Word: planetful
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...latest installment in the Planet Hollywood saga could easily be titled Vegas with a Vengeance. The plot: shrugging off two bankruptcies and years of ridicule, a die-hard chain of movie-themed restaurants abandons plans for world domination to seek salvation on the Vegas Strip. The star: Robert Earl, the waggishly underdog CEO, who hopes that by opening the ultimate outlet in a flashy hotel-casino, he can thwart his detractors and restore his reputation...
...easy. As a business, Planet Hollywood turned into the Death Star shortly after going public. But British co-founder Earl won't let go. "I have one desire in my business life," he says, "and that's to put Planet Hollywood back on top." A veteran restaurateur, Earl flits into Manhattan from his Florida home, and between brunch with Puffy, dinner with the Donald and beseeching Lehman Bros. to create a $50 million mezzanine fund, he pauses to reflect on his role as comeback kid. Last June, six months after Planet Hollywood International emerged from Chapter 11: Part 2, Earl...
...when he was still running Hard Rock Cafe, Earl launched Planet Hollywood with the help of celebrity partners, including Bruce Willis and Sly Stallone, who got paid in stock to go to openings and attract free publicity. Star power helped propel the firm to a dotcom-style IPO in 1996 with what even Earl describes as "insane multiples." On paper, Planet was worth some $3.4 billion at its apex--and Earl more than $1 billion. But its stock, which peaked at $32, was delisted just before Planet's first bankruptcy in 1999. The chain, based in Orlando, Fla., had barreled...
...Finding Life on Mars The proximity of Mars to Earth [NOTEBOOK, Sept. 1] once again raised the question of whether there is life on the Red Planet. When the Soviet Union launched an unmanned probe to scout the Martian skies [July 18, 1988], we took the opportunity to remind readers that years ago, earlier space experts, including astronomer Carl Sagan, predicted that finding evidence of civilized life on Mars might be far more daunting than anyone had expected...
...triumphant mission of the U.S. spacecraft Mariner 4 [in 1965] brought some reality to musings about Mars. The craft flew past the planet at a distance of only 9,800 kilometers, transmitting 22 television pictures of a bleak, moonlike landscape pockmarked by craters and showing no signs of life. Even so, hope persisted. To demonstrate that a Mariner flyby at a distance of thousands of miles might completely overlook a thriving civilization, a young and still unknown Carl Sagan that same year sifted through a thousand pictures of Earth shot by a weather satellite orbiting only 480 kilometers...