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July 15, 2008

When Divorce Goes Wrong

We in the media jump like trained monkeys when studios and others offer up press releases. Yippee! It's NEWS!

But a lot of the time... really, more than 20% of the time... the story fades as the players decide not to play. And very rarely is there a course correction since no one releases a story that their initiative failed and few journalists take any of this too seriously… until there is another press release.

So...

The Weinstein Co has announced its re-pacting with Showtime... at the expected lower price (the Hollywood Reporter reporting on TWC paying Showtime upfront cash makes little logical sense... there may be smoke and there may be money changing hands, but why and how and how much probably has not yet been uncovered)... which is most likely exactly what Paramount and MGM and Lionsgate will end up doing also.

With The Weinsteins out… MGM building with Mary Parent, but unlikely to be delivering much product to anyone before product that would have been running on Showtime will need someplace to land… Lionsgate having a rough run and 13 films on the schedule for the rest of this year, which means a lot of cash out in marketing and few guarantees of big hits… and Paramount already in flux with the anticipated DreamWorks exit in the months to come and not able to promise more than a half dozen films to a new outlet for cable release in 2009…

It’s independence vs. security. And with all three major players weak… well…

Meanwhile, just a breath after Philippe Dauman was saying about the decision not to renew the Showtime deal, "We wanted to control our destiny,” Paramount has done a deal with Jaman for digital delivery of its product:

JAMAN.COM AND PARAMOUNT DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT ANNOUNCE ONLINE DEAL
The Kite Runner, There Will Be Blood, Into the Wild, Cloverfield and many popular titles to Jaman's online library

San Mateo, Calif.- July 15, 2008 - Jaman.com, a leading global community and online destination for quality entertainment, today announced the completion of a distribution deal with Paramount Digital Entertainment. Many popular movies from Paramount Pictures will be available for rental or purchase from Jaman's site to viewers across the nation.

Jaman's expansion of its library continues to connect people with movies they love with the convenience of the Internet.

"Jaman is proud to deliver the latest hits and classics from Paramount Pictures," said Gaurav Dhillon, founder and CEO of Jaman. "The addition of these wonderful Paramount titles is a big stride towards our goal of making Jaman the biggest online destination for quality film."

"By bringing our titles to Jaman, we hope to engage new audiences with great movies," said Malik Ducard, Vice President of North America Digital Distribution, Paramount Digital Entertainment. "Jaman's creation of a secure, high-quality platform was a big draw for us as we strive to make our films easily accessible to audiences around the world."

Nice control.

Paramount has also made deals, beyond its direct control, for digital distribution of clips and shows from its cable nets with Joost. Why does Paramount need two separate digital distribution channels to deliver content from the wide range of content creators? (shrug)

Paramount continues to fight itself, leasing out assets that the company should be keeping for itself. And how long can Sumner Redstone allow Viacom division Paramount to compete with Viacom division CBS, which owns Showtime? They are now on the way to having – and more importantly, paying for - competing pay-cable networks and competing movie divisions… INSANE.

The three major movie pay-channels are:

HBO - Established in 1972 – Deals with DreamWorks, Fox, Warner, Universal

Showtime - Established in 1976 – Expired Deals with movies still in the 2008 pipeline from Paramount, MGM, Lionsgate

Starz/Encore - Established in 1994 - Deals with Disney, Sony, Overture

So, no new major pay movie nets in almost 15 years. As you can see, Disney and Sony have the comfy position of dominating Starz/Encore and are in excellent position to someday split the two sides of the company into individuated networks. WB obviously has natural family dibs on HBO, but the ratings at the first pay-TV major still make being there attractive for Universal (which has flipped around a bit), Fox, and DreamWorks. Don’t be surprised if the next major pay-tv net is Universal/DreamWorks, splitting off of HBO at some point.

What there is not is a financial incentive to sell outside of the family ahead of selling inside the family anymore. On individual movies, yes. On overall deals, no. And the cost of launching a stand-alone net in future will become less of an issue as niche branding becomes increasingly the norm. Paramount is five years ahead of itself – as the dominant element in their attempt to launch a new net – and too weak to force the issue.

How can Paramount fail to return to the Showtime fold before January 1? There needs to be some kind of realistic outlet in place by then. Is Redstone really going to let this go on past then? Because right now, there is no network to put on the books. And while the 2008 number for pay-cable lease of the average studio movie may be under $10 million, it’s another $120 million - $160 million that a studio can count on. And after Paramount has left much of that on the table because of the DreamWorks deal – yet another hidden cost – rebuilding, which is exactly what’s about to happen, can use every base of support possible.

Moreover, the Weinstein deal, whatever the terms, speaks to the state of the content-creator business at the moment, as does their deal to move Project Runway to ABC’s Lifetime network from NBC Universal’s Bravo. The issue of the moment is survival. And as The Weinsteins spread out over Disney and Viacom’s CBS (spurning Viacom’s Paramount), while still seeking a distribution partner – likely a third corporation - for the future, the opportunity to hold out for your own place on the dial is not an option unless you are very, very deep pocketed.

And right now, very few outlets are.

Posted by poland at 04:01 PM | | Comments (0)

June 09, 2008

Trying To Sprint With Billions Weighing You Down

David Halbfinger’s long piece on MGM does an excellent job looking at what the situation over there is. And he puts together a lot of the underreported elements from the last few years of the story of the studio. This piece was heavy lifting indeed.

But as is so often the problem with the NYT rotating smart reporters with no knowledge of the past of this industry, it is missing the full perspective on the story (which to his credit, Peter Bart got right to on his blog). This is a clear case of déjà vu.

What they are now doing at MGM was done, almost exactly, by Chris McGurk and Alex Yemenidjian over and over and over again until the market was right and they finally found the right suckers/buyers to cash them and Kerkorian out.

As I wrote about for years, it always seemed to me that the amount of money being spent by MGM was directly related to how close they thought they were to a sale. Kerkorian was always looking to sell, before McG&Y came aboard and every minute thereafter. The big asset was always the library, but the bait, the argument was, the idea of a major studio.

Yemenidjian and McGurk came into Kerkorian’s life in 1999, when he bought the studio one last time (we think) and was looking to do what he had done before… raise the perceived value and get someone to hand him a billion dollar profit for his trouble.

1999 was not their mess, 2000 saw just three wide releases, including Supernova, which the boys got Coppola to re-cut before giving him a deal to run United Artists with a budget of $100 million over two years covering five films. Tom Cruise needed five times that to get into business.

2001 leapt to seven wide releases, including wannabe star vehicles Original Sin (Banderas/Jolie), What’s The Worst The Could Happen? (DeVito/Lawrence), Heartbreakers (Weaver/Hewitt), and Bandits (Willis/Thornton/Blamchett). The foursome grossed $131m domestic combined. The savior was one of the lower budget hopefuls, Legally Blonde, though MGM didn’t have the juice to convert the event film for teen girls into a $100 million grosser domestically. And the one mega-hit was Hannibal, the awful Silence of the Lambs sequel, that grossed just over $350 million worldwide.

But no buyer for the price Kerkorian was looking for…

2002 also has seven wide releases. The big one was Bond in Die Another Day. Great. Barbershop was the underdog success with a $76 million domestic gross… and just over $1 million overseas. Still, a winner. After that… red ink. Windtalkers, The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course, Hart's War, McTiernan’s remake of Rollerball, and Deuces Wild… $114 million domestic… it’s getting worse.

2003, the money dried up. No more movie stars, thanks. The only one MGM had in their eight wide releases that year was Denzel Washington in Out of Time… unless you count the sequel to Legally Blonde as a star turn… I count it as a sequel. The studio did nicely with cheap no-star kids movies Agent Cody Banks and Good Boy!. But the also-not-terribly-expensive, low wattage efforts to find teens (Uptown Girls, Bulletproof Monk, and A Guy Thing) all stiffed.

In 2004, Kerkorian put a part of the company’s cash in his own pocket - to the tune of somewhere around $1.4 billion - with a stock dividend scheme. The timing was most surely in line with Kerkorian interest in making his cash out with a sale – which could come five months later, in September – as tax-burden-free as possible. The cash-out represented about a third of the total value of the eventual deal to sell the company.

As for the studio, they had gone strictly low rent, with six wide releases, 2 of them cheap sequels, 1 a remake of a studio property, 1 failed attempt at another black franchise, 1 teen girl flop, and one non-starting thriller.

Throughout all of these years, whether the two aggressive years or the three fallow years that followed, the theme was “we’re in business… we’re a real studio… we’re in the game.”

But Kirk’s Boys had found a magical opportunity that no longer had anything to do with whether the studio was operational. Blu-ray and HD-DVD. The owner of the largest library in Hollywood – not just MGM’s but many others acquired over the years – was in the cat bird seat as Sony (pushing Blu-ray) and the HD-DVD group, led by Microsoft and Toshiba, were battling for position in a new technology. Sony, which had gotten beat on Betamax two decades before, primarily by maintaining its equipment as proprietary, but in some minds because they didn’t dominate and control the software.

So now we are in HarrySloanLand. What does he do? He lashes together a coalition of independent distributors – most of whom are now effectively out of business – to take advantage of the one significant asset MGM actually had, a Showtime cable output deal at a rate higher than anyone else could negotiate on their own. (Irony cubed… no Weinstein Co titles released by MGM and then on DVD by Genius have come out in any high definition format.) But Sloan was just treading water until he could grab back complete control of the MGM brand, which was blurred by the shockingly brief active Sony relationship.

In the process, according to what Halbfinger unearthed in the company’s filings, MGM’s current owners, led by Sloan, have added about $1.7 billion to the $2 billion in debt they assumed buying the company from Kerkorian almost four years ago. So far… just like Kirk would do it.

Starting from that deep hole, it’s been setting up a UA deal for Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner, with a different mindset, but not dissimilar to tying the UA name to Coppola earlier. (Coppola’s deal fell apart before it was “complete,” but the UA brand was really resurrected, in the end, but Bingham Ray, who led a team (some now with McGurk at Ovation) that made small films with some Oscar heft, including Hotel Rwanda and Capote.)

Next, it was setting up the idea that MGM was still seriously in the movie business. Hiring Mary Parent was a legitimate power move (making her the Michael Nathanson of this situation). Cale Boyter is a solid high-profile hire. Money is being spent.

The problem remains the same as it was for Kerkorian, as it was for DreamWorks, as it was for New Line, as it was for Zoetrope, as it is for any small studio. You are vulnerable to the vagaries of the industry weather. With a bigger company, not only do you have a large infrastructure that supports the business if a picture of any size fails, but you have all kinds of opportunities to created additional value in the production you create, especially the big hits.

I am not saying that a Valkyrie will shut down UA if it doesn’t work at the box office… but the hard reality is that if it were to bomb too badly, it could shut the studio down. Conversely, if it hits modestly, say $180 million worldwide, then it means nothing to the studio's future in a particularly positive way. When you are small, you are always fighting the negative and rarely get to enjoy the success... unless it's Rings-level crazy success or Wedding Crashers or The Mask costing virtually nothing and hitting big.

I am not saying that Mary Parent needs a $100 million domestic grosser in 2009. But she does have to balance what she spends and what she earns. Bond is an existing major asset that the studio really doesn’t control… never has. Pink Panther will be profitable, but its profits won’t cover the executive contracts that Harry Sloan just signed.

On the other hand, there absolutely are advantages to a smaller company. There is an intimacy, a camaraderie, and a focus on the few films the company releases. A big part of handicapping DreamWorks as a stand-alone studio was losses they had chasing television production. That shouldn’t be a big issue for MGM.

That said, birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim. Setting up – finally! – serious marketing and distribution arms at MGM means that they need movies to sell and push out into theaters. Terry Press, if she ends up taking the marketing job, can tell them clearly. Those six-movies-a-year years at DreamWorks were brutal. There was this sense of revving this very powerful engine that had been created, waiting… waiting…

What DreamWorks did to make things work better was to find a franchise that consistently won… animation. But MGM doesn’t have a Katzenberg. And Bond only comes but once every three years. Even then, the franchise is still looking to its next film to be its first $600 million worldwide grosser, just as it took until Casino Royale to crack $500 million. The franchise is very valuable, but it’s not a studio maker. After all, Lord of The Rings – which grossed $2.9 billion in three films - couldn’t save New Line, at least not after the franchise ended.

What Mary Parent is likely to be able to deliver is a bunch of doubles, some of which can be stretched out to triples. Typical is the notion of taking a Ludlum novel and putting Denzel Washington in it. Great actor. Could be a great Bourne-like property. But Denzel has never had a $300 million worldwide grosser… ever. And Bourne went $215m, $290m, $445m worldwide over its 3 film run. And maybe this could be Denzel’s $300m break-out… in a second sequel in 2016.

Like Bond, a franchise that can be counted on to crack $200m each time out is a good, good thing. But Hannibal ($350m worldwide) and Legally Blonde ($142m ad $124m worldwide each) didn’t find a buyer for MGM. Blu-ray did.

And that buyer paid way, way, way too much. Of course, if you measure by the inanity of $900 million for the DreamWorks library of 59 titles…

But looking at that deal, which is not likely to be profitable for Paramount on the ongoing movie side, they paid $700 million for DreamWorks as an ongoing asset, beyond the library. MGM production might be worth something near that right now, as an investment, based on the Bond franchise, a percentage of The Hobbit and the Mary Parent and Tom Cruise businesses. If the library is legitimately worth $2.5 billion, then add another $700 million and the investors who currently own MGM can’t cover the $3.7 billion of debt they are carrying with a sale at a reasonable value today, much less the additional $2 billion they spent buying the assets.

Moreover, while I believe there is still going to be significant money in quality libraries, the value headed down based on what looks to be the new economies of ancillary delivery. There simply is no scenario that suggests that we are ever going back to $19.95 DVD level costs of “owning” a film or even – most likely - $15.

As a movie lover, I love the idea of chasing that long tail, but the industry has to start getting used to the idea that the more that’s available, the more easy the access, the more relentless the pricing battle will become. Some little known doc or indie will end up being sold a million times for $2.50 a pop and make its makers/marketers a nice chunk of change, but these are not the kinds of numbers that pay for studio overhead.

When Kerkorian bought MGM for the third time in 1996, he paid $1.3 billion. The one big shift in value that occurred over the last decade was DVD. And MGM’s library was there to take advantage of the opportunity. Kerkorian nearly tripled his investment. Genius… since the studio is overpriced at $5 million, much less the apparent $6.7 million it now on the books.

The Consortium could not have bought at a worse time… not unlike DreamWorks getting into the studio business and trying to build a TV business at exactly the worst time, when showrunners were being paid massive amounts upfront by everyone in town. For Sony, the investment, however oversized, would pay off if the deal led to Blu-ray winning the format war. (I would argue that the deal did help… but that Sony continues to drag its feet on hardware pricing, which is fighting an ever-narrowing window for cheaper HD home delivery, both by cable, satellite, and to a much smaller extent, internet. When the hardware price point drops under $150, the non-Blu-ray values of a PS3 – or whatever it’s called by then – will make them the standard and Blu-ray DVD sales may become the standard for a significant percentage of buyers. But the idea of buying DVDs could also be passé by 2012 – or earlier - so they better hurry.)

Thing is, building positive assets is building positive assets. Would The Consortium be happier with a way overpriced asset that is building more positive assets or one that lays there like a lox and demands a multi-billion write down?

If Sloan, with Parent, can keep this thing afloat for a couple of years, hitting for percentage, then there will be the big moment. Parent will get bored and she and her people will find The Home Run Shot and want to take it. And that one film may be the “yay” or “nay” for MGM as a production entity.

Meanwhile, the Titanic of MGM already sank. Harry Sloan and Mary Parent and everyone else over there are already on a very luxurious lifeboat. They don’t really have to bail water. They aren’t like to make it any worse in a hurry. And positives are positive, so bless them. But there are still icebergs out there. And all it takes is one.

Posted by poland at 12:35 AM | | Comments (0)

June 04, 2008

From Rothman To Lesher To Chance

rothtolesh.jpg

A very smart person commented in passing, in a different conversation, about a very interesting piece of history that is more relevant today than it was even a day ago. It’s a little hard to put together some of the details, since the memory goes back to 1996… before the web grew up and, interestingly, earlier than Variety’s archives seem to go. But…

John Lesher’s 28 month tenure at Paramount Vantage (nee’ Classics), then the move to “Big” Paramount is remarkably similar to Tom Rothman’s move from Searchlight to “Big” Fox (and then, to sharing Bill Mechanic‘s job with Jim Gianopulos).

Lesher’s first release at/as Vantage was the Sundance pick-up, An Inconvenient Truth, released about six months after he took the job. The film was a publicity bonanza, and in spite of a huge amount of spending to get all that attention, the film grossed a remarkable $24 million, making it the third highest grossing domestic doc of all time. (It’s now #4 with Sicko surpassing it by a small amount.) It would turn out to be the only profitable film of the extremely high profile Lesher regime.

Lesher’s second release at Vantage came 6 days prior to his one year anniversary with Paramount, though the film, Babel, was not made under his auspices (except as an agent, since he made the deal for the film repping his client, Alejandro González Iñárritu with Bred Grey while still at Endeavor). He fought to get the film under his banner… and succeeded. And his team, led by Megan Colligan, fought hard and long to get an Oscar nomination. Unfortunately for them, they sold off the foreign rights on the film, which is where the movie made triple what it did in America, which meant that Paramount would lose money on their first Oscar nominee since 2002’s The Hours, which was their first since Titanic in 1997.

Black Snake Moan was the second release… also from the previous administration… also a money loser, with a worldwide gross of just $10 million.

Lesher’s first release of his own (kind of… it was via Plan B, Brad Grey’s production company with Pitt and, then, Aniston) was Mike White’s Year of the Dog, 18 months after he took the job. It was the start of a run of 7 films from high profile directors that Lesher had worked with at Endeavor.

Mike White – Year of the Dog - $1.5 million
Michael Winterbottom - A Mighty Heart - $9.2m
Sean Penn - Into the Wild - $18.4m
Noah Baumbach - Margot at the Wedding - $2m
Marc Forster - The Kite Runner - $15.8m
Paul Thomas Anderson - There Will Be Blood - $40.2m
Martin Scorsese - Shine a Light -$5.3m

Five of the films would be sold as Oscar contenders. One would be nominated. None would break even. But the time the last film was released, Lesher had been promoted to “Big” Paramount and the responsibility for the future released vetted by Lesher would be on those left behind.

A similar thing happened at Fox Searchlight, created by Tom Rothman in 1994, and exited by Rothman for a bigger job before he released his tenth movie via the division, leaving the clean-up to Lindsay Law, a PBS exec and producer who was over his head in the job for about three years… years that included getting an Oscar nomination for The Full Monty, a title that would also remain Searchlight’s biggest grosser for seven years – four years into the Rice regime – until Sideways. (Rice more than doubled that top earner last year with Juno.)

Rothman’s first release was also a pick-up… Edward Burns’ The Brothers McMullen. The film would be the highest grossing film of his tenure with $10.4m. His next biggest hit was a follow-up by Burns (shades of Black Snake Moan, the follow-up to Craig Brewer’s Hustle & Flow), She’s The One, which grossed $9.5 million.

Everything else would lose money.

Rothman had high profile taste, like Spike Lee (Girl 6, $5m gross), Bernardo Bertolucci (Stealing Beauty, $4.7m gross), Al Pacino (Looking for Richard, $1.4m gross), Nicholson buddy and 70s legend Bob Rafelson (Blood and Wine, $1.1m gross), Bergman collaborator Billie August (Smilla's Sense of Snow, $2.4m gross), and Dangerous Liaisons writer/conceiver Christopher Hampton (The Secret Agent, $106,606 gross).

Lindsay Law wouldn’t do much better with his 25-or-so shots at the brass ring. He and his team hit the home run with The Full Monty. But only five other films in his tenure would crack $5 million. He too would miss with some big names.

But Tom Rothman went on to the Big Show to great success while Law had to sell stuff that Rothman launched and for which he didn’t have to take the heat. Of course, Rothman’s Searchlight films were not nearly as expensive and didn’t lose nearly as much as Lesher’s… so maybe Lesher will be an even better “Big” studio exec!

The news that finally landed, that Team Vantage was being melded into Big Paramount was not that big a surprise. Things clearly couldn’t continue the way Lesher and Grey had allowed them to, no matter how much attention they got with the films. Eventually the pool of red ink would be noticed. And now we know… it was.

Thing is, Tom Rothman has remained, for over a decade now, remained very committed to the division he birthed. He and Jim G have been smart enough to let Peter Rice and his key team of Gilula and Utley have their heads.

Dick Cook and Bob Iger figured out the right role for a post-Weinstein Miramax and Daniel Battsek has been nothing short of brilliant in navigating the territory.

Focus became an international asset for Universal, as much as it was a domestic art division, and David Linde is now co-running the big show.

And Sony Classics has its own unique set of goals and expectations in its Big Sony marriage and works well within them.

This step backwards for Paramount and Vantage is indicative of the fact that they jumped in with both feet… and never had a vision for the division that went past gathering attention. As a result, there is no way to continue down the road that they were on. The company has just three releases on the schedule the rest of this year… only one that they had their hands on in the making. And it may well be that film - Revolutionary Road – a Scott Rudin-produced film – that has as much as the Vantage marketing remaining intact. They are seen as the ones who can push an Oscar film. (Par can also expect a lot more help from 42 West on this one… as it is likely the go-to film ahead of Rudin’s Doubt, which will be over at Miramax.)

There was some talk, a little while back, that the Vantage kids might knock Gerry Rich from his perch. Didn’t happen. But sometime in the fall, as DreamWorks leaves Melrose in the dust, the ranks will surely be thinned again.

In the meanwhile, the circle just keeps turning…

Posted by poland at 12:23 AM | | Comments (0)

May 14, 2008

The Trouble With Trouble

We are in some rough water, folks.

There is no question.

The indie world is being squeezed, doc side first. The studios are trying to trim down to what works while dumping out of most of the funding responsibilities. And some are in serious trouble.

There are two stories on the web today that may be 100% true… but also concern me deeply. It’s not about pulling back the curtain. That’s the job. But there is a kind of malignancy in the idea that what has always been gossip is now being published by bloggers as “news”… and then, followed up on, even without any real confirmations of anything nefarious, as a way of self-glorifying… even getting down to the “send me your complaints about people who pay you late so I can humiliate them too!” gamesmanship. But who can blame Ms Finke for her gutter urges. They have gotten her so much attention so far!

When AJ Schnack sends out a blog entry as “BREAKING,” when it is, in fact, neither breaking or news, you have to wonder. Again… the unnamed sources who are trying to get paid – and there has been quiet talk that Think paid Alex Gibney off almost completely after he ran a threat through Stu Van Airsdale at Defamer – may be telling the story 100% straight. Or they may not.

The reason there are rules in journalism on sourcing is not because some crazy ass sources are not sometimes right… but because once someone is smeared in the press, it is hard to take it back.

Capitol and Think may be going under. They may not. But the feeding frenzy around their troubles tends to make a lot of assumptions… some of which may be true and others which may not be.

Crazy Nikki, on the other hand, is dancing on The Weinstein Company, thrilled to be getting calls from Harvey to respond to the anonymous gossip she ran yesterday. Again… The Weinsteins may be in deep trouble. They may not be in that much trouble. We don’t know anything for sure, other than they have been a bit cash strapped from the beginning of their new company and that the savior, Grindhouse, didn’t save anything.

Of course, Nikki is taking responsibility for shaming The Weinsteins into paying their bills. Yeah.

And she is running an EXCLUSIVE!!! statement from the DGA that is spectacularly vanilla and does not suggest the trouble that Nikki was trying so hard to stir up:

"The DGA has had a long and productive working relationship with The Weinstein Company and its predecessor. It is sometimes the case, with various companies, that residuals payments are late. We are working directly with TWC to resolve this issue and see that our members receive prompt residuals payments."

But hey… Nikki may still get a “Toldja” out of it. But as a journalist, it would be nice if she actually found some news in here… like actually knowing whether there is a cash crunch involved at TWC. She cannot and does not offer this. And that is the only thing that would rise in any of this past the level of insider gossip of the most obvious level.

And now, she wants more of the same… unidentified people complaining about who owes them money.

This is what passes as journalism.

And keep this in mind… this is not an abstract issue for me. We carry payables from many studio advertisers and the financial issues at both large and small distributors are of real concern. But it would never occur to me to embarrass these people or companies publicly as tool to reach my personal business ends. I can handle my business like a businessperson... and my journalism as a journalist. News is news and no one gets away without scrutiny. But gossip is just gossip.

Posted by poland at 05:27 PM | | Comments (2)

November 19, 1997

Behind the Scenes

DreamWorks is prepping Hell Bent, an effects comedy about a tobacco executive whose primary responsibility is selling cigarettes to kids. When his disgusted wife pushes him out of his window to his death, hell is the next stop and he, of course, fits right in. You all have read Rough Cut Daily's Pact With The Devil. Well, here's your chance. What show business people -- star, executive or job title -- do you think are one window push away from running the city that never extinguishes? E-mail me your candidates and the reasons. The best entrant will win their very own slot on The Hot Button.

The Jackal may have been number one at the box office this week, but the road was as twisted off-screen as on. You may remember the controversy over the original title, "The Day of the Jackal," which was meant by Universal to make the new version seem like a remake of the 1973 classic directed by Fred Zinnemann. Fred objected strenuously after reading the screenplay by Kevin JarrŽ. At the time, producer Jim Jacks defended the changes in the screenplay as part of the artistic genius of JarrŽ, the writer of Tombstone and Glory. "Why the IRA character?" I asked. "Kevin's Irish," was Jack's response. "Why a Richard Gere-type rather than the frumpy government guy?" "Kevin thought The Jackal was so charismatic that we needed someone equally as charismatic." Cut to the release of the movie. Universal settles with Zinnemann, who sadly passes away before the movie is done. It's called The Jackal. And as far as Kevin JarrŽ? His name is nowhere near the credits, displaced by Chuck Pfarrer, the genius who brought us Hard Target, Barb Wire and Navy S.E.A.L.S. Fickle business, huh?

Sony chief John Calley is prepping the studios first Bond movie for 1999. MGM is suing. Which company is going to get the Goldfinger? Who knows? Sony's already snuck around MGM and snagged the prize. Now MGM has Sony in the war room, threatening its life. Soon, Sony will be hung over a tank of sharks, hog-tied to Sharon Stone in a string bikini. That watch you're wearing had better be more than a standard issue Rolex, Mr. Calley.

Anything on that movie mind of yours? E-mail me your thoughts.

Posted by THB Archive at 10:40 PM |

November 15, 1997

Sony Takes the BO Lead

Sony Pictures (a.k.a. Columbia/Tri-Star) has broken the box office, passing the previous record of $1.2 billion in domestic grosses for one year. The studio hit the record high six weeks earlier in the year than the previous record-holder, Disney, leading the box office pack for the first time in over 25 years. How'd they do it? Bugs! Men In Black's aliens were pretty buglike. Julia Roberts went buggy in My Best Friend's Wedding. And Starship Troopers proves that bugs and tight pants mix just fine. Just one fly in Sony's ointment. The run of hits is the product of the past administration and the deja-vu will continue until next Memorial Day Weekend's release of Godzilla. Well, at least next year's monster is a reptile. Thank goodness for evolution.

Former b.o. king, Walt Disney Studios, is going through its next evolution. Studio chief Joe Roth says that the studio will cut back to 22 releases next year after putting 40 flicks in theaters this year. By 1999, he says Disney will release only 15 films. As Roth told The Hollywood Reporter, "You have to make your shots count." All of this would seem to make a lot of sense since no matter how cheaply you make a film, releasing the film costs at least $20 million and close to $40 million on average these days. This year, that's about $1.2 Billion (with a capital "B") out of Disney's pocket before you even pay for the movies! If they cut 25 films from the schedule, saving $800 million, even missing one Men In Black-size hit and a few other moderate hits would leave the studio in better financial shape than they're in now.

Finally, studio-moguls-to-be, Charlie Sheen and Bret Michaels, have started production on No Code of Conduct, their latest venture as Sheen/Michaels Productions (The first was a cheesecake calendar). Michaels will direct the film that he and Charlie wrote, with Charlie acting his butt off as a former vice cop. How original! One novel thing. The boys will be served legal papers in a few days that claim they refused to make good on their oral contract with Alexander Tabrizi and Anthony Esposito, a couple of producers who helped initiate the project on this, their maiden voyage.

Anything on your mind? Don't be shy, e-mail me.

Posted by THB Archive at 10:07 PM |

September 16, 1997

Robin Williams Has Set his Next Project,

Robin Williams has set his next project, The Interpreter. The light-hearted comedy about a schlub who interprets rather than translates in tense international negotiations might as well be called Flubber 2, following his expected hit Thanksgiving release. Ironically, when Robin was in negotiations to play The Riddler in Batman Forever four years ago, I asked him why he wanted the part. He said, "If I don't play a bad guy soon, I'm going to become f***ing Fred MacMurray!" No word on whether the Double Indemnity remake is on his "To Do" list.

The Full Monty will be the first late-summer release to go all the way to profitability. Even though the film's gross has just hit $6 million, it should pass $15 million in the next two or three weeks, putting the film into the black considering a $3 million production cost and an estimated $8 million P&A (Prints & Advertising) budget. On the flip side, G.I. Jane, September's top drawer (with silk stocking in it?), is in its fourth week with a $39 million total, making it a poor bet to even match its production costs in domestic box office, though it will certainly be profitable in the long worldwide run. Naked fat guys everywhere rejoice!

Speaking of G.I. Jane, what was with the men in short shorts and hairless legs? Despite Moore's pointedly feminine physique, Ridley Scott's vision of the S.E.A.L.S was more about beefcake than a Chippendale's video.

You think it's easy to be in the movie business? MGM, formerly the lion of Hollywood, has been singing in red ink for the last five years to the tune of $1.7 billion. Yes, billion with a B. Even last year, with The Birdcage and Goldeneye on the release list, MGM dropped $90.5 million. Fortunately, studio chief Frank Mancuso has taken home almost $30 million in salary and stock in that same five years. Makes Michael Eisner's paycheck look pretty reasonable, huh?

E-Mail Dave with the issues that get your button hot!

Posted by THB Archive at 08:19 PM |