Inside the unique partnership that helped 'A Star Is Born' soar at the box office by targeting music fans and live events
- Live Nation Productions is an arm of Live Nation Entertainment, the company responsible for some of the country's biggest live concerts.
- Known for financing documentaries like the look inside Puff Daddy's Bad Boy Records empire ("Can't Stop Won't Stop") and the Lady Gaga one on Netflix ("Gaga: Five Foot Two"), it found major clout when it got attached to "A Star Is Born."
- Live Nation Productions president Heather Parry talked to Business Insider about the unique way it helped the movie get noticed by concertgoers.
Live Nation Entertainment is known best for putting on many of the biggest music concerts in the country, but its production arm is beginning to gain respect too.
Heather Parry, president of Live Nation Productions, has tenaciously built the company in just under three years into a destination for artists who want to make work that goes beyond glossy visual marketing. This has led to Live Nation Productions getting on the ground floor for documentaries like "Can't Stop Won't Stop: A Bad Boy Story," and Netflix's "Gaga: Five Foot Two."
But what has brought the company an instant jolt of clout in Hollywood is Parry jumping on the most recent remake of "A Star Is Born."
Parry, who has a thick Rolodex thanks to her years at MTV, and decade running Adam Sandler's Happy Madison production company, began working her connections back when Clint Eastwood was still attached to direct and Beyoncé was in talks to star in the lead role.
"I was at a barbecue at Joel Silver's house and Greg Silverman, who was running production at Warner Bros. at the time, was there and I started talking to him about it," Parry told Business Insider. "I really wanted to see if Live Nation could be involved."
What Silverman, or really any executive at any studio, didn't realize was how much Live Nation was connected to artists and music fans.
Along with Live Nation Entertainment owning over 100 music festivals and venues, as well as owning the huge ticket sales and distribution company, Ticketmaster, Live Nation also houses the managers of some of the biggest acts on the planet.
"Where I sit, on one side of me is the manager of Miley Cyrus and on the other is [the one] who manages Lady Gaga, it's a good place to be sitting," Parry said with a laugh.
Parry didn't lock things down at the Joel Silver barbecue (Silverman was ousted at Warner Bros. months later), but she wasn't close to giving up.
The momentum was building, but what really clinched it, Parry said, was a chance encounter with "A Star Is Born" producer Bill Gerber at a party for a Martha Stewart book.
Parry said while everyone gravitated toward Stewart to get her to sign a copy of their book, she was at the other side of the room with Gerber talking about the movie.
"Billy came back around after I met with Warner Bros. and he said, 'Let's go,'" Parry recalled.
Live Nation came on to produce the movie in a hybrid role of putting in financing while also providing unique marketing to promote its release.
Read more: All of the "A Star Is Born" movies ranked from worst to best
By the time Live Nation came onboard, "A Star Is Born" was already in production with Lady Gaga as the lead opposite Cooper. So what Parry focused on was how to get the word out to music lovers.
Over the summer if you went to a well-known concert, you probably saw big "A Star Is Born" posters at the venue. And as the trailer became a meme sensation, it also showed in front of thousands at events like Lollapalooza and Country LakeShake.
And then Ticketmaster worked its magic.
"Ticketmaster has something like 180 million emails, so I got them to send me everyone who bought tickets to Gaga's last tour and everyone who is buying her Vegas residency," Parry said. "So when the trailer was sent out you really targeted her authentic fans. When I worked for Sandler we dreamt for this kind of data."
And in tracking down the "authentic fan," Parry didn't stop there. She spread the net to the fans of others in the movie, like fans who bought tickets to Dave Chappelle's recent comedy shows. They even targeted Bruno Mars fans. Though he's not in the movie, he wrote the hit "Uptown Funk" with Mark Ronson, who co-wrote the movie's hit song "Shallow."
It's all led to "A Star Is Born" having huge box-office success. Made for $36 million, it's earned over $323 million worldwide to date. That's been a shocking surprise to many - except Parry.
"I had a pretty good feeling," she said of the movie's success. "It's Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper!"
Looking forward, Parry is very busy. She said Live Nation has five documentaries and a docuseries in production and may branch out to competition shows and music specials. But despite being on a huge success like "A Star Is Born," the mission doesn't change - "Make films the way the artists wanted to make them," Parry said.
"A year from now if we've done something else outside the box, that's what makes me the most proud and happy," she said.