Word today in The New York Times - which means that one side of the negotiation wanted it in the NYT - that Universal may be able to sell off the failed genre arm of Focus Features, Rogue Pictures, to Relativity boggles the mind.
How stupid does Ryan Kavanaugh have to be if he is willing to pay a single penny more than the classic “$1 to take it off your hands” for this white elephant?
Perhaps he can go get Fox Atomic and “The New Paramount Vantage” while he’s at it.
Insanity.
The vanity of being “a studio” is the only possible benefit to a company that is paying for its own movies and already has an output deal with a studio.
If he wants to do something stupid, why not just stay with MGM and take over UA, now that it’s been utterly marginalized?
God bless Ron Meyer for talking poor Mr. Kavanaugh into thinking that it would be Shinola he was buying.
Who could resist a level of success that looks like this? 4 years, 14 movies, 2 over $25 million domestic gross. Wow!
Shaun of the Dead - $13,542,874
Seed of Chucky - $17,083,732
Assault on Precinct 13 - $20,040,895
Unleashed - $24,537,621
Cry Wolf - $10,047,674
Dave Chappelle's Block Party - $11,718,595
Waist Deep - $21,344,312
Jet Li's Fearless - $24,633,730
The Return - $7,749,851
The Hitcher (2007) - $16,472,961
Hot Fuzz - $23,637,265
Balls of Fury - $32,886,940
Doomsday - $11,008,770
The Strangers - $52,597,610
Proud… and profitable… right? And just imagine how much better it will be without the product from Working Title!!!
Schamus & Linde were and are masterful with the art and foreign productions and business models. The “genre business” was never a fit. Ryan Kavanaugh’s investments have been much more mainstream… or is he trying to tell us that he wants to make more Death Races?
Stay away, Ryan. DreamWorks learned its lesson and is there to instruct you. Don’t be Rogue. Keep branding Relativity. Heck, start looking for other people’s money to spend and they you will be a real studio, my son. The strawberries look good on the shelf, but if you open the crate, it’s moldy underneath.
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2008/10/sucker_born_eve.html