{"id":380271,"date":"2026-03-11T22:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T22:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/380271\/"},"modified":"2026-03-11T22:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T22:51:10","slug":"jamie-lee-curtis-has-some-ideas-on-how-to-protect-the-film-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/380271\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie Lee Curtis Has Some Ideas on How to Protect the Film Industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tJust as the original Halloween<\/a> did nearly 50 years ago, David Gordon Green\u2019s revival of the iconic horror franchise in 2018 changed the course of Jamie Lee Curtis<\/a>\u2019s career in a few important ways. The first was that, because the star wasn\u2019t fully up to speed on the filmmakers\u2019 plan to make another trilogy out of it, she approached producer Jason Blum to launch a production deal together. \u201cI\u2019m sure he gave it to me because he needed me to do two more Halloween movies,\u201d she cracks.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe second had to do with the actual creative experience of making that movie. \u201cIt was fast and fun and collaborative and nobody took money and it was all made for nothing \u2014 and I came back really turned on,\u201d she says. Specifically, Curtis told her husband, the filmmaker Christopher Guest, that she would write and direct the movie she\u2019d been wanting to make since she was 19 years old, called Mother Nature. Through a Zoom box, she shows me her voice-memo recording of the 40-page outline she dictated on March 1, 2018, two weeks after filming on Halloween concluded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tMother Nature has still not seen the light of day \u2014 though Curtis did make a graphic novel out of it; more on that later \u2014 but Curtis has made good on that creative reawakening. The 67-year-old\u2019s acting career has exploded, taking home her first Oscar (Everything Everywhere All at Once) and Emmy (The Bear) in the last few years. She\u2019s produced everything from the newly premiered Nicole Kidman TV vehicle Scarpetta to last year\u2019s Freakier Friday<\/a> sequel to the currently Oscar-nominated The Lost Bus. <\/p>\n

\n\tHer most intriguing behind-the-scenes endeavor, however, may be a premiere at SXSW<\/a> on Saturday: the paranoid thriller Sender, helmed by first-time feature director Russell Goldman and starring Emmy winner Britt Lower<\/a> (Curtis also plays a supporting role).<\/p>\n

\n\tThe film is weird, singular and smartly acted \u2014 the culmination of a partnership between Curtis and Goldman that began eight years ago, with the latter fresh out of Wesleyan. \u201cI was an out-of-work writer there to help her figure out Final Draft,\u201d Goldman says, referring to Curtis\u2019s attempts to get that Mother Nature script off the ground. \u201cI had no assumption it would be a creative job, but I didn\u2019t know Jamie yet. Because Jamie oozes creativity.\u201d Goldman now works in development for Curtis\u2019s Comet Pictures, but as she clarifies for me: \u201cHe\u2019s a fucking filmmaker. He\u2019s not a development executive.\u201d He is now, technically, both.<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis\u2019s fast rise as a power producer has given her a front-row seat to the anxieties and struggles of the industry she grew up in. \u201cI see the lists of actors who are available for work, and when you start going down these lists, these are people who have starred in movies, had their own TV series \u2014 and they\u2019re willing to go on tape for a small part in either your movie or your TV show,\u201d she says. \u201cIt is a desperate time. There is very little work available.\u201d She worries about \u201cconsolidation\u201d \u2014 referring, no doubt, to Paramount\u2019s impending acquisition of Warner Bros. \u2014 and recently reposted a criticism of Timoth\u00e9e Chalamet\u2019s viral comments about preferring to work in movies versus ballet and opera, art forms that he said are fueled by strained efforts to \u201ckeep this thing alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cMy daughter has been a dancer her whole life \u2014 my daughter teaches dance\u00a0and has a dance academy \u2014 so his comments are silly, and I\u2019m sorry that they\u2019re going to be a bit of his legacy now,\u201d Curtis says of Chalamet. \u201cI\u2019m sure he regrets the comment because you can\u2019t throw those art forms under a bus. You can\u2019t do it. They\u2019re too important. Does that mean that there\u2019s not a reduction in audiences for those art forms? I\u2019m sure there is. Does that mean it\u2019s going to be the destruction of those art forms? No.\u201d She adds, \u201cPeople still shoot on film, by the way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJamie Lee Curtis in Sender<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich gets at Curtis\u2019s larger philosophy as a film producer. She\u2019s seen what the medium is still capable of, with the success of wild gambles like Everything Everywhere. \u201cI believe that the industry will survive \u2014 I think we\u2019re in more of a transition phase,\u201d she says. \u201cI hope heads of companies will take $50 million of their annual budgets and say, \u2018Let\u2019s give $5 million to 10 filmmakers who want to make a $5 million movie and see what comes out of that investment,\u2019 as well as these giant investments on these tentpole movies where you\u2019re paying leads in the $20 million range. Let\u2019s do both. I hope that all those big companies recognize that importance.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNobody knows shit about what makes anything successful,\u201d Curtis adds. \u201cYou just have to trust the art form.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t**<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis has been trying to produce almost as long as she\u2019s been a working actress. Her struggles at finding her foothold behind the scenes led to her decades of work on best-selling children\u2019s books \u2014 while film and TV ideas \u201cdied on the vine \u2014 and they were good ideas.\u201d She\u2019s been working toward this moment, in other words. \u201cI\u2019ve been doing this for a long time, and I\u2019ve been hungry for this level of creativity and partnership and matching artists with work for a long time,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tShe spent 12 years committed to telling the fascinating and complex story of Glenn Burke, the first out gay professional baseball player who is also credited with inventing the high-five. Three different film scripts were written. Eventually, eight episodic scripts for a limited series written by the playwright Robert O\u2019Hara with Ryan Murphy on board \u2014 reports surfaced that Netflix was backing the project \u2014 before it faded away. \u201cIt was beautifully written, it was adventurous, it was very sexual, and it just was too much, I think, to imagine,\u201d Curtis says. \u201cIt just became impossible to tell that story truthfully without really blowing up all sorts of things. But boy did I try.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThen there\u2019s Mother Nature, which got pretty far into development, with a screenplay that Goldman helped rework \u2014 \u201cHe took out all the men and he said, \u2018Jamie, the name of your movie is Mother Nature\u2019\u201d \u2014 before they moved onto other endeavors as the cost of the project, particularly, proved prohibitive. Together they put out a graphic novel instead and Curtis still sees a path for making a film out of it, with Goldman directing. \u201cNow all of a sudden, Russell Goldman is my partner \u2014 he\u2019s not my 5 percent, he\u2019s 50 percent if not more,\u201d she says. Goldman adds, \u201cShe embraces risk and meets new, weird ideas with curiosity.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA few years ago, Goldman had started making short films on the side. All the while, an idea sparked Curtis when a pair of walking sticks was sent to her sister\u2019s home on her birthday \u2014 and they realized it was a scam. \u201cI called Russell and I said, \u2018This really creepy thing happened\u2026and I think we should make a movie called Return to Sender, about a woman trapped in her apartment or house going crazy because she gets shit sent to her of increasingly violent natures.\u2019\u201d Goldman made that short, starring Allison Tolman. Then unbeknownst to Curtis, he brought in another producer, Molly Hallam, to help turn it into a feature. A delicate but workable financing structure came together, and Curtis got in deep to then get it over the finish line.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBritt Lower in Sender<\/p>\n

\n\tAs indies tend to go these days, it almost fell apart. \u201cAll of these fucking actresses that he wanted to go to were all \u2018offer only\u2019 now \u2014 these are women I\u2019ve never heard of, and I have my finger on the pulse of show business. I was shocked that \u2018Betty Smith,\u2019 who Russell was going to talk to about playing the lead in Sender, was \u2018offer-only.\u2019 That happened four or five times,\u201d Curtis says. \u201cWe couldn\u2019t greenlight the movie until we had an actress. He almost had to let his crew go because he wasn\u2019t able to pull the trigger.\u201d They lost some financing. Finally, Lower came up and met with Russell. She was quickly cast, which immediately led to the ensemble being filled out by the likes of Rhea Seehorn<\/a> and David Dastmalchian<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[Curtis] built the infrastructure for me and Britt and the whole Sender team to find what moved us,\u201d Goldman says. \u201cShe would be candid about how it landed with her, pushing for better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCurtis will go down any number of roads in discussing what\u2019s sparking her \u2014 her love of Sinners (\u201cIt is spectacular\u201d) and of Ryan Coogler going back to Fruitvale Station, working Amy Madigan and Roger Corman on 1983\u2019s Love Letters (\u201cRoger Corman wouldn\u2019t let you have a generator because a generator means you can light longer, and that means more time\u201d) \u2014 but it\u2019s clear she\u2019s only just ramping up as a producer. <\/p>\n

\n\tShe smiles as she reveals the next movie she\u2019s working on with Goldman.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s called Closed Set about an intimacy coordinator who goes rogue, and it becomes like Fatal Attraction,\u201d she says. Based on Sender, you can trust it\u2019ll be a true original \u2014 and that Curtis wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just as the original Halloween did nearly 50 years ago, David Gordon Green\u2019s revival of the iconic horror…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[268],"tags":[174752,434,64450,18,117,5844,11850,19,17,46891,97443,62590],"class_list":{"0":"post-380271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-britt-lower","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-david-dastmalchian","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-freakier-friday","14":"tag-halloween","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-jamie-lee-curtis","18":"tag-rhea-seehorn","19":"tag-sxsw"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116212995528243469","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=380271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/380271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=380271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=380271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=380271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}