Specialty Film Division Execs New Studio Leaders

Executives:: Specialty Film Division Execs New Studio Leaders
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - The specialty film divisions used to be such marginal adjuncts to the studios that Hollywood's former top lobbyist barely knew that they existed.

While Motion Picture Assn. of America chairman Jack Valenti was perceived as being out of touch with his constituents, his successor Dan Glickman isn't making that mistake; he's going out of his way to make friends with the indies.

That's because today, the studio indie divisions are a strong, growing business. Oscar voters like their movies. The corporate bean counters like their economies of scale and robust global numbers. And it is a great place to make your mark as an executive because the margin for error is not as unforgiving as it is at the major studios.

20th Century Fox co-chairman Tom Rothman first forged his career at indie Samuel Goldwyn and then at Fox Searchlight. Some time after he moved over to run production for Fox, News Corp. president Peter Chernin drafted reluctant Fox production executive Peter Rice to take over Searchlight, where Rice swiftly became a star in his own right. Should Rothman and co-chairman Jim Gianapulos move on, for whatever reason, Chernin now has an experienced heir apparent in Rice.

Recently, when Universal Studios president Ron Meyer had to replace outgoing studio chairman Stacey Snider, he hired his marketing chief, Marc Shmuger, as well as Focus Features co-president David Linde, who was riding high from his recent Oscar season with "Brokeback Mountain," "The Constant Gardener" and "Pride & Prejudice," all released through Universal's specialty division. Clearly, the skills in production, acquisitions, and international marketing and distribution that Linde developed running Focus were invaluable to the studio.

Rothman understands what his specialty division's needs are, as Snider did at Universal. Fox and Focus are examples of studio subsidiaries that work in close symbiotic concert with their parent companies. They take full advantage of their parent companies' output deals in television and theatrical distribution all over the world. So does Sony Pictures Entertainment's Sony Pictures Classics, which has long maintained a laudable autonomy over its own operations, yet works well with its parent company.

After the Walt Disney Co. purchased Miramax Films in the mid-'90s, Miramax co-founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein got along with their Disney boss, Michael Eisner, as long as they stayed true to their indie roots. But they fell out of favor when they insisted on moving into studio-level budgets. Now divorced from Disney, the Weinsteins are operating a fiscally tight and responsible operation at their new Weinstein Co. And back at Disney, the new head of Miramax, Daniel Battsek, a recruit from Disney's London distribution office, has returned the subsidiary to its former slim profile.

Sometimes it is tough for indie-minded executives like the Weinsteins to toe the corporate line. Soon after Miramax veteran Mark Gill launched Warner Independent Pictures in 2003, he found himself overwhelmed by the Warner Bros. Pictures bureaucracy. Well-versed in the indie world, Gill had hoped that he would get more leeway after his successes with "March of the Penguins" and "Good Night, and Good Luck." But Warner Bros. production chief Jeff Robinov wanted to keep working collaboratively with WIP, and the two executives kept butting heads.

Gill wanted to assemble a picture like Richard Shepard's "Spring Break in Bosnia," with Richard Gere attached, and present it to the studio as a fait accompli, but that was the straw that broke the camel's back, Warner sources confirm. Gill was forced to resign last week, and was replaced by trusted studio production exec Polly Cohen.

As actors become less enamored of formula studio fare, it has become acceptable for them to work within an unofficial two-tiered salary system, charging less for specialty film productions than they do for the big studio spectaculars.

That is where the action is these days. In fact, there are so many promising projects coming out of these indie divisions that even the big theater chains are taking notice. In the wake of last year's box office dip and such indie successes as "Brokeback" ($83 million) and "Penguins" ($77 million), AMC recently announced that it will devote 72 special screens in 39 U.S. markets to screening smart films and docus.

Thanks to the growing vitality within the specialty divisions -- happily compensating for their studio parents' reliance on widest-common denominator entertainment -- discerning adults should have more reasons to come back to the multiplex.

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter/Anne Thompson

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