The Hot Blog

Juno… huge hit. Yay.

And The Strangers did well for Rogue. Congrats.

The relationship with Sam Raimi, Ghost House, is the next strongest thing the company did… and none of that is accruing to Lionsgate, as all the films in the past (The Gurdges and 30 Days of Night) and future are set up elsewhere…. at least, so far.

The next two highest profile pictures, Stranger Than Fiction and Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist, are in the red. It is possible, though not for sure, that Nick & Norah will touch black ink when it opens foreign and DVD revenues are counted up. No such luck for Fiction.

This last summer, Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay became on of the last official New Line releases, capitalizing on the love of the first film to $38m domestic… which will make it profitable in DVD.

And Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium played its part in shutting down Walden Media’s marriage at Fox, not even recovering P&A with its $32m domestic gross.

The company’s first film, Neverwas, starring Aaron Eckhart, Ian McKellan, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, William Hurt, Vera Farmiga, and Brittany Murphy never was released into theaters, dumping into DVD in 2007. There was also Lucy Liu in Rise, which got a passing ($115,000) theatrical on the way to DVD. And just this fall, there was Passengers, the Anne Hathaway movie that did under $300k domestically, as Sony moved it along into its DVD tomb.

So that’s the Mandate story. Not terrible. Not world beating. Ambitious. Interesting. One truly outstanding hit, bolstered by Fox Searchlight making it the one the rarities of the Dependent world… a $100 million+ hit that didn’t cost a ton to make. The rest? Barely breakeven, if breakeven. (There was, obviously, a reason why they were for sale.)

And what has Joe Drake brought to Lionsgate so far? He picked up domestic on the $45 million Nic Cage remake of Bangkok Dangerous, which died with a $15m gross in September. He brought us the knock-off of the Weinstein “BLANK Movie” franchise, Disaster Movie… $14.2 million. New In Town, which opened to an estimated $6.7 million this weekend, which will lead to a domestic gross under $20 million, leading to a desperate hope of covering P&A with theatrical and scrambling to pay for the production with DVD.

I can understand why he is selling the idea that Ortenberg left him hanging. But physician heal thyself.

This is not to say that Drake will not find his footing and give the marketing team that Ortenberg built some movies they can sell. Lionsgate is a company scrambling to find its future identity and has spent years building a library (more by acquisition than by production and distribution) to make itself a strong acquisition target. The moment never quite came and now, the high side of the horror/thriller wave has crashed (starting with Hostel II in Summer 2007).

Ortenberg’s legacy? Well, like so many things at a place like Lionsgate, separating out who is responsible for what is hard to do. does Ortenberg get credit for building the Tyler Perry and Saw franchises into what they are? How much a part of the “white trash” success (which includes everything from Waiting… to Witless Protection, all low on budget and high on DVD revenues) do you give Ortenberg?

You know, the last five years at Lionsgate have been rather odd. At the same time, in 2004, they seemed to be committing to make quality, awards-hopeful films into a significant portion of their annual line-up, Saw and (in early 2005) Tyler Perry arrived and became box office gold. Crash soon followed. But the lesson for the company seems to have taken… from 2006 on, it was back to mostly genre and the much more rare edgy indie flicks. They tried documentaries… nothing did over $1.1 million and their Oscar nominee did under $250,000.

In the last two years, there have been eight Lionsgate films doing more than $40 million. The only one that is not pure genre is a quiet genre, the western… 3:10 To Yuma.

And dare I point out, in these same two years, Focus has had two films crack $40 million, Searchlight three, Miramax just one, Paramount Vantage zero, The Weinstein Company zero, and New Line three.

So… it is true… Lionsgate took more shots at it than any of these other companies. But they did what they did. And they did it with Ortenberg.

I do not dispute that there were too many chefs at Lionsgate recently. I do not dispute that the marketing in place does a great job and deserves accolades. And as I wrote before, I am comfortable with the likelihood that Joe Drake will find his feet with the company, both with his projects and the legacy left to him.

And I don’t know what the finances of The Weinstein Company will bring in future. I know that hiring Ortenberg was one of the biggest expenditures on talent that the brothers have made since they went into business, missing out on other high profile names in great part because they were not paying enough in a market being pushed up, particularly by Paramount’s spending a few years back.

If Lionsgate struggles or improves its fortunes, it will not just be because Ortenberg is not there. And if The Weinstein Co improves its fortunes or does not, it will not just be because Ortenberg is there. All of these companies are bigger than one man or woman.

And on we go…