the very hot filmmaker Zach Craig of weapons and barbarian fame.

0:48Matt Belloni:We'll get into how that happened. Resident Evil will now have eight live-action movies, four animated films, two TV series, a stage play, and dozens of novels and comics. That's in addition to a still very popular game. It's a perfect example of how even relatively non-flashy IP can still have a really long life. And if this movie works, be reinvigorated potentially. The international film business is super interesting right now, so it's a good time to have the CEO of Constantine on the show. Oliver Bourbon, he's been with the company in various capacities for 30 years now. He's been running it since 2024.

1:24Matt Belloni:It's owned by the Swiss media conglomerate Highlight Communications. We're going to get into the franchise management business, especially on Resident Evil, how Krager got involved, Constantine's unique participation in the Marvel movies, and how a European studio stays relevant to Hollywood. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

1:48Matt Belloni:Okay, we are here with Oliver Bourbon, who is CEO of Constantine Film and an executive producer of the new Resident Evil movie. Welcome, Oliver. Hello, Matt. Thank you very much for having me. All right. This is one of our education episodes. I like doing these occasionally because I don't think we do enough about the international business and different aspects that people feel it. People in the business feel like they know everything there is to know about the international film business. And I don't think they do. So I want to have someone who actually does know a lot about the international film business, like yourself, on the show, to just kind of discuss the role that you guys play in the larger ecosystem, especially when it comes to U.S.

2:33Matt Belloni:movies, and especially when it comes to franchise management. And Resident Evil is a perfect example, because we're going on, what, 24 years of this franchise? 1997, I think we bought the rights from Japan, from Capcom, yeah. So, yeah, let's get into this, because let's go right into Resident Evil. Let's skip the whole background. Give us, like, why does a German film distributor own the rights to a Japanese game that has now been adapted into eight live-action movies? A good question. So when Bernd Eichinger, who founded the company in the early 90s, excuse me, in the early 80s, was still alive, he basically, his mission, his idea was to produce movies abroad in the US.

3:22And he did so. And I think in the mid-90s, our co-president of the LA branch, Robert Kulser, came into contact with Resident Evil as a video game. And he introduced it to Bernd. And so they were amazed by it. They took a plane flight to Japan to meet the Capcom guys. Making business with Japan is a long business. It takes a long time.

3:50Matt Belloni:You got to drink sake and go in the sauna with them. Well, yeah, that also. I wasn't there at that time. But I was there a couple of times now in the last two years. So long story short, they bought the rights. And we started the first movie, the first endeavor in the beginning of the 2000s. And the first international English language production of Resident Evil was actually shot in Germany, in Berlin, even though it was an international production. And it was released globally by, well, except Germany and France. It was released by Sony already. So Sony's with us as a partner since day one. So are they attached to it perpetually?

4:33Matt Belloni:No, they're not. Or every movie has to be redone, the rights? Yes, of course. And of course, we always, you know, go to them first and introduce it to them. And as you said before, it's the eighth movie now. There's six movies that has been done throughout the time by the same director. Paul W.S. Anderson. Exactly. Together with Mila Jovovich as the main actress, which was an amazing journey. Then there was a single movie, number seven. And now this is like entering a complete new universe, a complete new setup of the whole DNA of Resident Evil. So in each of these movies, we again went back to Sony and started discussions with them if they wanted or not.

5:21Matt Belloni:And I have heard that Sony initially was not interested in this one. Can you confirm or deny that? well i can't let me say um there were multiple people interested in this version and that was that was not only because of of resident evil which was really nice but most of all of course of zack braga yeah so so give us the timeline here because it feels like you almost i don't say lucked out but you are the beneficiary of the fact that one of the hottest filmmakers out there happens to be a huge fan of this video game and really wanted to do a Resident Evil movie when he could probably do anything he wants right now.

6:05Exactly. Well, at that time, it wasn't that short. So let me get back. Let me take you back.

6:10Matt Belloni:So the 2021 movie doesn't work. And you as the franchise manager, you say, okay, we're going to leave this alone for a little bit, do TV, do whatever. And then when did you say, okay, it's time? That was basically exactly the fact since the other movies didn't work that well, I said, well, we have to wait a little longer to see where we, and how we can, you know, re-manage this whole IP completely. So more or less by accident in that time, that is 23 to 24. Barbarians was out. Weapons was not out. Yeah, that was Zach Greger's first big movie. Exactly. Weapons was not out at that time. Zach Greger actually approached us together with Roy Lee Roy Lee is the producer he works with exactly he basically came to us to Robert and asked if this franchise if this IP was available and it was really strange because at that time first of all we were in that situation that we said okay we're going to leave it alone we're going to need to find a completely new way on how to adapt this for the future and And on the other hand, Zach just only came out of Barbarians.

7:26So it wasn't at all that everybody was jumping on it immediately.

7:31Matt Belloni:Yeah, well, he was pretty hot after Barbarian. Exactly. And what was the real issue, the real point where we said, okay, we got to do this, was actually his pitch. He came to the table and he had this idea in front of his head. He knew exactly what he wanted. and he presented it to Robert in a cafe in Beverly Hills. And he knew the whole movie. He knew everything that he wanted to do. And it was so different from everything that we have done so far that we started digging into it. It was more moody, more like the game, more first person, less, you know, actress kicking ass. Well, it was more like he's a gamer.

8:14He loved playing the games. So he came to this from a completely new direction. He also didn't, at least he said that, he didn't saw any of the movies. He was totally into the games. So he said, okay, I have this idea of basically bringing this guy, this, you know, random normal guy that has no skills into the situation, have them, you know, have him go throughout the story get you know as in a video game get better get weapons um get more skills whatever it is and have him and the audience um feel what what's it like to play that game that was his take basically so a completely different as he said before from the action takes of the of the former

9:04Matt Belloni:movies so you guys say we like this and then you shop the property with him attached to various studios and what was the response well it started a little different so we said we liked it and then we we had the incredible chance of bringing playstation in to develop the script so we started developing the scripts together with playstation we're a fantastic partner from day one on this one it was the first time that they came on board so only from this one so the first draft can came in we really loved it that's surprising because that's a sony company exactly well i'm not going to get into that too far because obviously there's there's a lot of companies belonging to sony and they're not you know always close attached but here was the case that we started developing the script also zach knew from the very beginning uh that austin should play that part it wasn't it was something that he had in his head he knew him from weapons uh before So he had him in his head.

10:07We really liked it. And then obviously, because of Zach's former work, and then weapons came out and it went through the roof and everybody was really excited. Suddenly, there was a lot of traction from many other studios at that point.

10:23Matt Belloni:Yeah, amazing. Huge hit. Everybody wants the next movie. But you had not signed yet with the distributor. No, of course we were talking to Sony already. Oh, that's great leverage for you. Well, yeah, and we were talking to Sony at that point. And at that point, it was still unclear if we're going to do it or not. Yeah, because that's where I had heard that they initially passed. Well, I'll leave that to you. Okay. But I had an incredibly great meeting when I started my CEO internship of Constantine Film. I had the first introductory meeting with Tom Rothman because we had a long-term relationship between the companies already.

11:04Matt Belloni:Runs Sony Pictures. Exactly. In that conversation, also, you know, obviously at the end, Resident Evil came up and I told him that we're pretty far along. And he jumped immediately into it. All right. So he overruled his own people and said, we're doing this. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that. You're not saying that. I just said that we had a great creative communication about this. Also in general about, you know, Konstantin having, even being a much smaller European studio, having similar ties like Sony, you know, not having an own streamer, being independent. So there was a lot of parallel discussions, very, you know, IP driven from an IP standpoint that also incredibly great directors and writers can be IP.

11:54So through that conversation, we got to that point. And he said, well, he definitely loves Zack Greger. He wants to do it. And then from that point on, it was clear.

12:04Matt Belloni:So how does the deal work on a movie like this? Do you guys put up any part of the budget for a Resident Evil movie? So, yes, we do. And we have another great partner since day one of that franchise, which is Metropolitan, is a very big French. distributor and producer. Victor Hadida is his name. He's running the show. And he's a partner with us since day one. So he's your money man and helps... No, for that reason, the two territories, France and Germany, are carved out. And of course, they're financing partners of the whole show. Always has been. It's not a different situation now. So you put up how much of the budget?

12:50So we put up a decent amount of the budget. Like half? Like a third? No, no. You have to take it into account. Look at the whole world at all territories. And then you have two major territories in Europe that are strong, the most strongest one.

13:08Matt Belloni:Okay, so it's apportioned to where you are releasing the film. Exactly. And by the way, that goes on not only to that movie. It's because you were asking how we're going to do this in the international business. This is basically how we do it. We have an IP. We produce it. We sell, if you do it on a market like TIFF now, you sell different territories. Here, we sold it completely to Sony, who became our partner, taking over the whole world, plus domestic, excluding these two territories. So that's basically how it works. Okay, so it's a version of the international sales model, except Sony bought you out, except for the two territories that you guys are putting up money to release the movie in those territories.

13:54Matt Belloni:Exactly. How well do American rom-coms and thrillers and horror movies perform in Germany? It's interesting because it's, I mean, you mentioned different genres. Let me start with horror. So horror, unlike in the US, is not as big, especially when it gets too gory. If it's too gory, people are more afraid of it. If it gets more towards the direction of thriller, they love it. so it's totally different if you compare it to domestic to the US yeah Americans love the gore they love it it cannot be hard enough you know I mean I have to say that what you can see even in the past and now with Insidious and also some other titles last year it is changing a little bit so the younger the very young audience they adapt it but if you look in general I would still stay with my statement that the more gore you get the more difficult it gets in Germany on a rom-com base, because you mentioned that as an example, is different.

14:56Matt Belloni:Yeah, not that regretting you is a rom-com. I know it's not. No, I know. I know that's not what you mean. Could be. But like Practical Magic 2. Actually, that's not a rom-com either. No, I mean, let's say everything that's connected to comedy, Germans love that. And if it's American, if it's local, they're really into it. I know that Germany is not known for its humor, but it's just the case. It's very Americanized. So really, that travels well. Everything towards that direction. Comedy is in David Hasselhoff. Oh, yeah, you bet. Especially when he's singing. Oh, yeah, that's right. Is that still a thing?

15:37Matt Belloni:Does he still have a singing career there? Well, I don't. Well, the song is still, as you know, it was played up and down when the wall came down. So there's a lot of historical influence together with David Hasselhoff in Germany. And it still stays that way. All right, enough about David Hasselhoff. Let's get back to the IP management question. When you own or control this IP, how much influence do you have over the creative and the marketing plans and everything that the traditional studio typically handles? Well, if I can answer, it's two things. One of, let's take Resident Evil as an example.

16:16It's an IP. We own it. But it is an original IP as a game franchise by Capcom. So you have to be true to that direction as well. You have to be actually true to all that.

16:28Matt Belloni:Do they have input? Not in a sense that they control, but of course you want to be true to it. Right. You don't want to piss off the fans. Exactly. You don't want to do that to the fans, but also you don't want to jeopardize a longstanding relationship. They have, as you know, other very good IPs. We did Monster Hunter, for example, with them together. Also a very big gaming IP. So to answer your question, that's the one thing you have to manage constantly. I'm traveling to Japan at least once or twice a year to talk to them, to explain them what we're doing. Not because I have to, but I think it's really important to keep them in the loop.

17:04And also, we want them, when the movies come out, they bring out new games. We want the correlation of both. So that's one thing. The fans is the other thing you said that. And the third part is that you said, of course, when Sony, you know, brings out this movie, releases this movie, their power of marketing press is huge and is amazing. And the very good thing is here, this specific case is they know the IP. They know it for many years already. It's an advantage on the one hand, but it also can be a challenge because now, as you can see with Zach Greger, you know, doing this completely new take on Resident Evil.

17:48you have to also change your whole, you know, direction of marketing and how to market a movie like that. Because there's no relationship to anything that has been with the IP so far.

18:01Matt Belloni:Well, but that's sort of my question, because when you are the controller of the IP and you are trying to do something new and interesting, I wonder if you have any guardrails or if you have any control of, you know, the characters cannot do this. or the marketing cannot go this direction and whether you just hand it off to the studio and the creative partner. No, it didn't. Well, first of all, when we hand it off, it's not like a one-way street. It's a very good collaboration constantly, but it's not just between us. And you wanted to talk about the brand management idea. The management in my idea is not so much of us as the producers just telling what we want, what we don't want.

18:46I think the more, you know, modern way of managing these IPs is bringing creative in, in this case, Zach, who really had an explicit idea of what he wants to tell. And also not only on the movie side, but also when it gets to marketing. So even Sony heavily involved Zach in all the marketing ideas, not so much because of who he is, but more because he had this very unique, specific, creative idea of how he wants to tell that story. So to answer your question, it was not just handed over and that's it. It was a great collaboration between Zach and his team, between the Konstantin marketing team and the marketing team in the US.

19:30Just to give you an example, the German marketing team of Konstantin Film brought in the whole TikTok collaboration that we're doing with this show. You know, tons of other things are coming from the Sony side. So it's a really good collaboration on all different ends. And again, the good thing here is that we know the brand. We know the IP for a long time already.

19:52Matt Belloni:Do you have Kreger signed for another one, if this works? I would love to have him do more movies with us. But he's not signed. It's a one-off. No, no, he's not signed. Maybe he'll get EP credits on follow-ups. Roy Lee getting EP credits on follow-ups. again before you get into that the much more important question would be desi has a great idea for follow-ups and to be honest i think he does oh trilogy what do i know i i of course you're not you're not gonna shoot that down give me the overall picture of a company like constantine so your your core business is exploiting these properties that you control and being a studio partner in the territories that you are expert in releasing films in, investing into certain movies to get those rights.

20:48Matt Belloni:And what else? What's the core? What is the modern European studio model these days? Plus what you just mentioned, also investing in the production itself, not just in the IP. So for us as Constantine Films, the great thing here is that we have a local market in Europe. That is a strong market compared to the rest of the world. I think it's number four. I'm not quite sure anymore. We are number one in that market already. So we have a strong market attached to everything that we're doing. And the core business model is basically divided into two pieces. One is the one that we're just talking about, the international part, where we have, you know, international IPs that we're working in on the US side, but also, let's say, on other European countries in the UK or in France.

21:39And then in addition to this, we have the local side, which is really strong. And if you compare it by percentage, I would say it's around about 60-40 between European, German domestic and US domestic. And the model is so far divided in these two chapters that you have a very strong footprint in your local market with local production. So the most important point for us is that we are and we're trying to be always number one in our local markets and then with own production with local language productions it doesn't necessarily like in streaming take streaming for example where you have i don't know local for global you have a local show that can explore that can overspill into other markets on the cinematic side for us we are focusing on our market, on Germany, Austria, Switzerland, heavily, and just want the local and domestic productions to work there exceptionally well.

22:38Matt Belloni:And these days, if you can find a global audience on a streamer, all the better. Yeah, absolutely. But that enables us, the revenues that are coming in from these production on the feature side, they enable us to invest internationally and domestically. But you have a Netflix deal, don't you? No, we have an output deal, though. We had a Netflix deal, that's true. We have an output deal that started this year with HBO on the paid side and on the... Yeah, I know HBO just advertised some German show that they're bringing to the US for HBO Max. The reason for that is, and I'm pretty sure you know that, that HBO only in January went into a couple of other territories worldwide.

23:23Matt Belloni:They're spreading HBO Max across the world, switching from the licensing model. Exactly. And I imagine having local language stuff to promote. Very important for them. Very big for them. Yes. So you guys probably want a piece of that. It's the same thing in the cinema market. If you look into the market, let's take Germany as an example, as an international market, the share of the local production there, if you take the whole 900 million euros, it was last year, close to 1.1 billion US dollars, 25 to 30 % is local. So what's success for you? Like, what is the goal for a company like Konstantin?

24:00Matt Belloni:How has your business changed and how are you adapting? And what is the future for you? Oh, that's a couple of questions in one. I know it is. I'm sorry about that. No, no, no, I'm fine. So to answer your first one, the success for us is to be able, as the only German company, having success on the international market in the feature business. And that's a success we've been trying to do for the last 30 years. and it's doing well. And I hope we will have a chance this year with resident. That's a number one goal. The other number one goal I would say is to stay put and keep the number one position on the domestic side.

24:36That to answer your question here. Then the second part of your question was much more difficult because you were asking where's the whole business heading for. And I think that's a much more difficult question. I think what you can see what's happening in the U.S. with the consolidation, that's something that for sure happens in Europe too now. It's always a little later. It's always mostly two to three years later.

24:58Matt Belloni:The mergers, consolidation, all that stuff. And obviously the local TV model is probably being upended there by the streamers too. I don't think there's a TV model anymore at some point. It's a streaming model. There's no TV model anymore. But look at, for example, we talked about RTL, the merger between Sky and RTL in Germany is huge. And Sky used to have all the HBO programs. So that goes over now to taken away from Sky to HBO. But then again, with RTL and Sky being together, they are on the same height, kind of the same height that Netflix is. They're over Disney already. It's a local streamer.