April 4, 2005

And then there were eight…

With the essential elimination of MGM and Newmarket from the playing field - no Bob Berney = a very different, very small Newmarket - we are down to nine companies that are capable of releasing a film on enough screens with enough force to generate tens of millions of dollars.

It's not a monopoly, but it is monopolistic.

They aren't all majors, but they are all pretty major.

In what would appear to be no coincidence at all, the four studios with television networks as part of their conglomerate appear to be closing ranks and tightening up film operations into clean, marketable divisions. Instead of opening a whole new division, NBC-Universal has added an arm to Focus Features to include low end genre films, so far to little success. Disney is tightening the Miramax belt post-Weinstein. Paramount is expanding the power of players inside the company while it is keeping the output brands well defined… though Paramount Classics management may be in play before the end of the summer, I would expect the brand to remain as we start to see movie after movie launched as divisional co-productions. And Fox is just pleased as punch with both divisions going fairly smoothly and consistently, with strong Oscar candidates coming this year to save the senior studio from just being the home of high-end, moneymaking movie junk food like The Day After Tomorrow and Dodgeball.

Meanwhile, the other two mega-corps, Sony & Time-Warner are expanding, expanding, expanding film operations, perhaps to protect the balance sheet with a wide safety net of "something's gotta work" product. Sony is up to four major production arms (Columbia, Screen Gems, Sony Classics, Tri-Star) with the Revolution deal looking like its going to be renewed, Mike De Luca picking up the pace and Scott Rudin just outside the gates. Warner Bros. added Warner Indie to the mix, but in the big picture let's not forget that New Line and the newly bulking up Fine Line are also Time-Warner properties. These two fought over the MGM library and rumors lean towards one of these two companies grabbing the Pixar deal if it isn't resurrected at Iger's Disney.

It is not insignificant that Bob Berney ran for the skirt of a giant parent less than a year after releasing The Passion of The Christ. You can virtually hear the ink squealing as he signed the deal, "Never again," as every inch of Berney's body remembered the fight to get his and Mel Gibson's money from exhibitors. Not only does Time-Warner guarantee that everyone gets the money their contract entitled them to, but the company is also big enough to kick in extra money when extra money is called for… enough money to win some of the skirmishes that Newmarket had to just step away from.

The last two companies are balancing a fight for oxygen (green oxygen) with the constant drum beat of potential buyers just outside the gates. DreamWorks split things up so DreamWorks Animation can be counted on for Wall Street support (and putting money back in Paul Allen's pocket) while the parent company tightens the reins and smartly works through partnership deals on virtually every film they make. And Lions Gate is all balls and no shaft, so to speak. The less attractive young cousin to the last incarnation of MGM, just about the minute that the perceived value and the actual value of the LGF library match, someone will grab it up and make it part of a bigger Home Entertainment machine.

Laa dee da dee doo…

Warner Bros. is pretty much guaranteed to win the market share battle for 2005 but, more impressively, they have a real chance of being over $1 billion in domestic ticket sales before getting to V For Vendetta or Harry Potter 4. December will belong to Universal (again), but the year will be Warners'. And the irony will be that if it was a baseball team, Warners' big success this year would be considered a reflection of players brought along over the years much more than of expensive free agents.

Tim Burton started at Warners… he's back with two films. Batman is an owned franchise as Time-Warner owns DC comics, unlike Marvel, which gets to whore around all over town. Harry Potter is still a mega-franchise not only because they bought in early, but because they have nurtured it like their favorite child. Even the Wachowskis, who despite all the press coverage, made a shit load of money for the company with the Matrix sequels, are back at home with a much more conservative budget and another project that could break out in unexpected ways.

In the recent wild wild west of movie budgeting, the four centerpiece films of Warners years represent a production investment of under $600 million. But looking across the board, the shocking truth is, everyone has cut way, way back from the insane spending we've seen lately. Unless The War of The Worlds goes way over budget, there will be no films with $200 million price tags this year for the first time in years. In fact, I count fewer than ten movies that will cost over $100 million to produce this year.

A while back, I had a chat with Disney's Dick Cook about Moneyball, the great book about the very different mindset of one major league baseball general manager, Billy Beane of the Oakland As. He picked players based on a series or criteria that were not the norm, passing over or trading away high-priced, high-profile players for strong journeymen with special skills. Dick said then that he wasn't sure the concept would work for the movie business. But in the same conversation, he talked about Disney's move toward a more Disney, less Touchstone product line. And if you look at Disney's schedule for this year, there is not a single $20 million movie star and the only $100 million investments are in Chicken Little, the studio's first CG animated film without Pixar and The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, which they hope will be a Rings-esque franchise. Ironically, two of the four most expensive movies coming from Buena Vista distribution will be the two Miramax leftovers, The Brothers Grimm and The Great Raid.

(Note: I gather that Grimm is being recut yet again, this time by Gilliam, who had the film taken away from him by Harvey only to get it back after Harvey's cut was even more disastrous that the original.)

Good lord, even Paramount's run-to-come of The Longest Yard, The Honeymooners, The War of the Worlds, Hustle & Flow and The Bad News Bears could be one of those classic "best years in memory" from the outgoing administration… and every one of them a project that typified the old regime. Lansing did the big Cruise movies… the low-budget remakes of studio properties and tried to do the Adam Sandler thing, in business with Saturday Night Live's Lorne Michaels for more than a decade. Hustle & Flow is the exception to that rule… and it may be the film that defines the future of Ruth Vitale and David Dinerstein at the studio.

Amy Pascal has been willing to throw $150 million budgets around, but this year, the big investments are in Will Ferrell, Jim Carrey and a Zorro sequel. Ironically, like Disney & Miramax, Revolution will deliver two of Sony's most expensive releases this year.

Universal's only huge all-in is King Kong, about which a recently popular media expansion of the budget to $200 million has been exaggerated

Kingdom of Heaven is Fox's one big layout, though Mr. & Mrs. Smith is way, way over budget. Remember, they pay nothing for production on Star Wars. In fact, Robots was their most expensive greenlight.

If there is a spendthrift in 2005, it's DreamWorks, partners in three $100 million-plus price tags… Madagascar, War of the Worlds and Michael Bay's The Island. Of course, they have partners on all but the animated film.

All in all, this may not be the high flying year that excites the media. But it could be one of the most profitable years in Hollywood, across the board, in a long, long time.

It is the instinct of a journalist and a critic to rail against the corporatization of an art form. But the irrational exuberance that has put majors out of business in the past history of this town has been tamed. And finally - I see this as a potential positive - we see an industry with the opportunity to balance the harsh boundaries of the "golden age" studio system and the free wheeling corporate capitalism of the new era, making all kinds of films so long as the directors and producers and the actors' agents are willing to play along.

This is a moment of great opportunity. .The next major wave has begun.

READER OF THE DAY: S&M writes: "Having seen and been dissapointed by Sin City (it's shocking that so much melodrama brings out so little feeling and emotion), I find it amusing that the central error of the film is in fact the thing that A) would have been the easiest to fix but B) is part of the key to the whole 'total faithfullness' crowd who love it. As anyone who reads comic books knows, most comic books contain lots of extranious dialogue, be it thought balloons or first person narration, or simply a bunch of on-the-nose expository dialogue (compare any movie with its comic-book adaptation).

Unfortunely, about 90% of the spoken word in Sin City is this kind of language. This is the kind of thing that is and should be the first to go when a comic book is translated to film. The dialogue is used to fill in the blanks, to compensate in stories which often involve loners who have no one to talk to. It is also much more natural sounding when read in a book, where the dialogue is read silently in a certain internal monotone dialogue. To paraphrase Harrison Ford, you can write this shit, Frank, but you really really can't say it. Of course, I can't imagine that, even in book form, that the constant, redundant, and kindergarten-level-vocabulary-based narration of Sin City is that much more effective when it's not filled with overstated inflection. Just a thought."

And this from BUFFALO BRI: After Hairy's post on the coming of 3D and with Hollywood's love in making movies about itsself (most of them suck), why dont they make a movie about its own future? I can see a scene now where a family wants to watch a movie and the Dad tells the family to gather around and the kids reply that this one better not be a "flattie" (or whatever derogatory or hip words will be used for a 2D viewing of a movie like we do now). I might actually be interested in a movie about the future of movies.

Someone wrote Robert X Cringely was the fifth employee ever to be hired by Apple. I guess technically he was the sixth becuase Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak got pissy with each other over who would be the official first employee. I guess Jobs won by getting himself dubbed "employee zero." Whatever, interesting nut this Cringley, have you read his Howard Stringer - Ken Kutaragi piece? How about adding this drama to my proposed idea for a movie about Hollywood's future (specially a tall guy with a doctor for a wife in a Japanese company)?

I, Cringely . March 10, 2005 - Mr. Idei's Kurosawa Ending | PBS

Why in the fuck is Entertainment Weekly more interesting than Premiere? What happened to the once great Premiere magazine? For example Premiere's Sin City article was a waste of time reading while on the bowl. C'mon, their whole existence is the movie industry, roll up your arms and get to work on some real insight into, what looks like, an interesting movie. At least give me more of what Rodriquez can expect by leaving the guilds and having Miramax blow up like the Deathstar.

Also, I didnt learn alot about Keanu Reeves from their interviews about him by associates in a few issues back. I think it was better when that one dude from ESPN/ 20/20 correspondent ran it.... whatshisname... Chris Connelly. Ok, this person nailed it better than I could circa 1996 (wow has it sucked that long?):

Why you should cancel your subscription to Premiere Magazine

I gotta stop buying that shit, but they trick me when Keanu is on the cover and I figure I will get some questions on how he felt the Matrix sequels came out, but no, nothing....not even a list of chicks he has done err dated....just some stupid story of Francis Ford Coppola remembering him drinking beer and eating donuts in his kitchen. BTW, collecting those four different covers from their 1999 Episode 1 issue was stupid of me.

BTW, any of your readers who are politically motivated and happens to be one of your past ROTDs better hope they were moderate in their comments becuase webpages get archived. Should have came up with an alias in 1997. No Senate seat for me. Wired magazine had an article about this recently on whether people realize the thoughts they have posted on websites can come back to haunt them later."

E-ME: Anything you've said on the web that haunts you?