Zombieland may rule the US box office at the moment, but the talk in Hollywood is about a real life slasher tale, where studio chiefs are being ruthlessly axed down in the corridors of power by corporate chieftains desperate to change an industry in crisis.
It’s not just the global recession, changing viewing habits and the challenge of the Internet that has Hollywood on the ropes. Even the good old days of highly paid actors starring in guaranteed blockbusters looks to be as doomed as black and white movies in the age of Technicolor.
The corporate bloodletting began in June when Paramount unceremoniously ousted studio bosses John Lesher and Brad Weston. In August, MGM got rid of its chief executive, Harry Sloan.
Then in the middle of last month, Disney ousted its widely revered studio chief, Dick Cook. This week it was Universal’s turn to act. Following a disastrous summer characterized by high profile flops such as Public Enemies, Bruno and Land of the Lost, the studio owned by General Electric canned chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde.
Thus, in a few short months, half the major studios had a shake-up at the top.
“There’s been more change in the last 18 months than in the preceding 18 years,” said Mark Gill, chief executive of the Film Department, an independent film finance company.
Warner, Sony and Fox have remained loyal to their leaders, but they have enjoyed a far better year than the studios that ousted their head honchos. Experts say that a combination of factors now means there is less room than ever for error, or for box office flops.
Shaky film finances are at the core of the upheaval. Most significantly, DVD sales have plummeted after years in which sales of discs, coupled with the growth of overseas markets, compensated for the spiraling costs of movie-making and the anemic state of the US box office.
At the same time, the global recession has made it far harder to raise capital for movie production. During the boom years, wealthy individuals, hedge funds and insurance companies in the US, Germany and Japan were a key source of financing. That made it easy to pour money into risky projects.
The effectiveness of star power also appears to be on the wane, Los Angeles Times film columnist John Horn said.
“Some of the town’s highest-paid stars — US$20 million actors such as Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler, Russell Crowe — have proved over the last year that their names on the marquee hardly guarantee that crowds will come,” he wrote.
So what’s the new strategy?
Disney has clearly pointed the way with the US$4 billion deal to buy Marvel Comics and its stable of superhero characters, and its decision to replace Cook with Rich Ross, who built Disney’s cable channel into a teenage TV powerhouse.
“Marvel will be able to provide engaging characters without the need for highly paid stars, just like Pixar, another recent purchase did,” movie blogger David Bourne said. “Ross is a proven expert at building brands and developing franchises for teenagers, who are the most important movie audience of all.”
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