Word: mca
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Even before his latest coup, he was regarded as the most powerful man in Hollywood. Michael Ovitz, the town's No. 1 talent agent, can make or break a movie project or an actor's career. But as the power broker behind Matsushita's acquisition of MCA, Ovitz has reached an international stature that even legendary moguls might envy. "He is the mega-dealmaker," says an industry executive. "Not only on a film-by-film basis, but on the very largest scale of buying and selling studios. That is the most significant thing you can do in Hollywood...
...experts then prepared a list three possible targets. The Japanese company rejected one studio, Orion, as too small. Another candidate, Paramount, was dismissed because some of its holdings, ranging from publishing (Simon & Schuster) to sports (the New York Knicks), didn't fit into Matsushita's strategy. Ovitz recommended MCA, which had the mix of show-biz operations that Matsushita wanted...
What's next for Hollywood's hottest leading man? After the Matsushita deal, Ovitz may be in line to succeed Lew Wasserman as head of MCA. Yet such a move could limit his power, which now encompasses the entire movie business. And he is not yet finished changing the face of Hollywood...
Central Casting could not have supplied a better chorus of worriers than the screenwriters, politicians and just plain citizens who weighed in last week after MCA chairman Wasserman announced that he was selling Universal Pictures and the rest of the MCA entertainment giant to Matsushita Electric Industrial for $6.1 billion. How could he, they asked, sell to foreigners the studio that made To Kill a Mockingbird, Jaws, E.T., Born on the Fourth of July and Back to the Future? The home of TV heroes Magnum, Columbo, Jim Rockford, Sonny Crockett and even the Beaver? The company that runs the lodgings...
...movies currently showing in Rio's cinemas, 21 are American. Overseas fans say they are drawn to the American spirit of independence and optimism. Says Roberto Fernandez Blanco, an Argentine businessman: "When you see an American work of art, you feel a breeze of freedom of expression." Thus the MCA deal strikes some Americans as another example of selling the goose instead of the golden eggs...