Weekend, 13-14 May 2000

NEWS BY THE NUMBERS

Well, folks, our illustrious Managing Editor, Morgan Fouch, is heading to Los Angeles as I write this (on Friday), where she and pretty much the entire roughcut.com team will relocate permanently over the next month. (Some of the staff will remain e-mail connected from the wilds of Atlanta.) The news week is light and I'm pushing my deadline and Morgan needs to get on a plane. I need her to get on that plane too, so that we will have a working site on Monday. So, this weekend, NBTN will be a Top 5 instead of a Top 10. And frankly, you should be happy you got that because Morgan and Sarah Raskin had to go way out of their way to get this up at all this weekend. My thanks to them both and my apologies to you all. See you Monday.

5. Spins A Web: Bashing Marvel Enterprises, Inc. has been standard operating procedure on the 'Net for a long while now. Hatred of Avi Arad, chief creative officer and CEO of Marvel Studios, has become an unremitting theme. So when Marvel took the offensive, doing an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday before releasing First Quarter economic results on Thursday that were weak, but no weaker than expected. The push of all of this is that the company is selling a big comeback, driven by a number of movie and TV projects that are on their way. The Wall Street Journal story, somewhat amazingly, doesn't even mention Arad. Don't think that's a coincidence. He has demanded the spotlight as the company's frontman in Hollywood and it seems that the company finally figured out that corporate CEO Peter Cuneo was a much safer, much more stable image to front the company. The spin on the piece, generated by WSJ reporter Erin White, was that the studio would be diversifying with its characters beyond the comic book page. Of course, Ain't It Cool ran a misleading report from a "spy" suggesting that Marvel was moving away from comic books. There was not a single sentence that even remotely suggests that in the Journal piece. What is mentioned is that the company wants to diversify even its printed titles. Also misreported at AIC is the idea that Peter Parker is being changed into a middle-aged man with a wife, a kid and a prosthetic leg. Well, that is kind of true. Marvel will do a series with that future idea of Peter Parker in "an alternative comic-book series coming out in October." Oy!

Here's the real bottom line. Currently, Marvels' revenue stream is 75 percent toys, 13 percent publishing and 10 percent licensing. But the actual cash flow is 35 percent licensing. So, Cuneo expects that in future, licensing will grow to 50 percent of cash flow or more, that toys will make up only 40 percent and that publishing will become only 10 percent. And one bit of news that I haven't seen anywhere else is that Avi Arad, allowed to be part of the company's first-quarter press release, suggested that Fantastic Four may step up to a scheduling spot on Fox's schedule more soon than recently expected. But my bet on that is that Fox will wait to see if the lower-tech concept they used on X-Men does well before applying the same approach to a Fantastic Four movie that could hit screens as soon as next summer. (By the way, when IS Tim Burton going to start shooting Planet of the Apes?) Arad may be evil and/or nuts, but nothing about their current fiscal plans seem to be anything less than smart and to the point.

4. Cannes Can: The big news out of Cannes this week was that Menahem Golan, king of the crap movie and the bounced check, is making Elian: The True Story of Elian Gonzalez. Catchy title, huh? Unfortunately, it's not going to be a musical. I can just imagine what Julie Taymor would do with a singing dolphin and a dancing inner tube. Oh well. On another front, Miramax bought the rights to Roland Jofffe's Vatel, starring Gerard Depardieu and Uma Thurman. The story is that the studio picked up domestic rights cheap and that Harvey Weinstein may have gotten a little sentimental for the film about the chef who tried to win over Louis XIV...one of Miramax's first great triumphs was the fight over The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. And of course, there was the de-mustaching of Jeff Wells over at Reel.com in his second day of Cannes coverage. He kind of suggests that he decided that the mustache that the Reel.com people had added to his face on top of his column made him look "pretty silly." Sillier than that, Jeff. But I'm betting he knows that and that the transatlantic screaming match that took place when he saw that thing was one of his loudest and angriest yet. His coverage is worth checking out, though I think he might want to save his list of who he did and didn't eat with for a pure gossip column somewhere.

3. Is there a worse idea out there than an Elian movie? It could be Dirty Dancing 2 starring Ricky Martin and Natalie Portman. But why wonder when Artisan and Miramax have given the project a $25 million greenlight. The film will be set in current day Miami Beach. I guess that means we'll have to lose the chaste lust of the original for an act of fellatio that "isn't really sex," the current creed of teenage girls. Well, maybe it will draw a wide range of teens in that case.

2. Mike Ovitz' AMG (once known as Ovitz and The Yorn's AMG, but we all knew that wouldn't last) has officially gone into production business, announcing Artists Production Group (APG) and publicly hoping that the entity will start 4 movies this year. One has already wrapped. It's an under-$20-million Ed Burns comedy that will go the indie route. But the other three films are all at studios (Warner Bros., Paramount and New Line). As always, Ovitz is able to spin what has become fairly normal business procedure into a one-of-a-kind tale for the press. APG is looking for out-of-studio financing, eschewing a first-look deal at a studio. But virtually every studio movie is a co-production these days and everyone, now including APG, is looking for a way to walk to the studio table with at least half of the financing in place before a deal is struck. In other words, Mike Ovitz is looking to do very much what Elie Samaha and Franchise Pictures is doing. However, Ovitz would rather die (or kill) before being compared in any way to a guy like Samaha. Gotta love him.

1. Battlefield Earth hit theaters this weekend. It was so bad that the Los Angeles Times sent a non-critic to review the film lest the stench get on their regulars who will have to deal with Travolta and Co. again. It's so bad that Maria Salas is using the verb "rocks" again. It's so bad that the Washington Post jumped on the abuse bandwagon with a feature by Sharon Waxman on top of abuse by two separate critics. This film is historic. Long live Battlefield Earth!

READER OF THE DAY: Not Kyle writes: "First off, another item to add to your list of annoying people at theaters- My wife and I were sitting in a half-full theater, the lights were down, and we were 20 minutes into Gladiator. This man with a 20 gallon cowboy hat was leading his significant other down the aisle, and decided to pick the seats directly in front of us. Delightful. And as if the sight of a white cowboy hat directly in front of us wasn't distracting enough, they immediately proceed to suck face at regular intervals. After weighing my options, I chose moving to other seats over slapping them upside the head. I didn't want them to bite down on their tongues... Doesn't anyone use the back row anymore?

If I see one more Road Trip trailer I am going to demand the safe return of my brain cells. Tom Green is (in my mind) the most annoying personality to hit the big screen since Pauly Shore. When this trailer begins to play I stifle the screams building in my throat and pretend it's something more pleasant, like an Anthony Robbins infomercial.

I'm done ranting. For now."

And this from His Royal Grungeness: "How dare you compare Battlefield Earth (quite likely the worst movie ever!) to Clerks (quite likely the greatest...er, funniest movie ever)???

Leverage... "F-Word" ...?

Those two movies should NEVER be mentioned in the same sentence!!! (Then again, I am sure I am not the only one writing about this!)

Then again... I hated Travolta to begin with. Pulp Fiction and Face/Off would have been even better if he were NOT in them!"

E ME: Well, most of us still love you, John. Despite B.E. And the trailer that most people were sick of was Gone In 60 Seconds. Almost every e-mail mentioned that they liked the trailer but were sick of it. Same with Road Trip, for the most part. What movie do you think is the last movie in the world that should be made?