Word: studioful
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Many studios are rethinking their approach to stars and scripts. For one, audiences are growing older and may be interested, at least for now, in affecting, down-to-earth movies with characters who have more than one dimension. Big names are no longer a guarantee of a film's success, a development that prompts studio executives to gripe privately that certain stars are overdue for a deep discount, most notably Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Sean Connery, Bill Murray, Warren Beatty, Richard Dreyfuss and Nick Nolte. Each commands $3 million to $7 million a movie, but they are simply not attracting...
Disney was No. 1 in market share last year, but the studio's profits hit a three-year low. Katzenberg's prescription: smaller budgets and fewer films like Dick Tracy, last summer's comic-book extravaganza starring Beatty and Madonna that cost an estimated $100 million to make and market. While the movie has grossed nearly $200 million in theaters worldwide, Katzenberg complains that it has "static" characters who fail to evolve, and he suspects that it was not worth the expense or the 10 years of development effort. "Thanks to the dictates of the blockbuster mentality," he writes...
...embarrassing stiffs. Godfather III, which cost at least $55 million, started strong but sagged after several weeks. All told, Paramount has had to lower the estimated asset values of five of the 15 films it released in 1990. Since the summer, Paramount has trimmed its staff, shaken up the studio's production staff and halved the number of films in development (to 125). For this year, Paramount still plans big-budget films with stars, but the company intends to make more movies (20) without increasing its production budget from last year's $420 million...
Warner Bros.' earnings hit an estimated record $370 million in 1990. But the studio's box-office rank slipped from No. 1 in 1989 to No. 3 last year, when Warner had only three modest hits out of 22 released films: Goodfellas, Presumed Innocent and Hard to Kill. This year The Last Boy Scout will be the only Warner film to have a budget of more than $30 million. "We're not giving * up working with stars, as long as we can match the right star with the right material," says Warner chairman Robert Daly. "We want to resist...
...Some studios aren't bothering to jump on the new cost-cutting bandwagon. Columbia Pictures is now shooting Hook, a $50 million-plus Stephen Spielberg extravaganza starring Dustin Hoffman, Robin Williams and Julia Roberts. The film's top talent will get a lavish 40% of the gross revenues. To earn a nickel for the studio, Hook will have to become one of the year's highest- grossing films. But the new management team at Columbia, led by Batman producers Jon Peters and Peter Guber, is clearly confident. The company bought two French-made Falcon jets last year, even before...