Word: mca
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...publicity rankles the people at Universal and MCA, its corporate parent. MCA boss Sidney J. Sheinberg, who is concerned by a tone in the press he calls "Hard Copy journalism," claims that the Journal story is "unfair, irresponsible and in a great number of places inaccurate." The film's producer, Charles Gordon, who has spent months undersea and under siege, says the no-toilet story is "insane. We had bathrooms on boats out on the water, two feet away from the trimaran where the scenes were shot. When I read stuff like this, it drives me crazy...
Universal must now find other filmmakers who can bring in the big-grossing films-and at a price that won't provoke grimaces from MCA's Japanese owner, Matsushita, which Sheinberg has accused of trying to stunt his company's growth. Asked if the Matsushita board had expressed vexation over the Waterworld embarrassments, he replies, "None. I can blame them for a lot of things, but I can't blame them for that...
...game machine that was 50 times as powerful as Sega's or Nintendo's, Hawkins was greeted with the kind of fawning attention usually reserved for rock stars and conservative talk-show hosts. He was backed by some of the biggest names in entertainment -- including Matsushita (Panasonic), AT&T, MCA and Time Warner. His initial public stock offering raised $26 million even before the first machine was built. The hoopla subsided soon after the machine hit the market. The initial price tag -- $799 -- was too high. The software was late. The games were derivative. Wall Street turned sour...
...Last week Mitsubishi, which has an 80% stake in the Rockefeller Group, owner of New York's Rockefeller Center, threatened to default on its $1.3 billion mortgage, taken out five years ago when borrowing was easy. Matsushita, meanwhile, is locked in a struggle with the American executives who run MCA -- the film studio it bought for $6.1 billion in 1990 -- over the Americans' demand for more authority and investment capital. Last week the company reportedly hired Hollywood agent Michael Ovitz and media dealmaker Herbert Allen to help make peace and to "re-evaluate" MCA's assets; one option would...
...Matsushita the Tokyo end of management seems in order; the trouble is between Tokyo and Hollywood. MCA's Lew Wasserman and Sidney Sheinberg -- the longest-running partnership in Hollywood -- have been heading the studio, but have openly complained that their pushes to go after CBS and to open a theme park in Tokyo were ignored. The Japanese firm is especially eager to keep the team intact since director Steven Spielberg, who made close to $1 billion for MCA with Jurassic Park, recently announced that he would stop working for the company if his mentor, Sheinberg, were to leave...