Word: bronfmans
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...Edgar Bronfman Jr. is certainly the youngest and handsomest of the moguls who own entertainment companies. And ever since he acquired MCA in 1995, Hollywood has been waiting to see whether he would also prove to be one of the smartest. But in the wake of a spate of firings at the company, now called Universal Studios, there is a giant whirring sound as Tinseltown starts to turn on young Bronfman...
...skepticism doesn't end in Los Angeles. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and USA Today have all put Bronfman's performance under the critical microscope. Contrarian weekly Barron's, however, sees his actions as a harbinger of good things to come. Earlier this month, the Toronto Stock Exchange halted trading of his parent company, Seagram, to allow officials to deny a whirl of rumors: that Seagram was shedding its Tropicana juice division; that Bronfman might sell Universal to DreamWorks; and, last and most incredible, that patriarch Edgar Bronfman Sr. was essentially firing...
Shutt and Jones are popular with directors like Steven Spielberg and Ron Howard. But they may have resisted, fatally, a cost-cutting re-engineering scheme. And Bronfman thought they were too quick to write off movies that did not have hit potential...
...Bronfman is frustrated by the skepticism that greets his assurances that the dismissals are finished, but then lots of things about Universal must frustrate him. A former Universal insider says Michael Ovitz, onetime head of the powerful CAA talent agency who played a bit part in negotiating Bronfman's purchase of Universal, portrayed the company as "an easy turnaround." Ovitz also figured, wrongly, that he would be the one to do it. But instead of buying a slumbering giant, Bronfman bought a more troublesome enterprise...
...Bronfman may have created some problems by hiring his top executive team backward. When talks with Ovitz fell through, he hired Ovitz's partner, Meyer, as No. 2 man. Meyer installed his associate Sandy Climan and his friend Weitzman in top executive jobs. Both are now gone. And finally, with the key players already in place, Bronfman hired Frank Biondi as chairman of the company...