A Film on Bush Finds Friends Abroad

Spurned by Hollywood, Oliver Stone's movie 'W.' draws foreign financing

Director Oliver Stone's drama about President George W. Bush, which hits theaters next weekend, is being financed by a patchwork of global investors -- and hardly a dime of U.S. studio money.

When Mr. Stone and his producing partner, Moritz Borman, brought the script for Mr. Stone's latest project, "W.," to the major Hollywood studios earlier this year, they expected an enthusiastic response. Mr. Stone had, after all, made a string of successful political movies at the majors before, from his 1991 conspiracy thriller "JFK" at Warner Bros. to "World Trade Center" at Paramount in 2006.

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Josh Brolin as George W. Bush and Toby Jones as Karl Rove, in 'W.' Lionsgate

But the studios turned their backs on the film, which Mr. Stone attributes to fear of the subject matter -- a sitting president. "Hollywood today is full of big corporations," says Mr. Stone, referring to the conglomerates that own most of the movie studios. "The larger the corporation, the less the appetite for risk for this kind of film," he adds, noting that "a major executive said, 'I love this project, but I can't touch it.' "

"W." traces the rise of the young Bush, from his fraternity days to his born-again Christian transformation, while also focusing on his presidency -- specifically the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. The studios say they passed on the film because they don't think the public is interested in Bush: The Movie. One studio executive said audiences were exhausted by Michael Moore's 2004 "Fahrenheit 9/11," which offered a documentary take on President Bush's reign. "Fahrenheit 9/11" took in $119 million at the domestic box office.

Mr. Stone isn't the only top Hollywood director being funded from abroad these days. Steven Spielberg and his DreamWorks team just partnered with Reliance ADA Group, one of India's largest entertainment conglomerates, to start a film company. Spike Lee funded his film, "Miracle at St. Anna," with foreign capital.

One man who did want to make "W." was Bill Block, a film financier who bought "The Blair Witch Project" almost 10 years ago and went on to found the production and foreign sales company QED International. When Mr. Block heard Mr. Stone was looking to make "W.," he quickly struck a deal with the director -- and then set out to find the $60 million or so that it would take to make and market it.

"What you're seeing these days are strong indigenous distributors all over the world, in Asia and in India, in Germany, who have been making movies for years in their markets and for their markets, but who are ready to take the next step and make movies for the global marketplace," Mr. Block says. "This film was their opportunity to gain entry into that marketplace in a low-risk fashion."

Mr. Block went on a global chase to run down potential investors who were fascinated by the Bush story in a way that American executives weren't. What he wound up with was investors from Europe to Asia who were riveted by President Bush's global celebrity -- and hoping to use it to crash into Hollywood.

One key piece came from Australia, where Mr. Block convinced Christopher Mapp, who runs a media company there called Omnilab Media, to contribute more than $25 million to market the picture. In Europe, Mr. Block found Swiss Internet millionaire Thomas Sterchi, who thinks that Mr. Bush is "the greatest political disaster of the last 50 years." Mr. Sterchi, who recently took over a film company in Switzerland, contributed $2.5 million to the $30 million film. He paid another $2.5 million so he could release the movie in German-speaking territories such as Austria and Germany, where he says "a lot of people feel betrayed" by President Bush and "frustrated" by the Iraq war.

Q&A: Oliver Stone on 'W.'

Oliver Stone may be the last filmmaker some would expect to make a sympathetic portrait of President George W. Bush. But the Oscar-winning director says his latest film "W." is an attempt to do just that.

• Read an interview with Mr. Stone

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said about "W.," "I am quite certain the American people will appreciate that we'll decline to comment on this ridiculous movie as we are fully focused on returning stability and strength to the financial markets."

Global antipathy toward President Bush put Mr. Stone -- known throughout his career as a provocateur -- in the unusual position of being the one to advocate toning it down. Mr. Stone says some investors wanted a more accusatory look at the Bush presidency; he insisted on a humanizing portrait that attempts to explain how Bush became who he is. "Bush hurt us, but radicalization is not the way out of our hole," says Mr. Stone.

Two of the film's investors -- Samuel and Victor Hadida, Moroccan-born brothers who run a French film company -- managed to push Mr. Stone into making the film quickly enough so that it could be released in advance of the U.S. presidential election. "The urgency came, ironically, from abroad," says Mr. Stone, who shot the film in 46 days and edited it in 12 weeks. (He spent 67 days shooting and 32 weeks editing "World Trade Center.") "I would have been happy with January" for the release date, he says, but "the French pushed us. They did not want to invest in the damn movie unless we had it ready for the election." The Hadida brothers believed the film would be at its commercial apex before the election.

In Asia, Mr. Block found investors who were more willing to stay behind the scenes. Through a mutual friend, Mr. Block met Johnny Hon, a Hong Kong venture capitalist and "ambassador-at-large" to Granada. Mr. Hon's company, Global Entertainment Group, produces films like this year's horror movie "The Coffin" to distribute in the Asian market.

Reuters (Yeung); Getty Images (Hadidas); Berliner Photography LLC (Block); Thomas Sterchi (Sterchi); Johnny Hon (Hon); iStockphoto (map)

The 36-year-old businessman hopes that "W." will have the same global impact that Mr. Stone's 1987 feature "Wall Street" did when he saw it about 20 years ago. "President Bush is obviously a controversial guy, and like everybody, I desperately wanted to know more about him," says Mr. Hon, who compares Mr. Bush's international celebrity status to that of David Beckham. "If Oliver was going to make a film about David Beckham, we'd finance that too," he says.

Mr. Hon opened the door to another unlikely investor: Emperor Group, a Hong-Kong based conglomerate with interests in music, film, gambling and other areas. Mr. Hon, after meeting with Mr. Stone in Berlin, made an enthusiastic presentation about the film to the Emperor Group. Albert Lee, CEO of Emperor's film division, says the script hooked them with its humor. "There were certain scenes, from his college days, from when he works in Texas, that we just found quite hilarious," says Mr. Lee.

Emperor was the largest equity investor in the film, contributing about $3.5 million. Emperor's chairman is Albert Yeung, a wealthy business tycoon in Hong Kong and family friend of Mr. Hon. Mr. Yeung, who has been arrested several times and was the subject of a series of high-profile court cases, was convicted for perverting the course of justice and of illegal gambling in the 1980s. Mr. Yeung declined to comment on this story.

Mr. Block, who has never met Mr. Yeung, declined to comment on his background, but he says that QED has worked with Emperor Motion Pictures, Emperor's film division, for many years.

"Emperor is a publicly traded company, and they have been in the film-distribution business for a long time," Mr. Block says. "'W.' wasn't a three-million -dollar film where payroll was paid out of the back of a trunk, it was a $30 million picture with proper institutional lenders and equity investors."

Karl Rove, President Bush's former deputy chief of staff, says "W." is "clearly based in a reality that only exists within Oliver Stone's left cortex." Mr. Rove, who says he hasn't seen the movie but has read a script, adds that "the fact it was rushed through production and into theaters two weeks before the election, financed by suspect Chinese investors and slap dash efforts by one of the nation's leading left wing directors calls into question the entire project."

Mr. Stone says that investors don't rattle him or affect how he makes his movies. "The film business has always been full of strange characters," he says. "Who the hell gets into this business but gamblers and buccaneers and pirates? You don't get Henry Paulson as a producer in this business, that's for sure."

As the U.S. continues to face financial turmoil, Mr. Stone says, he'll welcome any sorts of investors in his films, as long as he can "keep my freedom and my content free of interference." He does draw the line at a certain point. "If you're asking if I would do a movie with a known drug dealer, no, I wouldn't," he says. "You don't want to corrupt a movie, though the nature of the film business lends itself to criminal enterprises."

—Anthony Kaufman and John McKinnon contributed to this story