Weekend, 17-18 July 1999

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

There is only one real news story this week. Bob Daly and Terry Semel are leaving the top slots at Warner Bros. The longest running partnership at a modern Hollywood studio will be kicked upstairs to a production deal. And we all know they didn't really resign. It was time to leave because losing $50 - $100 million on Wild Wild West is just too much to take after Soldier, after The Avengers, after U.S. Marshals, after Sphere, after The King & I became both an embarrassment and a lawsuit, after not seeming to be able to get Batman, Superman or any man back into costume anytime soon and after losing money on last summer's one big summer grosser, Lethal Weapon 4 because it cost so much to make that they couldn't make money. Let's not forget that You've Got Mail, Analyze This and The Matrix were all big winners in the last eight months. And Eyes Wide Shut and The Iron Giant are on the way. (Well, one is here now, but not expected to be a financial windfall.) Maybe the duo were effected by Kubrick's all-too-early exit from this earth and decided that the stress of fighting an uphill battle was just too much. Or maybe Deep Blue Sea really is that bad.

All I really know are these two things. One, The Hollywood Reporter got there first, kicking the collective ass of the rest of the media. Congratulations to Anita Busch. And Two, there's no point in beating a pair of retiring horses. In the aggregate, Daly and Semel's tenure at Warner Bros. was more glory than failure. So let's not bury the dynamic duo, who were brought down as so many great leaders are (I'm thinking of Coach Don Shula) by the very loyalty and honor that built their success in the first place. You gotta know when to hold `em, know when to fold `em.

News By The Semel-Daly Numbers

10. The Number of Major Franchises Launched By The Duo During Their Tenure: Ace Ventura, Batman, Gremlins, Grumpy Old Men, Lethal Weapon, Major League, The Neverending Story, Police Academy, Purple Rain and Vacation all spawned multiple hits for the studio. These franchises were at the heart of Daly and Semel's master plan for the studio and were a big part of creating the sense of stability that hung over the studio for so many years.

9. The number of months that people at Warner Bros. have been speculating that Mark Canton would be taking over again and have been kissing his ass, despite Jack Frost, for just that reason.

7. Great Years: The golden age of Semel and Daly was smack in the middle of their tenure. It's really pretty amazing. There was a somewhat fallow period to start, then seven golden years in the middle and then another fallow period, leading finally to their departure. The golden period was 1987 through 1993. 1987 was the year that Lethal Weapon opened, truly launching the era of Dick Donner and Joel Silver at the studio. The Lost Boys became Joel Shumacher's calling card even though the film didn't do quite the business everyone had hoped for. The stylish look was well remembered and the video and cable life for the film was and continues to be phenomenal. The Witches of Eastwick was painful to make, but it was as big a big-star event as there was that year, again defining the philosophy of the team in charge. In the next six years, Beetlejuice defined Tim Burton and Batman made him one of Hollywood's elite directors. Clint Eastwood's Bird brought him a new level of respect as a director and The Dead Pool and The Rookie ended his action career. Tango & Cash revived Sylvester Stallone and made Kurt Russell, while having Goodfellas, Hamlet and Reversal of Fortune in the same year ended up removing the sting of Bonfire of the Vanities. In 1991, Doc Hollywood, JFK, The Last Boy Scout and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves all did better than anyone outside the studio thought likely. 1992's Unforgiven was great box office and the big winner at the Academy Awards. And in 1993, the last year of this run, a full half of the studio's releases were hits. Dave, Demolition Man, Dennis The Menace, Falling Down, Free Willy, The Fugitive, Grumpy Old Men, Made in America, A Perfect World (which was huge overseas), The Pelican Brief and Sommersby were all golden. A great year. And no sequels. But more to the point of the next button, only two of the films would spawn hit sequels. Trouble for the formula.

6. Fallow Years: Semel and Daly did not get off to the greatest start ever. They had their hits. But starting with 1981, the first real slate of their own, they had six fallow years. For every Purple Rain, there was Mike's Murder and a Lassiter. For every Color Purple, a Spies Like Us. Eastwood's demise as a pure action star started with Heartbreak Ridge in 1986. Chevy Chase started to seem like he only had one note. And a great film like The Right Stuff just couldn't be opened. Again, starting in 1994, another fallow period started at Daly and Semel's Warner Bros. True, they had Ace Ventura in 1994. But they also had only four other hits (Maverick, Natural Born Killers, Richie Rich and The Client), all of which, except for The Client, were somewhat soft at the box office. Suddenly the overbloated Batman Forever was defining the studio as much as The Bridges of Madison County. Important members of the Warner Bros. family were delivering some of their worst work: Richard Donner/Assassins, Joel Silver/Fair Game, Tim Burton/ Mars Attacks, Bill Murray/The Man Who Knew Too Little, Kevin Costner/The Postman. Their Julia Roberts film was the ever-name-changing Something To Talk About. Steven Seagal's price tag became as bloated as his belly and the studio got Under Siege 2, Fire Down Below and The Patriot, with only a cameo in Executive Decision being of any value. Sandra Bullock brought the studio Two If By Sea and In Love and War. When they got a classic like Heat, they couldn't get it out or pitch for Oscars the way it deserved. I count 18 hits in those 6 years. Only 2 each in 1996 and 1998. Even worse, this came as the number of releases ramped up to as many as 27 in 1997. Of those 27, only two films were legitimate hits (The Devil's Addvocate and L.A. Confidential) and one was borderline (Absolute Power). For the first time since I started covering ShoWest, Warner Bros. was a no show in 1998. But as someone pointed out, quite smartly, six years off, seven years on, six years off...it's time for WB to come into seven years of good times and it may just do that.

PAGE TWO: "The fall from grace continues..."