THB 607a Sidebar: More detail on the origins of "September 5"

This is a follow-up on yesterday’s piece/review of September 5.

I got some insight from sources who have much better insight than I into the story of how September 5 became a Paramount award season release.

To start with, the project started in 2021 with the ambition of covering 4 different stories about the terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics, Remnants of at least one of the other perspectives - a woman who negotiates directly with the terrorists - remains in the film. But the project got too big for its britches/budget and was deemed unproducable. So the directing/producing team narrowed it down to the ABC Sports story, which had been deeply researched, and got the project back on track.

It turns out that September 5 was not made by "two German production companies," as I wrote yesterday. The film was developed and made by BerghausWöbke Filmproduktion, which has produced every film from Tim Fehlbaum so far. It is a co-production with Constantin, the biggest German production house, which will release the film in Germany in January.

In order to get access to American acting talent, the team reached out to Sean Penn’s production company, Projected Picture Works. At first, it was pass… but in time, they came along.

The movie was ultimately filmed in Munich on a sound stage. Projected Picture Works played its role but had no direct influence on the filmmaking.

Paramount, which was on board via their international financing arm from the start, initially didn’t think the film could perform in America, so they had Republic (an in-house sales rep/tv distributor) actively try to sell it, even after Venice and Telluride. The producers of the film had no knowledge that this was happening at the time.

But then Warner Bros made an offer that would have made the film profitable, reflecting a theatrical release plan. Others passed, the higher-pricing for streamers (including backend) being too high under the circumstances, given limited star power and the pending international release commitments.

This got Paramount’s attention and that’s when it took the film off the market and put the film they always owned into the powerful hands of big Paramount and its domestic team.