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articles.chicagotribune.com/1989-03-16/features/8903270313_1_pact-with-universal-pictures-delaurentiis-entertainment-group-blue-velvet
Profiting From Youth
In Search For Adult Fare, Studios Overlook A Hit
March 16, 1989|By Anne Thompson, Special to The Tribune.
4
HOLLYWOOD — If the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group had been able to stay in business long enough to release ``Bill and Ted`s Excellent Adventure,`` the now-bankrupt distributor could have enjoyed its first mass-market hit. (The DeLaurentiis ``successes`` ``Blue Velvet`` and ``Crimes of the Heart`` barely broke even.)
Last year, when DeLaurentiis didn`t have sufficient funds to follow through on the just-wrapped time-travel comedy, the video company Nelson Entertainment came to the rescue, acquiring all domestic rights (DeLaurentiis kept foreign) and footing all necessary completion costs. Though the picture
(developed by Interscope Communications) still lacked a final score and special effects, several studios screened the rough cut and passed-a move they now regret.
Not since ``Crocodile Dundee`` has a sleeper come as such a surprise to the industry. This underscores how much Hollywood executives are wired to this week`s conventional wisdom. A few years ago, when youth comedies were king,
``Bill and Ted`` would have been taken more seriously. Now that the business has focused on grabbing older moviegoers, the studios aren`t that interested in appealing to the relatively ``narrow`` youth segment.
But that`s the very group that turned ``Beetlejuice`` into a hit this time last year. And now kids are turning out in droves for Stephen Herek`s irreverent history lesson (written by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson), which Orion Pictures agreed to release in partnership with Nelson. After the first Los Angeles research screening, Orion refused to believe how good the results were, and ordered another preview in Secaucus, N.J. ``The numbers were even higher,`` recalls coproducer Michael Murphey. ``It appeals to ages 16 to 24.`` Luckily, that age range doesn`t read movie reviews, which were roundly dismissive. Murphey admits that he and his partner, Joel Soisson, liked the script because ``it was kind of like `The Three Stooges.` We never laughed so hard.``
Could the film`s anti-education theme be responsible for its success?
``No,`` Murphey says with a straight face. ``People like it because the boys have good, innocent hearts.``
- Yet another independent distributor is dead: Alive Films. The production entity, however, will live on: Cochairman Shep Gordon continues to collect hefty producer fees on his deals with horror-meisters John Carpenter and Wes Craven (a deal with Tom Holland is about to close); and cochairman Caroline Pfeiffer will fulfill her two-film (minimum) pact with Universal Pictures (Universal chairman Thomas Pollock, formerly an attorney, used to represent Gordon and Pfeiffer).
Alive is, at least temporarily, abandoning the uphill struggle to release specialized films in today`s hostile theatrical and video marketplace.
After the split of the successful Island/Alive combo that had released
``Kiss of the Spider Woman,`` ``A Trip to Bountiful`` and ``Choose Me,``
Island continued to release a few profitable acquisitions, such as ``Mona Lisa`` and ``She`s Gotta Have It.``
But Alive, funded by Nelson, hasn`t had a hit since the divorce, three years ago. Alan Rudolph`s arty ``The Moderns,`` crippled by a pan from the New York Times, generated some modest returns for the company, but nothing else performed: not Rudolph`s stylized ``Trouble in Mind,`` nor Lindsay Anderson`s geriatric ``The Whales of August,`` nor Jean-Jacques Beineix`s lusty ``Betty Blue,`` nor the most recent fiasco, Sam Shepherd`s $6 million ``Far North.``
Alive`s production for Columbia, ``A Time of Destiny,`` starring Bill Hurt and Timothy Hutton, also failed at the box office.
Though they couldn`t make it in the distribution game, Gordon and Pfeiffer will continue to produce movies. Carpenter and Craven have new pictures coming up at Universal, while Pfeiffer is looking forward to shooting two movies with $6 million-plus budgets. ``It`s a time when true independents are undergoing change,`` she says. ``Until recently we made our profits from videos; but the video market is just not buying films anymore.``
- It looks like Disney`s back on a winning streak, this time with a picture in a genre that has not seen much support in recent years: the anthology film. Disney`s Jeff Katzenberg gave Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola and Woody Allen about $5 million to make a 30-40 minute New York story. The gamble was that the studio could sell the three-director concept in urban centers and broaden to 500 screens for its second weekend.
The marketing effort was blessed with plenty of funny Woody Allen footage to use in TV spots.
Profiting From Youth
In Search For Adult Fare, Studios Overlook A Hit
March 16, 1989|By Anne Thompson, Special to The Tribune.
4
HOLLYWOOD — If the DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group had been able to stay in business long enough to release ``Bill and Ted`s Excellent Adventure,`` the now-bankrupt distributor could have enjoyed its first mass-market hit. (The DeLaurentiis ``successes`` ``Blue Velvet`` and ``Crimes of the Heart`` barely broke even.)
Last year, when DeLaurentiis didn`t have sufficient funds to follow through on the just-wrapped time-travel comedy, the video company Nelson Entertainment came to the rescue, acquiring all domestic rights (DeLaurentiis kept foreign) and footing all necessary completion costs. Though the picture
(developed by Interscope Communications) still lacked a final score and special effects, several studios screened the rough cut and passed-a move they now regret.
Not since ``Crocodile Dundee`` has a sleeper come as such a surprise to the industry. This underscores how much Hollywood executives are wired to this week`s conventional wisdom. A few years ago, when youth comedies were king,
``Bill and Ted`` would have been taken more seriously. Now that the business has focused on grabbing older moviegoers, the studios aren`t that interested in appealing to the relatively ``narrow`` youth segment.
But that`s the very group that turned ``Beetlejuice`` into a hit this time last year. And now kids are turning out in droves for Stephen Herek`s irreverent history lesson (written by Ed Solomon and Chris Matheson), which Orion Pictures agreed to release in partnership with Nelson. After the first Los Angeles research screening, Orion refused to believe how good the results were, and ordered another preview in Secaucus, N.J. ``The numbers were even higher,`` recalls coproducer Michael Murphey. ``It appeals to ages 16 to 24.`` Luckily, that age range doesn`t read movie reviews, which were roundly dismissive. Murphey admits that he and his partner, Joel Soisson, liked the script because ``it was kind of like `The Three Stooges.` We never laughed so hard.``
Could the film`s anti-education theme be responsible for its success?
``No,`` Murphey says with a straight face. ``People like it because the boys have good, innocent hearts.``
- Yet another independent distributor is dead: Alive Films. The production entity, however, will live on: Cochairman Shep Gordon continues to collect hefty producer fees on his deals with horror-meisters John Carpenter and Wes Craven (a deal with Tom Holland is about to close); and cochairman Caroline Pfeiffer will fulfill her two-film (minimum) pact with Universal Pictures (Universal chairman Thomas Pollock, formerly an attorney, used to represent Gordon and Pfeiffer).
Alive is, at least temporarily, abandoning the uphill struggle to release specialized films in today`s hostile theatrical and video marketplace.
After the split of the successful Island/Alive combo that had released
``Kiss of the Spider Woman,`` ``A Trip to Bountiful`` and ``Choose Me,``
Island continued to release a few profitable acquisitions, such as ``Mona Lisa`` and ``She`s Gotta Have It.``
But Alive, funded by Nelson, hasn`t had a hit since the divorce, three years ago. Alan Rudolph`s arty ``The Moderns,`` crippled by a pan from the New York Times, generated some modest returns for the company, but nothing else performed: not Rudolph`s stylized ``Trouble in Mind,`` nor Lindsay Anderson`s geriatric ``The Whales of August,`` nor Jean-Jacques Beineix`s lusty ``Betty Blue,`` nor the most recent fiasco, Sam Shepherd`s $6 million ``Far North.``
Alive`s production for Columbia, ``A Time of Destiny,`` starring Bill Hurt and Timothy Hutton, also failed at the box office.
Though they couldn`t make it in the distribution game, Gordon and Pfeiffer will continue to produce movies. Carpenter and Craven have new pictures coming up at Universal, while Pfeiffer is looking forward to shooting two movies with $6 million-plus budgets. ``It`s a time when true independents are undergoing change,`` she says. ``Until recently we made our profits from videos; but the video market is just not buying films anymore.``
- It looks like Disney`s back on a winning streak, this time with a picture in a genre that has not seen much support in recent years: the anthology film. Disney`s Jeff Katzenberg gave Martin Scorsese, Francis Coppola and Woody Allen about $5 million to make a 30-40 minute New York story. The gamble was that the studio could sell the three-director concept in urban centers and broaden to 500 screens for its second weekend.
The marketing effort was blessed with plenty of funny Woody Allen footage to use in TV spots.