William Goldman’s adage that “nobody knows anything” never gets old.

If studios and financiers knew what was going to work every time, everyone would be rich and the industry would be a lot less interesting.

The old saying reared its head today at the Zurich Summit when filmmakers and brokers behind the year’s horror phenomenons Backrooms and Obsession admitted that they didn’t know their films were about to go stratospheric. There’s absolutely no shame in admitting that. No one knew quite how enormous both films would become, even if many clearly believed in the films and the filmmakers.

“You know, it’s funny,” CAA Media Finance Co-Head Roeg Sutherland mused during a panel on the independent business. “We have a colleague in our department who sold Obsession. I can promise you, we had no idea that Obsession was going to become Obsession.”

CAA co-repped the domestic deal with Capstone, selling the Curry Barker-directed movie out of Toronto for around $14M to Focus. The film went on to make a staggering $264M in the U.S. alone off a $1M budget. It took $520M global.

But believing in a filmmaker is where it starts, added Sutherland.

“I think the most important thing, is less about IP and genres, though those things can be important, but it’s always about the filmmaker. Whether it’s an established filmmaker or a discovery, it has to be someone that you’re willing to go on a ride with. You never know what’s going to happen. But that’s the central element that will decide whether a movie is gonna be good or bad. The filmmaker is the person you’re betting on.”

In an earlier panel, Backrooms director Kane Parsons was asked whether he contributed to the distribution and marketing of the A24 smash. While A24 clearly mounted a brilliant campaign, Parsons admitted that there was a level of uncertainty over what the film could do and who exactly it would reach.

“The truthful answer”, the 20 year-old said about the horror film that took a whopping $400M global off a $10M budget, “is that I don’t think there was a real sense of what it would be prior to the release of the film. I don’t. Even at the height of projections.”

Parsons added that he didn’t know whether the film would truly click with fans of the creepypasta genre, but that he “liked to think we did the core idea that they were expecting”. Clearly he did, and plenty more.

Later in the day, CAA Media Finance co-head Sarah Schweitzman also noted the serendipitous element to this summer’s record-breaking $4.7BN domestic box office. But also to the success speaking to a desire for authenticity and irreverence.

“When you look at the landscape today, the movies were so amazing this year, and they’re so different to what they’ve ever been, and unexpected in achieving the success that they’ve they’ve achieved. There is no way in which you can categorize the film business as unhealthy, because it’s burgeoning, it’s booming. I think that also speaks to where we are politically. There’s a lot time for irreverence. It’s a time for saying things that are maybe unpopular or maybe scary, but there’s a real underground belief and desire to hear the truth, which is not necessarily something that everyone is encouraged to do right now.”

There are worse ways to be introduced when you’re about to unveil your new film as the Opening Night selection of the New York Film Festival, as “one of the great living American filmmakers.” But that’s exactly what Artistic Director Dennis Lim said as he brought Paper Tiger director to the stage at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall on Friday evening.

Gray has a long history with the festival, having closed it with The Lost City of Z and marked its anniversary with a special screening of Armageddon Time. But still, this felt different — as Gray himself noted in his moving introductory remarks, reflecting on growing up a few miles away from the Upper West Side. He remembered, after telling his parents he wanted to become a movie director, their skeptical reply: “How are you ever going to do that?” Gray then looked to the full house inside the theater and said, visibly taken aback: “Well, here I am.”

The general feelings around Paper Tiger feel distinct from Gray’s past films as well. Although a consistent critical darling, the Queens native hasn’t been able to break into the Oscar race in his career thus far, and at this point seems overdue — certainly, it wasn’t hard to think so hearing Lim’s comments framing the relaunch of Paper Tiger, which has not screened publicly since its world premiere in Cannes. The film had been widely acclaimed on the Croisette, and despite the jury overlooking the drama — as has, frustratingly, been a pattern for Gray’s movies at the festival over decades — it was being primed to roar with its fall launch by distributor Neon.

Indeed, this one has arrived with the bells and whistles that typically elude the rollout of a Gray movie; its mix of bold classical filmmaking and rich memoiristic undertones is ideal for placing the movie in the context of his career. In his introduction, Lim spoke about how difficult it is to make personal, independent American films in the current climate; earlier this month, he called Paper Tiger “miraculous” in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter for just that reason. In a season dominated by international directors and blockbuster hits, that framing stands out.

Paper Tiger stars Miles Teller and Adam Driver as Irwin and Gary Pearl, brothers in 1986 Queens, caught in a scheme that puts their family’s lives at risk. Gray’s tight screenplay weaves these crime-thriller bones into textured family drama, with the plot coming to hinge on Irwin’s wife, Hester (Scarlett Johansson), considering how best to protect her sons and ensure their future, while also contending with her own personal crisis.

Shown on a 35mm print at Lincoln Center, this North American premiere was warmly received, with the core cast all on hand. As THR reported last week, Teller will campaign as a lead in the film — Irwin POV opens and closes the film — with past Oscar nominees Driver and Johansson going supporting. The best-actor race may be too competitive for Teller to make much of a dent, but the transformational work of Driver and Johansson, who’ve earned raves for Paper Tiger, could gain traction (and help push the film as well) coming off of the NYFF momentum.

“We were on such a small set…and also it was extremely hot, and when you have a group of actors hanging around with everybody on top of each other — honestly, that’s a labor of love. You do it because you love to do it,” Johansson said in the post-screening Q&A. “You end up hanging out and talking and sharing stories and feeling closer…. You have to survive the day, and it’s hard making movies, and it’s very hard making movies [like this].”

Note: This story contains spoilers from “A Different World” Season 1.

Netflix’s “A Different World” reboot introduces viewers to the next generation of students at fictional HBCU Hillman, anchored by Deborah (Maleah Joi Moon), the youngest child of Whitley (Jasmine Guy) and Dwayne (Kadeem Hardison), who reprise their roles from the original sitcom.

Deborah gets a crash course to Hillman alongside a fresh crop of freshmen that quickly bonds them together, and, as is the case at a college campus, romances are sparked left and right. But, by the end-of-the-year gala in the Season 1 finale, nearly all of those couples are torn apart.

It’s even more complicated than that for Deborah, who tries to find her way back to Shaquille (Cornelle Young IV) — despite the fact that he hooked up with her RA Candace (Renee Harrison) — but has the double whammy of finding out not only that he block her, but he’s said to be transferring out of Hillman.

“I think that put her in the headspace of, ‘I think it’s over,’” showrunner Felicia Pride told TheWrap, explaining that by the time she gets to her dorm room and sees Ellington (Vincent Jamal Hooper) making a rose-filled romantic gesture, she can only think, “here’s Ellington in front of me … acknowledging how he feels about me and I have feelings for him too.’”

But that doesn’t mean Shaquille is out of the picture forever, with Pride saying, “I think you can write yourself out almost anything, including death if you have ever watched soap operas.” “We were very specific about how we wrote all these cliffhangers so that we had different options on how we could get out of them,” she said.

It’s not just Deborah who struggles with romantic woes in the friend group (more on that below), but things take a much more serious turn for Ghanian-Nigerian student Kojo (Chibuikem Uche), who is approached by an ICE agent asking for his papers.

“The ICE storyline was something that we really wanted to pursue and make sure that we got right,” Pride said, noting the seeds planted about ICE starting at convocation when Dwayne says “they want to deport us” to Kojo’s parents. “Having him approached on campus is real because there certain campuses where administration has allowed ICE to be on campus … we wanted to address that.”

The presence of ICE is just one of the issues plaguing HBCUs that are raised and discussed in “A Different World,” with Pride noting political consciousness was a non-negotiable for herself and Debbie Allen, who returns as a director and EP. It was Allen who brought on Pride to the project after working with her on “Grey’s Anatomy.” The conversation below has been edited for length and clarity.

TheWrap: Why did it feel like the right time to revive “A Different World?”

Pride: [Debbie Allen] said something that really felt like an urgent charge in the moment, which was “now’s the time to hear from young America, especially young Black America.” That was something that I could definitely get with because I was hesitant, of course … I grew up on the show in real time — the legacy of the show, the responsibility — but … I felt that charge that she made.

How did you want to balance having so much of the original cast back while welcoming in the next generation?

Debbie was keeping the legacy cast warm, as she likes to say, because they were trying to make the show in different ways, [with] different folks for years. So once it seemed like we were going to do it, the legacy cast was really, really excited. For me, it was about finding organic ways for them to be attached to our new brilliant cast … but also to have our legacy cast have organic relationships to Hillman, so that they could be around in organic ways. So we see Dwayne as provost, Whitley’s on the board, Ron because his son, Freddie is a professor.

“A Different World” fits into Netflix’s slate of YA-centered shows. What conversations did you have about tone with Netflix?

We definitely worked a lot on the tone. It is different from the original. It’s not a straight sitcom with set-up to joke. It’s more of a dramedy where we have high moments of drama, and then we have these laugh-out-loud moments. [We wanted to] focus on the relationships of these young folks, and what it feels like to be young and at a HBCU today was really important to us. We established an HBCU council that was like an advisory board of sorts for the writers’ room, and we also replicated that on set. We had current HBCU students on set that we could ask questions to, ask about their experiences, because that was really what was important for us for the YA-ness of it all to make sure that it felt relevant and authentic.

The show was filmed at several different HBCUs. Why was that important for you?

In the move from multicam to single cam, it really allowed us to have a more immersive experience at Hillman and see Hillman in ways that we never had previously, so we had the pleasure to film at Spellman, Morehouse and Clark, and that gave us just the texture and opened up our world in such beautiful ways. But it also helped with our authenticity because 59% of our background were current HBCU students and alum, and so when we’re in these scenes, we feel the authenticity of these current students because they know what it is to be at school today.

We actually did a casting call at Howard University, and we were able to cast Hazel, who’s played by Kennedi Reece, who just graduated in May, so she was still a student while we were shooting the show, so to have her authenticity and experiences infused into Hazel was amazing.

The show doesn’t cut corners about how HBCUs are being targeted, both by those seeking to incite violence, but also politically via budget cuts and DEI policies. How did you want to approach these issues?

The question we asked ourselves was, what issues are HBCUs facing today, and what issues are HBCU students at HBCUs facing today? And those were big, big issues that we were seeing that were very prevalent across HBCUs … because all HBCUs aren’t the same, but they do experience similar challenges. We explore things like immigration and ICE because it’s just so prevalent as well in our communities and beyond, and then … we explore neurodivergence, we explore sexual identity and sexual health … there’s a range of issues that we thought about what young people in particular are experiencing.

How did that Summer Walker cameo happen?

That was also our advisory board, our HBCU council. When we were thinking about performers at homecoming, we got a list from all our council members that were on set in the moment, like “who do y’all want to see? Who should be performing?” Summer Walker was on most of their lists. She’s also Atlanta-based, so that worked out perfectly. We were so happy with with being able to land her, and she came and did an amazing job.

Do you have some of those other artists bookmarked for potential other seasons?

Exactly.

What happened in that warehouse fire?

We made some cuts in the explanation of it, but Deborah was the one who actually rented the warehouse, and some kids put off some fireworks in it, and it caused a fire, and she was held liable for it.

I was surprised by Hazel’s reveal that she’s a long-distance boyfriend this whole time. What went into that twist?

Everybody’s messy. That was the thing … this is college life. They’re all making mistakes, but they’re all kind of learning from them. Her longtime boyfriend, we learn in the finale, got accepted into Hillman, so it’ll be interesting to see if we get a Season 2 … what he’s like and how that might bump up against what Hazel is trying to do.

Whitley and Dwayne come back together by the end of the season. What inspired their journey?

Relationships are hard, and the thing is, Whitley and Dwayne are soulmates. Life gets in the way, and for me, I wanted to use it as inspiration for couples who life may have gotten in the way, and that’s okay. That happens, but that you can find your way back to each other.

“A Different World” Season 1 is now streaming on Netflix.