A Big One

It’s no real surprise, but I must credit Nikki Finke for getting the call from Brad Grey – her primary source at Paramount – before anyone else. And that is why I have no doubt that this gossip is true.
Lesher is out at Paramount.
Okay… hold the applause until I’m done.
It doesn’t much matter that all the rationalizations about why Lesher is on the way out are nonsense and every single one is something that was said of him during his financially disastrous $150m-losing built and fall of Paramount Vantage. The upside there was that he made some very good movies, got some Oscar nods, and was the only thing Paramount could point to in any remotely positive way with DreamWorks heading out the door. That upside ended when he moved into the big studio and didn’t have former clients to hand big bags on money to so they could make their dream movies.
What’s really funny about the Finke spin is that it fails to recall that all the things “they” (read: Brad Grey) are tagging Lesher with now, they tagged on Gail Berman when she failed to get the studio moving (though she was accused – apparently not always unfairly – of being much less “cordial”).
Isn’t the story here (yes, a rhetorical question) the man who hired both Berman and Lesher to the exact same result… few movies… few prospects… failed synergy… a broken studio?
There are many reasons why Lesher might be out right now. I have been predicting for a long time that he and/or Grey would not last the summer based on the budget issues of Star Trek and GI Joe. Trek, obviously, went as well as anyone could have imagined. But as I have repeatedly noted – to the irritation of some – it was a bit of a financial boondoggle, perhaps reviving the franchise for cheaper, future film, but still struggling for breakeven in spite of $355 million in worldwide grosses.
One oddity is that Par is still running primetime spots for Trek, at least two weeks after one would have expected them to stop. Moreover, there has been a primetime blitz for GI Joe, which is very, very unusual this early in the summer for an August movie that still has to deal with the wave of Transformers 2 and Harry Potter as head-on competition. A Super Bowl spot or a spot on the finale of American Idol… okay… big platform choices that cannot be replicated. But they must be well past $10 million into an August TV budget in June. What is that all about? Last time I recall something like that, it was The Dukes of Hazzard.
There have also been cash flow issues at the studio for 6 – 8 months now… projects being put into turnaround or given up… deals that seemed quite attractive and had studio interest that ended up being pushed away from late in the game…
And then there is a simple reality that has been a problem for Grey since the day he prematurely broke the news of his hiring to the LA Times… no one of consequence in the movie business wants to work for the guy. Goodies were handed out at every studio in Hollywood to execs who decided not to take jobs at Paramount under Grey… but the bottom line was, not one of the execs who were asked and leveraged those meetings actually wanted to go to the studio.
This is why the two people hired to run the movie studio by Grey were, 1) from TV, and 2) from an agency, working with indie clients. The great ambitious grown-ups who were not famous enough for Grey were turned away and the ones who were famous enough for Grey didn’t want to work for the guy. Neither hire ever had a fighting chance because neither one was suited for the job.
Do you blame them or the guy who hired them?
Don’t get me wrong… Lesher is, indeed, a handful, and he can have a hissy fit with the best of them. His management issues are not made up. And the reason why Vantage lost so much is that he didn’t have control of the projects – even the great ones – that were made under his leadership.
But to my eye, this is a clear case of someone getting the ax because someone has to… right now. And Brad Grey isn’t going to be that guy ahead of any of his employees. Rob Moore has his detractors, but he also has more people in and out of the studio who support him and see him as a relatively straight shooter in a crooked town than anyone else at the top of the studio. Besides, if he was the sacrificial goat, things might really fall apart, even more so than they have. Lesher is soft. Lesher was soft when they hired him. Lesher goes.
So… let the speculation begin. Did they look at tests on GI Joe, recut, test, recut, test, and realize that they are about to take a big bath on the film, even with Spyglass eating some of it? Could be.
Did Spyglass suddenly realize that whatever kink in the Star Trek deal that has the studio still throwing money at a popular title that is slowing down at an expected and very good rate without spending more on tv buys piss them off – since it must be coming out of their pocket – and seeing more thrown at GI Joe so early cause a ruckus? Could be.
Did Sumner Redstone take a look at the books this week and realize that the studio is in its second summer in a row where it can have mega-box office titles and still not make much money, causing him to demand someone’s head right this very minute? Could be.
Did someone finally wake up to the fact that the only movie the studio has on the schedule between December 11, 2009 and May 7, 2010 (almost 5 months) is a DreamWorks Animation film that they only get a distribution fee OR that there is a EIGHT MONTH gap between Shutter Island (October ’09) and Footloose (June ’10), the only two movies in that period that the studio has actually made itself without DreamWorks or Marvel?
Yeah.. blame Lesher… it was all his fault… not his boss’… ya…
And with due respect to Adam Goodman, who is a nice enough guy, but whose ass has been covered by Parkes & MacDonald and then Snider… he may be a solid executive, but he has no business being the guy to try to turn around a studio the size of Paramount.
So now the real question… when does Grey finally get whacked?
How long can he hide in plain sight?
The one thing he has working for him is that Sumner Redstone doesn’t have an obvious alternative right now that will keep his stock price in order or raise it in anticipation of greatness. Whatever hope he has to lure Imagine to Melrose was dashed when DreamWorks went with the Disney deal. Peter Rice is moving through his steps to ultimate leadership at Fox. Elizabeth Gabler, who probably should have been running the studio from the start, isn’t coming. Stuber and Parent already passed, though there is little doubt that Grey is considering some kind of MGM deal to use as cover, which would bring Parent into the fold. The boys of Columbia are pretty settled in these days. Harvey Weinstein is not looking for a job. The indie darlings have lost their luster.
I am still of the position that Redstone has to make a big move by the middle of the fall (no pun intended, though amused by the pun after reading it back). Even though divesting is the new black amongst the chattering class, i still think that reuniting the two halves of Viacom is the play that needs to take place, putting Moonves in charge of all. If not that, the divesting idea is interesting – Paramount as a stand-alone studio – though who would buy that and Redstone would still have to merge cable and CBS, no?
The dance continues… round and round and round again…

BYOB Friday 61909

Thoughts After Hearing NPR

Driving and listening to NPR and on comes an interview with a journo covering a trial, “for Newsweek and The Daily Beast dot com.”
Wow.
The future? Smaller Old Media? How does on differentiate between the coverage they choose?
I just read about how Diller doesn’t yet wish to sell Daily Beast ads, but prefers to establish the brand first and then sell better ads for more money. I’m not 100% sure this isn’t spin that works for the moment, but interesting…
Also interesting was the horror show that is the Supreme Court is refusing to allow a convict who was convicted via an earlier era of DNA testing to have the evidence retested at his own expense. Alaska refusing, I understood. But The Supremes? Oy.
Also – There was talk about Twitter as a tool for John August’s short story and another guy’s art. The artist, a well known painter whose name I am not remembering right now, started posting photos of his work as he painted and fans commented. He said that the fans now make him more concious of how he is working. He thinks this is good. But is it?
My experience is that the more I think about readers when I write, the worse my work. Whatever is concious in the work any of us do is important. But the best work, I am convinced, comes from the unconcious.

Conan vs Letterman

As is now the norm, a couple of weeks of O’Brien vs Letterman is being watched too closely for anyone’s good.
The simple fact seems to be, so far, that Conan has lost a not-insignificant part of Leno’s former audience, but that he still retains enough to be ahead… for now. Letterman seems to be pretty much where he’s been for the last number of years.
The scary thing is that the pair seem to have misplaced almost a million Leno viewers who have not switched over to Dave, but who don’t seem to care to spend their late nights with Conan either. There is no indication, so far, that they are landing on Nightline or Kimmel either.
Things aren’t much better for NBC with Jimmy Fallon, who is leaking viewers now, though in that case, Craig Ferguson seems to be picking some of them up.
How long before ABC moves NIghtline into a 10p block, 5 nights a week, with Kimmel at 11:35 OR alternatively, take Nightline out to an hour and pushes Kimmel to 12:35a? There is an opening there – even if Kimmel isn’t terribly exciting – and ABC is letting it slip through their fingers with their off-schedule non-competition.
Now is the time for someone to come up with a legitimate format buster. A Playboy After Dark type show without 25 – 35 minutes at the top taken up with comedy segments, more welcoming to talent could do very well.

Surprising? Really?

April 07, 2008
The odds of Mission:Impossible 4 are now at 90%… no matter what Cruise has to take for the gig. He needs a franchise hit like Harrison Ford needs Indy 4. He will suffer with earning just a couple of dozen million instead of three times that, try to talk Peter Berg or Francis Lawrence into taking the job, and be in production before September. Count on it.
And expect Sumner Redstone to agree to keep a lid on the discounted rate Cruise works for… and for Brad Grey to leak it three days after production ends.
It took a year longer to happen because Harry Sloan decided to play the “No, we’re really in business” game and to spend a ton to force Valkyrie open. And JJ Abrams, who shot M:I3, which was considered a financial car wreck even though it grossed about the same as Star Trek will and cost less to produce, has secured his position as Par’s golden image boy. But the rest of the song remains the same.
My guess is that the budget will be locked at $140 million. It will grow during production to $190 million. Cruise will work for free (minimum) against 6% of dollar-one gross until the film hits $300m worldwide, when that number will double, and then go to 18% at $400m.

L&G Music Factory Opens For Business

It’s one of those things that you enjoy as you spend your second decade in this business. Chris Libby and Lee Ginsburg are leading a team of other familiar publicity vets – Laura Paulsen, Chris Regan, Kate Payne, Gina Lang and Karina Vladimirov – into a new business, Ginsburg/Libby (the slash is mine). Here is the press release.
Lee and Chris have been all around the town, always working hard, always with a grand smart ass insight to offer, always a grimace and a joke through moments of ultimate stress. They have, separately, led two bigger companies into the indie and awards business… often frustratingly. But at a moment when everyone is narrowing focus, these two and this strong team should able to be a serious competitor for indie work along with MPRM, Block-Kornbrat, MRC, LT-LA, KF&A, ID PR, Indie PR, DM&A, and all the other smaller companies. (Apologies if your initials didn’t jump to the front on my brain pan.)
Inevitably, a focus develops with these businesses. I don’t know that there is a top or a bottom in this duo. But with seven publicists, they will need to get to work first and worry about what the personality of the company turns out to be later… probably at the bottom of a bottle and a cigarette at 2am in some Park City hot tub.
Good for them. Good for us.

Bruno Circle Jerk Continues

I’m beginning to think that Universal or SBC’s peeps are behind what is looking more and more like one e-mail that has launched navel gazing about the film on the intellectual level of Sarah Palin wasting a week of the news cycle on a reasonable funny but uneventful Letterman monologue joke. (Like that idiocy, those continuing to try to build a story out of, literally in this case, fairy dust, are serving their own interests while pretending to be after bigger game.)
The New York Times ran the first stupid story last Thursday, inferring that they had seen the movie and, in great Sharon Waxman fashion, desperately chasing an old story into being a relevant current story, when there was none. (Here is Waxman’s pathetic attempt to get ahead of the film’s Toronto premiere after, unlike virtually every writer in town, she was not given access to the film in advance.)
Why was that story stupid? Because they were reporting on a movie they had not seen and would be able to see weeks before its release… but then they would be competing with the opinions of others. So they jumped the gun… quoted blogs like they were news… and generally made a mountain from a factual molehill.
But we were just getting started, because today we got the real Waxman and the really crazy Nikki Finke going at it in a battle of EXCLUSIVE!!!!s to “report” on an e-mail that both received from seems likely to be the same unnamable source, who allegedly is working on the film and does not like the movie.
Unlike the e-mail Finke published, every indication is that Universal HAS shown the movie to gay community leaders. The Wrap’s version of the tale even has a GLAAD leader delusionally thinking that the film was changed significantly to comfort his concerns.
Of course, The Wrap is all about the National Enquirer headlines… “Gay Hollywood Comes Out … Against ‘Bruno'” and subheads, “Criticism from gay insiders led to reshoots on Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest satire.”
Wow… they must have a great source for that, right? “The filmmaker conducted “significant reshoots” to temper the troubled reaction of insiders from the Hollywood gay community, according to one person involved in the Bruno production who declined to be identified.”
Oh… you mean the same cranky guy who wrote Nikki to tell her, “It is not a scathing depiction of homophobia — but a grotesque satire of homosexuality. Br

Making RULES Makes An Ass Out Of You

Anne Thompson offers up a well-meaning, but profoundly wrong-headed set of Summer Rules today… oy…
Here are some summer lessons:
1. Originals sell. The very thing that the majors are most afraid of is what makes Pixar King of the Mountain, every single time: originality. While everyone else looks for easy-sell labels, Pixar relies on a very old-fashioned idea: make it good and they will come. Up scored not via marketing prowess, but through great word-of-mouth. Gross to date: $191 million and going strong. Heck yeah!
Answer: So aside from Pixar, whar big hits are we talking about? Drag Me To Hell?
The Happening? The Love Guru? Pineapple Express?
Pixar sells family films. The films are brilliant. That is the exception, not the rule. Space Chimps was original… did $30 million. Miyazaki is original, brilliant, and Disney wants to get behind it… no one goes. Monster House was great, original, and couldn’t get to $75 million domestic in the summer.
As I have pointed out before, there is a total of ONE animated film in domestic box office history to get past $100 million that was not a Pixar, Disney, DreamWorks Animation, or Fox brand film. That was Paramount’s The Rugrats Movie, which just barely got there and was based on a TV show. And the 5 Fox films to get there were 2 Ice Ages, another Chris Wedge, a Suess, and The Simpsons.
Originals CAN sell… but the idea that this is a rule is pleasant, but unreasonable mythology making.
2. Origin myths sell. Star Trek skipped behind the other ten movies and went back to the beginning. Director J.J. Abrams found the right balance for Trekkies and newbies alike. Gross to date: $233 million so far.
Origin myths like Terminator Salvation?
3. Smart R-rated dumb male comedies sell. Always have, always will. The Hangover is the summer’s sleeper hit, grossing more than $110 million in its first two weeks. The best news for Warner Bros: no talent profit participants. The bad news: they have to share with partner Legendary Pictures.
So what happened to I Love You, Man… or Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle or Observe and Report (to those who saw it not only as smart, but brilliantly satirical) or Rushmore or Election?
4. R-rated dumb male comedians don’t sell in family movies. Universal miscalculated by starring Will Ferrell in $100-million remake Land of the Lost. The studio pulled the second weekend print ads on the picture, an unusual move. Gross to date: $36 million.
So are we talking about Elf or Blades of Glory, two of Ferrell’s three biggest films? Eddie Murphy in The Nutty Professor or Shrek? Or Jack Black in Nacho Libre? Or Vince Vaughn in Dodgeball?
5. Eddie Murphy without makeup doesn’t sell. I rest my case with Imagine That. Put Murphy under pounds of makeup playing a character, and they show up. Give him a role playing someone close to himself and audiences stay away in droves.
I saved Daddy Day Care and the Doctor Dolittle franchise and even Norbit ($95m domestic/$160m worldwide). Some failures do not erase the successes.
Will Smith and Ben Stiller and Matt Damon have had more big hits (over $95m domestic) in the last 3 years. Brad Pitt has not. George Clooney has not. Mark Wahlberg has not. Leonardo di Caprio has not. Clint Eastwood has not. Vince Vaughn has not.
Want to remove Shrek 3 from the Murphy equation? Of all of those, only Vince Vaughn matches Murphy with 2 qualifying films.
I understand why people love to attack Murphy. And things do ebb and flow. What most people don’t get is that the reason Paramount sold Imagine That so hard was to get Murphy to sign a deal for another movie since the only reason the film in question is not set up elsewhere is because he felt they dumped another of his movies. But this opening wasn’t much better. So we’ll see if this works out for Par.
6. Lackluster sequels sell–but don’t break out big.
You mean like last summer’s Indiana Jones movie ($790m ww) or Wolverine ($360m ww and counting) or Angels & Demons ($440m ww and counting) or Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa ($600m ww) or Fast and Furious ($350m worldwide)?
What is BIG?
Star Trek is chasing $400 million worldwide. That seems to be the standard for mega-success in “rule” #1. So…
Thing is… rules are for fools. At least when you get into the idea of wide-ranging rules.
IT’S THE MOVIES, STUPID!
There are a bunch of things that matter… and they change, not only every year, but with every single film. Marketers and filmmakers mix and match and try to come up with the best version of making the film and selling the film… every single time.
Hancock grossed about 60% more last summer than Star Trek will this summer. And the chattering class chattered themselves silly about how over Will Smith was… as they always do… because “they” WANT to.
Star Trek will make more than Wolverine this summer… about 10% more. I have a rule for that… take the one that cost 30% less and makes 10% less because you will make a lot more money. And when you do make the sequel (the inevitable outcry about why the former is a better success than the latter), make it for 30% less and it will make even more profit than the original challenger.
When I look at this stuff, I go back to 7th grade science. Come up with your hypothesis. TEST you hypothesis. If it works, great. If not, go back to the drawing board. It’s not complex. So why is it so hard for journalists to live by?

Theater Review – Twelfth Night

There is some magic going on in Central Park lately. Last year, it was the summer of Hair, which transferred to Broadway and won Best Revival a couple of weeks ago. This year, it

More PR Pap Pretending To Be News

TRANSFORMERS 2
As of today, U.S. ticket sales at MovieTickets.com for

"Back Away From The DF Indie"

So, now indieWIRE has offered a perspective piece on DF Indie Studios, the latest entry into the lower end for studios/higher end for true indies funding, production, and distribution company that was hyped into life on Monday with a party on the top of 30 Rock… very indie, eh?
So after biting hard – the NYT launched the serious-question-free coverage on Sunday, followed by indieWIRE, both of whom having spoken to the principals of the company – media is beginning to push off.
Why?
Because the company doesn’t pass the smell test.
The concept is both a holy grail of indie right now… and one of those movie caves where our heroes get trapped and notice dozens of corpses in various states of decomposition. But the details that the duo in charge gave the AP – “a $150 million revolving credit line with a major bank to pay for film printing and advertising, and $150 million in deals with domestic and foreign distributors who have seen a proposed slate of films” while claiming to be chasing $100 million in production with $50 million in their pockets now – smells to high heaven. We have all seen how well having $50 million and claiming to have $400 million has worked for others who have had $200 million and claimed a billion. And these folks are claiming, based on their $10 million gimmick, that they have the money in place to make, market, and distribute fifteen $10 million movies.
Overture has been in business for 2.5 years, has a much higher level group involved, and has released a total of 9 titles.
Summit has been in business for about 2 years, has a much higher level group involved, and has released a total of 10 titles, even with one that grossed $385 million worldwide, the uber-wet-dream of every one of the start-up indies (and Lionsgate for that matter).
Cynicism is called for.
But even in today’s piece, at the same time Ted Hope “cautioned that the deal has yet to be announced,” indieWIRE announced “buzz that the DF Indie has closed in on its first film” and continued to lead with clever quotes from the company’s principals.
Why?
Because everyone is drooling over the possibility that someone somewhere has The Answer. And so false prophets are made real overnight, as the industry prays that its savior has arrived.
It is a sickness in the media that creates the kind of void that allows stories like this to get hyped up without serious answers being demanded. The line between gossip and news gets thinner every day… and not just via hacks or, god knows, The Evil Internet o’ Blogs, but by serious journalists with serious intentions.
indieWIRE does seem to finally be getting that all the hype is bait, not an announcement of action. What do CEO Mary Dickinson and COO/President Charlene Fisher actually have? $50 million in privately raised funds. Maybe. They can jump into 2 or 3 films with that money and try really hard to make everyone think that they have arrived.
Of course, as a media circus sidebar, there was Crazy Nikki’s screed with its spin against Ogilvy and BWR for doing their jobs, clearly missing the issue, but serving the placement by one of her leading handlers (and direct competitor of those publicists), Allen Mayer, and of course, serving herself by claiming to have known better. (Typically, Nikki won’t run news that has been broken by anyone she feels compelled to acknowledge… not getting it first makes it not news, get it?)
I would love to believe that these two do have the money and The Answer. Magic Eight Ball says, “Not likely.” My sense of history in this business is that people who have it together hype their movies, not themselves. And the people who are so busy hyping themselves are usually selling the thing they have and the thing they want to have… but not many movies.

DP/30 – The Hurt Locker

Screenwriter Mark Boal and director Kathryn Bigelow spend 30 minutes chatting about their new film, The Hurt Locker.
The complete video interview in QT after the jump… and the podcast is available here.

Read the full article »

And So, The Twitter Experiment Ends

It’s late in LA… later in NY time… but just a note to say the THB Twitter Era is over.
Great Things We Discovered In NY This Trip
The High Line (at least until the first rooftop concert)
The Standard Hotel, Meatpacking District
Twelfth Night in Central Park 2009
The Normal Conquests as a three-show theatrical experience
Van Leeuwen Artisan Ice Cream Truck
ZipCars
Good Things We Discovered In NY This Trip
The Burger Joint at the Parker Meridian
The Normal Conquests, show by show
Cabrito’s on Carmine

BYOB 616

The $10 Million Thing

God bless DF Indie Studio… long may it reign.
But just because they were the first ones – apparently – to put together the $10 million per film funding package that at least a half-dozen legitimate “players” have been chasing for the last three years does not make this a revolutionary idea or anything much more than smart people hoping that they can avoid all the pitfalls that make this a problem idea and will turn the trick by making Little Miss Sunshine (more like $12 million) once out of every five movies.
The problem with $10 million is, still, that is is neither fish nor fowl. It’s not an amount that can be guaranteed to be covered by DVD or foreign sales. The amount rarely allows for big-name acting bait for alternative distribution… the urge for which will be inevitable. And there is still the biggest problem for wannabe independent distributors… marketing dollars.
Wanna be in the Overture business? Okay. Good luck. $10 million a movie doesn’t put you in the Summit business. If you are making movies, you aren’t in the Sony Classics business. Searchlight, Focus, and Miramax are not in this business.
I don’t mean to piss in their happy stew. I am rooting for them. And if they have some idea of a new way of making and/or distributing movies – they haven’t suggested that yet – I truly wish them the best. The industry needs innovation. But so far, everything I have read is pretty conventional.
Now… that kind of line up with a top budget of $5m-6 m… that’s when it starts getting interesting. That’s getting into the idea of one $40 million grossers out of every 10 films or so and you can be making some money while not chasing the big Twilight-esque wave, hoping a project falls of the truck of the big dumb studio.
The theory here, it seems to me, is that in a shrinking industry, quality filmmakers will shrink their budget to $10 million in order to work with people they like with more artistic freedom. And they will. But they will still be looking elsewhere first. And there will still be issues with distribution costs and, much more importantly than the over-hyped notion of assured theatrical, a great DVD and pay-tv deal.