In 2015, Molly Smith, Trent Luckinbill and Thad Luckinbill — founders of the film finance and production company Black Label Media — experienced the “deafening” roar of their first Cannes ovation as producers on “Sicario.” (“There’s no premiere in the world more glamorous than a Cannes premiere,” Smith told Variety on Friday afternoon.) In the decade since, the company has evolved from a fledgling outfit to a major player, arriving on the Croisette with Lynne Ramsay’s hotly anticipated “Die, My Love,” starring Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson.
“We’ve just watched the business change so much, yet at the same time, it feels almost full circle,” Smith said. “Indie film and the way we were putting movies together in the beginning feels like it’s back in full force.”
Added Trent Luckinbill: “We started out being a filmmaker-driven company, and we got lucky in the beginning to work with great names like Denis Villeneuve and Jean-Marc Vallée. We haven’t changed that mission. We’ve stuck to our guns on how we’re motivated to make movies.”
The company’s credits include “Devotion” (directed by JD Dillard), “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” (directed by Kasi Lemmons), “Only the Brave” (directed by Joseph Kosinski) and “Demolition” (directed by Jean Marc Vallée). Black Label also co-financed and executive producer the Academy Award-winning “La La Land” with Lionsgate.
Black Label boarded “Die, My Love” at the screenplay stage. Martin Scorsese discovered Ariana Harwicz’s 2017 debut novel — about a woman who has just had a baby and is engulfed by love and madness, to which her husband appears oblivious — and passed it along to his and Jennifer Lawrence’s manager Rick Yorn; Lawrence and her Excellent Cadaver partner Justine Ciarrocchi developed the project and kicked off conversations with Ramsay, then Pattinson signed on to play Lawrence’s husband.
“It was a big book, and that first draft distilled it down to a story where someone could step into a powerhouse performance, like Jen,” Trent Luckinbill said. “Taking on this role takes a lot of courage. It needed to be somebody fearless.”
And Lawrence delivered. The refrain from everyone who’s seen the movie thus far has been, “God, she’s good!” Thad Luckinbill chimed in. “She’s always been a movie star, but she’s in a league of her own.”
A strength of Black Label Media as an independent financing studio, Luckinbill noted, is their ability to move quickly on projects that we fall in love with — with or without a distribution partner. “The packaging is usually the part that slows us down the most,” he said, but Lawrence paired with Pattinson was a dream combination.
“That’s a cool story on its own – they grew up sort of in the ‘Twilight’- ‘Hunger Games’ parallels, and have never worked together. So we love the packaging,” he explained. “Then we just went after our wish list, like Sissy Spacek, Nick Nolte and LaKeith Stanfield. The pieces fell really nicely — a testament to one the script and Lynne, because everybody knows what she can do.”
The project shot in Calgary from August to October last year and they fast-tracked post-prodcution in hopes of making it to Cannes. “Die, My Love” was a late addition to the competition lineup, screening for the festival committee after the official press conference on April 10.
“Lynne is a darling of Cannes,” Trent Luckinbill said. “So in our minds, we thought, ‘God, if we can get this done in time, wouldn’t it be great?’ We certainly had to push to get it in shape, with the hopes that we could pull, pull this off, and thank God we did.”
The version lucky audiences will screen in the Palais on Saturday evening is “as fresh as you can be,” Smith quipped, noting that Ramsay was in the final mix just 48 hours prior to our interview. Now, the film is finally ready to be shown to an audience of cinephiles and potential buyers.
“We knew when we got this script that we weren’t going to try and shop it up front for distribution,” Smith said. “The calculus is just your gut. We knew we had to go make this independently. We’re not trying to insert Actor B or C here to hit numbers. But because it’s Jen and Lynne Ramsay — who is such an event herself, we [decided] to make this purely independently and trust our gut to do it as economically as possible.”
So, generally speaking, who are their hopes for “Die, My Love” post-Cannes?
“I do think that the movie — certainly with this cast and Lynne Ramsay’s so cinematic — deserves theaters and hopefully it will find an audience that wants to enjoy it in theaters,” Smith said. “But all options are on the table, because that’s how we have to roll in this business now, right?”
Trent Luckinbill hopes the strong performances will help it stand out. “When we’re looking at potential projects, you ask that question, “Is this a theatrical release? Is it a streamer? Or is it a hybrid?” With “Die, My Love,” it’s about finding the right partner. This one is just so special.”
