Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus, former proprietors of the infamous Cannon Pictures, have talked a health club chain into financing a movie start-up to the tune of about $2 million. Gotta hand it to these guys. They obviously still can make their manure smell sweet to others. Cannon was one of the clearest examples of a company that was killed by the excess opportunity of the Reagan era. After hitting big with the Death Wish series and then turning Chuck Norris into an action hero, the company got big bucks in the junk-bond economy of the ’80s. Suddenly, they went from Norris and Bronson to Dustin Hoffman and Faye Dunaway. A few years later they were bankrupt after spending millions on films they never made and making some quality films, including Barfly, that no one ever saw. At least in theaters. Welcome back, boys. And readers: If they try to hire you, get cash.
MGM‘s desperation to hang onto the Bond franchise for themselves and themselves alone was made plain as day last week when the company filed their intentions to take a $30 million writedown for this quarter on Red Corner, the Richard Gere political drama. There will be no writedowns in first quarter 1998 with Bond on the way to save the day. But MGM, already off the list of “real” major studios, is becoming more of a mini-major every day. And, although Lindsay Doran has great taste, expect the film projects, excepting Bond, to get smaller and smaller.
As if to prove that barbarism is still in vogue, a group of Iranian militants attacked theatergoers, including a disabled veteran, as they left a showing of Snowman, a film about a man so desperate to get out of the desert that he disguises himself as a woman with the hope of marrying an American man who can take him/her away. The thing is, the guy falls in love with an Iranian woman and stays put. He doesn’t even go the whole route (or is that the full monty?)! Another theater pulled the film under threats of fire bombing. Finally, a movie that really is responsible for community violence.
L.A. Confidential surely has secured an Oscars berth for Best Picture after winning multiple best picture awards by critics already.
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