Word: ovitz
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What does $250 million buy these days? Lots of things, but not Michael Ovitz. That wad was not enough for Seagram's CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. to lure Ovitz from Creative Artists Agency, the talent shop he built into Hollywood's prime power brokerage, to become chairman of MCA, the show-biz conglomerate (movies, music, TV shows, theme parks) that Seagram's purchased last week. Thus ended the hottest nonevent since Comet Kohoutek. Except that this one had bigger stars ready to collide. And the meteor showers may be felt for years...
...lately been involved in its own corporate melodrama. In 1990 Matsushita bought the company in a $6.6 billion deal arranged by the movie Mephisto, Michael Ovitz, chief of Creative Artists Agency. Profits were plentiful, thanks to a flourishing music division, helped by acquiring David Geffen's record holdings, and a folio of hit films, most of them produced by Steven Spielberg. And at first, Japanese-American relations were smooth. Then some of the Matsushita executives who were on good terms with MCA president Sidney J. Sheinberg were fired. Says MCA movie chief Tom Pollock: "I believe if the Matsushita administration...
...would have bought Virgin Records, he would have bought nbc," says Irving Azoff, MCA's former music boss. "He was really frustrated that the Japanese wouldn't let him do any of that." The brokered marriage was soon looking as vulnerable as Lyle Lovett's to Julia Roberts. And Ovitz, the canny matchmaker, was apparently unwilling or unable to save...
...rash of rumors now suggests that Bronfman, if he buys MCA, would ask one of his friends, Ovitz or at-large media mogul Barry Diller, to run it. But either of them would surely insist on substantial equity, and last week both were denying any interest in the job. It is more logical that Bronfman would urge Sheinberg to stay on-not least because that would assure MCA of a Spielberg-DreamWorks connection-but that Edgar Jr. would run the show...
...Baby Bell phone companies have turned to Hollywood. Ameritech, Bell South and Southwestern Bell (now SBC Communications) are teaming up with the Walt Disney Co. to develop and distribute movies, games and other programs to home viewers. Nynex, Bell Atlantic and Pacific Telesis have been talking with superagent Michael Ovitz about forming an alliance to make and distribute films. The idea is to create a coalition, or umbrella, that would enable the telephone companies, with the clout of their 50 million customers, to acquire the programming that will go out over these networks...