NEW YORK (AP) As difficult as it may seem, Mike Cheslik did not want to alter the course of film when he was creating Hundreds of Beavers.With a group of four or occasionally six people, Cheslik was standing in the snow in the Wisconsin Northwoods, causing his friend Ryland Tews fall amusingly.
Cheslik recalls, “I kept thinking when we were shooting: It would be so stupid if this got mythologized.”
Nevertheless, Hundreds of Beavers has accumulated the elements of a lo-fi tale, if not quite myth. Despite only costing $150,000 and being self-distributed in theaters, Cheslik’s film has managed to infiltrate a film industry that is primarily controlled by high-profile sequels.
Hundreds of Beavers is a wordless black-and-white bonanza of slapstick antics about a stranded 19th century applejack salesman (Tews) at war with a bevy of beavers, all of whom are played by actors in mascot costumes.
Although Hundreds of Beaves isn’t particularly ostentatious, it is significantly more creative than a lot of Hollywood productions. A low-budget heir to the dwindling legacy of Buster Keaton and Naked Gun, Cheslik created something akin to the human version of Donald Duck’s snowball fight with some 1,500 effects shots that he labored over on his home computer.
Hundreds of Beavers may have offered a fresh route forward at a time when independent filmmaking faces greater obstacles than ever before, although one that is notably beaver-festooned.
The creators decided to release the film themselves after no significant distributor offered to help, starting with roadshow presentations that resembled carnivals. Though never more than 33 at once, Hundreds of Beavers has performed in at least one venue each week of the year since beginning in January. (Blockbusters usually appear in about 4,000 venues.) After the film went to video-on-demand, over half of its roughly $500,000 in ticket sales were generated.
The co-director of the award-winning film Everything Everywhere All at Once, Daniel Scheinert, has referred to Hundreds of Beavers as the film industry’s future.That bold pronouncement, which ricocheted around film blogs, might seem extreme for a movie about a guy wearing a comically large beaver hat.
But in a shrinking movie industry, DIY microbudget filmmaking may increasingly be left to fill some of the void left by risk-adverse, corporate-driven Hollywood.
I hope people can stop shooting things to make them look like commercials and just get back to more of the nitty gritty and letting your imagination flow, says Tews, who also co-wrote the movie with Cheslik. I just hope we stop bowing down to Hollywood and thinking they re the gold standard. since they simply aren’t.
The year-to-date box office in North America is down 11% from last year and about 25% from before the pandemic. More movies are making a tiny impact in theaters; according to Franchise Entertainment Research, 41 wide releases in 2024 have grossed less than $3 million nearly three times the amount in 2019.
The costs not just to make wide-release films but to market them has greatly shifted what even indie distributors are willing to back. Just to get eyeballs onGladiator II,which carries a $250 million budget, Paramount Pictures took the extraordinary step of running a trailer of the film simultaneouslyon more than 4,000 platforms, including TV networks, radio stations and digital outlets. For even the biggest movies, it s hard to get people s attention.
In such an environment, where the expense of making and marketing a movie is potentially prohibitive for everything but the safest of bets, more filmmakers are questioning the economics. That s especially because after last year s strikes, movie production hasn t rebounded. Ina contracting movie industry,many remain out of work.
Brady Corbet, director ofthe highly touted The Brutalist,a 3 -hour epic shot in VistaVision, for less than $10 million, has preached that smaller budgets don t have to mean less artistic ambition. Sean Baker, whose breakthrough film Tangerine was shot with iPhones, has argued movie budgets can come down without sacrificing what s on the screen. His $6 million Anora is one of the year s most acclaimed films.
Right now, it s panic in LA, Bakersaid in an earlier interview. I m like: We don t have to make films for that much. They don t have to cost as much.
Hundreds of Beavers is a more micro example, but it was likewise made with a strong belief in the big screen. On Dec. 5, the movie will begin an encore tour in theaters, at some 70 locations. That s the widest release yet for Hundreds of Beavers, nearly a year after it opened. They re calling it A Northwoods Christmas.
It s a victory tour (with a Blu-ray release to follow) for Hundreds of Beavers, a barnstorming indie hit that Cheslik hopes shows aspiring filmmakers that the same kind of goofy inventiveness that goes into a TikTok video can be channeled into a movie.
You still can do whatever you want, Cheslik says. No one s going to stop you if you take a phone and make a 90-minute timeline instead of a 30-second timeline.
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