Wednesday, 31 January 2001

Please forgive me if it takes a couple of days to get back to speed. It's been a very long couple of weeks. Before I get to the business at hand, I'd like to thank the hundreds of you who wrote to offer your support as my transition into the next phase of my professional life begins. I don't have time to thank each of you personally, but please know how much I appreciate each and every e-mail and phone call. If you aren't up to day, here's a link to yesterday's column. That said, let's get to the buttoning…

LU-C-E, I AM YOUR FODDER!: While the roughcut team was up at Sundance, Mike DeLuca and a host of New Liners were being shown the door in L.A. Actually, a number of the dead were walking up and down Main Street in Park City, trying to figure out the best way to express their "joy" about their freedom. Mostly, I got to tell the maudlin jokes about death and corporations and they got to laugh... birds of a feather and all.

So, what do I think about Mike DeLuca specifically? Well, he has his fans and his detractors all over this town. At one table, the word "scumbag" gets used and at the next he is "like a brother." That's a pretty good place to be in this business. A man with no friends is in eternal danger, but a man with no enemies isn't getting out enough.

The truth is that I think that DeLuca got out at just the right time. They've been flogging the same horses (big movies one year, tiny ones the other) alternatively at New Line for some time. Miracles occur. (See: Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, whose "miracle" started with easily the largest P&A investment in New Line history.) But in the end, the movie business is a game of percentages. And a company either has to be in the blockbuster business or not. The middle is the most dangerous place. Because two big budget films a year, amongst lots of smaller budgets, means that if both miss, the year is dead. And the blockbuster odds on big pictures are more like 1 in 5.

Where did I get that figure? Pulled it out of my tuchus. But then, I went to the studio release lists from 2000 -

Disney: Mission To Mars, Dinosaur, Gone in Sixty Seconds, 102 Dalmatians, Unbreakable.

Fox: The Beach, Titan A.E., X-Men, Me, Myself & Irene, Cast Away

Paramount: Mission: Impossible 2, Shaft, Lucky Numbers, What Women Want

Sony: The Patriot, Hollow Man, Charlie's Angels, The 6^th Day, Vertical Limit.

Universal: U-571, Viva Rock Vegas, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Nutty Professor II, The Grinch, Family Man

Warner Bros.: Romeo Must Die, Battlefield Earth, The Perfect Storm, Space Cowboys, Get Carter, Pay It Forward, Red Planet

Now, Paramount only has four on their list and Warner Bros. list includes some Elie Samaha projects that didn't pray on the studio's cash flow. But you get the idea. Disney had three $100 million movies amongst their rocket shots and still had a pretty soft year. The first three attempts at really big movies at Fox got Bill Mechanic fired. Paramount had bookend smashes to keep them in the middle. Sony is still quaking after The Patriot broke $100 million but was seen as a disappointment and Charlie's Angels was a disappointment that was made to seem like a smash. Universal hit a powerful .500 in the tentpole biz and had Meet The Parents jump up out of nowhere and yet all people talk about is Rocky & Bullwinkle not making the fiscal grade. And Warner Bros. is still trying to figure out which way is up.

But at New Line, there were a bunch of little quirky pictures and just two real tentpole efforts, The Cell and Little Nicky. In 2000, almost nothing worked. There were small victories like Next Friday, Final Destination and Frequency. But those weren't nearly enough to overcome the combination of weak box office and weak critic receptions for film after film. Add Lost Souls and the still-date-shifting Town & Country and you have recipe for a dramatic exit.

It is already being speculated that DeLuca won't be getting the big German deal that guys like Joe Roth were able to put together in a flash last year. Well, duh! That train has left. But if DeLuca can deliver three movies a year that he really believes in, not born of a need to fill a pipeline or to meet a quota of low budget product, he will quickly become a very valuable producer for the New Line stable or for whatever studio at which he really puts his roots down. He won't be the next Saul Zaentz. But he's not going to be the next Roger Corman either. DeLuca will gamble on the Paul Thomas Andersons and Brett Ratners and Pete Jacksons of the world and come up a winner, whether financially or critically or both. Do you want a career to compare DeLuca's potential career to? Well, he may well be thinking "a less angry Scott Rudin," but I would look more at David Brown's career. Brown was an insider at Fox before going independent with Dick Zanuck and building careers like Steven Spielberg's while making quality films with guys like Sidney Lumet and Ron Howard and Rob Reiner and on and on. The big difference is that DeLuca is on the loose as a 35-year-old veteran and Brown didn't start producing until the age of 57. On the other hand, Brown is still in Oscar play with Chocolat at the age of 84. DeLuca could pick a worse role model.

PAGE TWO: Ongoing Ugliness,
A Simple Misunderstanding & ROTDs