Paramount executives knew they needed to dazzle the audience from the very first moment. “There’s always self-imposed pressure, but we wanted to make it clear that Paramount is back, bigger and hungrier and better than ever,” Paramount Pictures co-chair Josh Greenstein tells Vanity Fair. “That reel was to help us kick the show off and to align everybody on our vision, which is, we want to be in business with the biggest, best, and most talented filmmakers and actors and actresses in the world.”
Jon M. Chu’s short features more than 30 big stars and filmmakers, with scenes set around the Paramount lot, from the water tank and the theater to the dining hall and the iconic Paramount gate. The video not only teases the studio’s upcoming films and highlights the talent who have signed deals, but also reflects on the Paramount lot’s 100th anniversary.
But this big idea would have to be completed in only seven weeks. To pull it off, Paramount Pictures co-chairs Greenstein and Dana Goldberg enlisted Chu, who went to film school at USC with Ellison and signed a deal with the studio in December. Chu says Ellison’s pitch to get him to join Paramount “was all about the soul of a new studio and what we want to see in the future of this business and the opportunity that is here.… He loves movies so much. I know his heart. I think we are all there because of the spirit of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to reinvent a studio.”
The Wicked director came in with an ambitious plan that involved a dozen different settings, stunts, stars, an ostrich, a camel, and, yes, a scene at the water tank. He brought on a number of his past collaborators, including cinematographer Alice Brooks and Crazy Rich Asians production designer Nelson Coates. “I was like, ‘I’m very inspired by this idea, but I’m going to throw you a bunch of things that I want to do, and I don’t want anyone in my way,’” Chu says of speaking to Goldberg and Greenstein. “‘I want to do all the things I’ve never been able to do that I’ve always dreamed about on this lot.’”
