Local production: Back to the future with 'FlashForward'

Pasadena residents might glimpse the future this Friday.

That's when the new ABC TV series "FlashForward" begins filming in the area, according to a sampling of upcoming shoots from FilmL.A, which coordinates film permits for the Los Angeles region.

The drama, which debuts Sept. 24 and is adapted from Robert J. Sawyer's 1999 novel, is about the aftermath of a mysterious event that causes people to glimpse their futures.  David S. Goyer, co-writer of "The Dark Knight" and Brannon Braga ("24") are executive producers of the show, which stars Joseph Fiennes and John Cho.

The show, which is set in LA and employs 250 people per episode, will shoot on sound stages at Disney as well as various locations through the county. Producers said they wanted to remain close to studio facilities and the show's writers.

"The series is the first time I've been able to shoot L.A. for L.A., and it's like Christmas for our locations,'' said Jessika Goyer, an executive producer. "We are challenging ourselves to find looks all over the zone that haven't been shot before and really stand out."

ABC's decision to shoot "FlashForward" locally is welcome news for Los Angeles, which has been struggling to retain its bread-and-butter TV business as shows have migrated to other locales. On-location shoots for TV shows dropped 32% last week over the same period a year ago, according to the latest data from FilmL.A.

-- Richard Verrier

When Universal Pictures agreed in October 2006 to pay $42.5 million for the rights to distribute "Bruno" domestically and in eight key overseas markets, many in Hollywood scoffed.

After all, star Sacha Baron Cohen was an untested talent on the big screen: His first U.S. theatrical release, "Borat," based on a character from his "Da Ali G Show," hadn't even opened yet. Moreover, the pre-release audience polls were less than enthusiastic, making the film's box-office prospects highly uncertain.

And "Borat," which 20th Century Fox distributed, cost only $18 million to produce. By shelling out more than twice that for rights to the follow-up, Universal seemed to be grossly overpaying, even by Hollywood's profligate standards.

As it turns out, Universal executives might not have been as crazy as they looked at the time. That's because the studio negotiated a highly favorable deal point that helped justify the big upfront payment it made to the film's financier, Media Rights Capital.

According to two people familiar with the terms, the studio's distribution fee for releasing "Bruno" is 25%, which is at least twice the current industry standard. DreamWorks Animation and Marvel Studios, for instance, each pay an 8% distribution fee to Paramount Pictures to release such films as "Shrek 3" and "Iron Man."

A person close to MRC disputed that the "Bruno" fee is 25%, contending the figure was lower. 

Distribution fees are based on a percentage of revenues studios receive from releasing movies in theaters, on DVD and in other media. Typically, those fees do not exceed 15%, and are often much lower.

Universal gets to collect its distribution fee and recoup the $42.5 million and the tens of millions it spends to market the movie before it must pay MRC any cut of potential profits. MRC, which declined to say how much it spent to make "Bruno," will then divvy up its share with Baron Cohen and other profit participants.

Of course, now that "Bruno" is projected to sell more than $30 million worth of tickets this weekend in its U.S. debut and match or exceed that overseas, it's likely everyone involved in the film will profit quite handsomely.

"Bruno" grossed $1.7 million from Thursday midnight shows and has had strong matinees today across the country. It has also done well in overseas markets, including Australia, where it has generated $4.6 million since opening Tuesday.

"We're overjoyed that all the partners are going to make a lot of money," said MRC co-chairman Modi Wiczyk.

It's still not clear, however, whether "Bruno" will ultimately do as well as "Borat," a surprise hit that grossed $128.5 million at the domestic box office, $133.1 million from international markets, and sold more than an estimated 5.5 million video units in the U.S.

-- Claudia Eller and Ben Fritz

Picture: Sacha Baron Cohen at the Hollywood premiere of "Bruno." Credit: Frazer Harrison, Getty Images.

California may be teetering on financial collapse and about to pay its bills with IOUs, but that doesn't appear to be discouraging filmmakers and producers from seeking film tax credits from the state.

The California Film Commission said it received 56 applications for the tax credits on Monday, the first day companies could apply. The tax credits were adopted earlier this year by the state Legislature in an effort to keep movie and television production from migrating to other states.

"We got a great response,'' said Amy Lemisch, director of the California Film Commission, the state agency that is administering the program. Applicants included movies of the week to low-budget features, cable series and studio films, she said. "We got a little of everything."

The commission will review the applications over the next 20 days and send out "credit allocation letters" to those who qualify. Because of the interest, the commission has devised a lottery system to determine which applications will be reviewed first. The tax credits won't take effect until 2011.

To compete with cheaper locales, the Legislature this year agreed to allocate $500 million in film tax credits over a five-year period. Producers can obtain a tax credit totaling 20% to 25% of "qualified production expenses." There are a number of restrictions: Only feature films that cost $75 million or less are eligible. The program also is limited to new basic cable TV series, movies of the week or miniseries and existing TV series that move back to California.

-- Richard Verrier

Is the local drought in feature production coming to an end? Maybe not, but the latest data for on-location filming provides at least a glimmer of hope. Filming for on-location movie production in L.A. edged up 15% last week over the same week a year ago, when studios were winding down their filming in anticipation of a possible walkout by members of the Screen Actors Guild. Among the movies that began filming last week is "Cats & Dogs 2," a sequel to the Warner Bros. animal comedy. Still, in a grim reminder of the recession's toll, shoots for television shows and commercials fell 50% and 48%, respectively, below year-ago levels, according to the latest data from FilmL.A. Inc. See the chart below.

-- Richard Verrier

It was another bleak week for film production. Production days for on-location filming dropped 43% last week compared to the same time a year ago, with the biggest falloff occurring in feature films. See the latest figures and a sampling of what's shooting around Los Angeles in the weekly "On Location" chart below.

At a time when expensive adult dramas keep striking out at the box office, it appears not even Brad Pitt and director Steven Soderbergh can entice a Hollywood studio to spend about $57 million on a baseball movie.

Pitt and Soderbergh, who were given a short window to set up their adaptation of the 2003 bestselling book "Moneyball" at a rival studio after Sony Pictures unexpectedly killed the project just three days before production was to begin today, have been turned down by Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, which shared concerns about the film's high budget and limited commercial appeal.

Sony movie chief Amy Pascal had given them the weekend to try and set the movie up at the two studios where they have the closest ties. Pitt's production company is based at Paramount, and the actor and Soderbergh have made the "Ocean's 11" movies at Warner.

On Friday, as first reported by industry trade paper Daily Variety, Sony's Pascal pulled the plug on the production after Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the script by Steve Zaillian that she found unacceptable, according to people close to the situation. A person informed about the matter said that Pascal had liked Zaillian's adaptation of Michael Lewis' book about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, but when Soderbergh's rewrite came in last Wednesday, she was surprised that there were "substantial changes."

Pascal met with Soderbergh in her Culver City office to see if he was willing to revise his take, but the two couldn't agree on a vision for the film. They also disagreed over Soderbergh's plan to shoot the film in a more improvisational documentary style, the person said.

She then made a last-minute decision to scrap the production, shocking those who were about to start shooting, said one individual involved in the project.

By Monday, Paramount and Warner Bros. had already decided to pass. Similarly budgeted dramas aimed at adults, such as "State of Play," "Duplicity" and "The International," have all fared poorly at the box office this year. "Moneyball" has the added burden of being about baseball, which would not only limit its appeal among women, but also overseas audiences. International receipts from theatrical, television and DVD sales typically account for more than half of a film's total sales.

As studios continue to tighten their belts, those added up to more than enough reasons to flash a red light.

"In light of the economic climate, Warner and Paramount said they weren't going to make the movie," said Pitt's manager, Cynthia Pett-Dante. She added that Pitt "totally supports Steven all the way" in his vision for the movie.

Soderbergh's manager, Michael Sugar, declined comment on behalf of the director.

One executive who had considered bringing the project to his studio said the movie would have had to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office just to break even.

Sony is still weighing its options, which now appear limited to either convincing Soderbergh to alter his vision, proceeding with another director, or putting the entire project on the disabled list.

Either way, the studio will be on the hook for the nearly $10 million it has already spent on preproduction and screenplay development.

-- Claudia Eller, Ben Fritz and John Horn

Photos: Brad Pitt. Credit: Koichi Kamoshida, Getty Images. Steven Soderbergh. Credit: Peter Foley, European Pressphoto Agency.

 

Panavision Inc., the longtime supplier of motion picture camera equipment, has replaced Chief Executive William (Billy) M. Campbell  — after just 10 weeks on the job.

The Woodland Hills company, controlled by the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, said in a statement that William C. Bevins, a longtime associate of Perelman’s, had replaced Campbell, the former president of Discovery Networks who also had been an executive at ABC, CBS and Warner Bros. Television.

Bevins is the fourth CEO in six years at Panavision, which manufacturers and designs film and digital cameras that it rents out to film crews, along with lighting, grip and crane equipment.

Panavision offered no explanation for Campbell’s abrupt departure. The company's employees were stunned by the news, coming so soon after Perelman hailed him for his “visionary leadership” that would “take Panavision into the next phase of our business.”

Campbell had replaced Bob Beitcher, who had been tapped by Perelman in 2003 to revitalize the  business that had been slow to roll out new products and adapt to a changing digital market.

The management shake-up comes at time when many companies that service the film and TV business
are reeling from a sharp downturn in production. Sources close to Panavision say its business was especially hard-hit last year during the 100-day writers strike, which virtually shut down television production, and the subsequent slowdown caused by year-long contract dispute between the Screen Actors Guild and major studios. The recession also has prompted studios to make fewer movies, further depressing demand for camera equipment.

Panavision has laid off more than 100 workers from its offices around the world in the last 18 months and currently employs about 1,150, including nearly 300 in Woodland Hills.

Bevins is a former consultant to MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., Perleman’s main investment vehicle. A former chief financial officer for Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Bevins also previously ran New World Communications Group Inc. and Marvel Entertainment Group.

“He brings unparalleled operational experience to the table, which will help strengthen Panavision’s platform for future growth,” said Panavision Vice Chairman Ken Ziffren, a veteran entertainment industry attorney.

In a statement, Campbell called his short tenure with Panavision "a privilege" and said he would remain as an advisor to the company. A spokesperson said he was not available for further comment. Campbell was among the passengers of the USAirways plane that crash landed in the Hudson River last January.

-- Richard Verrier

20th Century Fox's high-profile stare-down with theater operators over who would pay for digital 3-D glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has been settled. But the issues underlying the dispute will almost certainly flare up again.

Fox, which had initially threatened to make theater owners bear the costs, has agreed to pick up the tab, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The glasses are supplied by RealD, the Beverly Hills-based company that provides 3-D technology to theaters.

In the past, studios have paid between 75 cents and $1 per moviegoer for the glasses. For a successful film, that can easily add up to as much as $10 million.

That's a sore point for studio executives, who privately complain that they shouldn't have to pay that fee, particularly because glasses that aren't stolen or damaged can be reused. Additionally, producing a movie in 3-D can cost as much as $15 million extra.

Tickets for 3-D movies come with a $2 to $3 surcharge, which is split between theater owners and studios.

For their part, exhibition companies note that they already are investing heavily in the new format. They  typically pay RealD an upfront licensing fee of $5,000 to $10,000 a screen for the use of their equipment, plus a royalty of about 50 cents per ticket.

Fox was the first studio whose concerns became public, when word got out during the ShoWest film industry trade show in late March that it was pressuring exhibitors to pay for the glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which comes out July 1 and is its first 3-D movie. Theater chains balked, with Regal, the nation's biggest, threatening to play the movie in 2-D only.

With nearly 50 3-D movies due out in the next two years, expect more dust-ups over the issue. Fox in particular is likely to continue pressuring exhibitors to pick up the tab for the glasses and pushing for theaters to reuse them. The studio has ample incentive to do so, since this December it will release the highest profile 3-D film to date: James Cameron's "Avatar."

-- Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier

Photo: Glasses for viewing digital 3-D films from RealD. Credit: Ken Hively, Los Angeles Times.

It hardly seems like the ideal time to launch a new independent movie studio. After all if the kings of the business -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein -- are struggling to stay afloat, can anyone make it work?

Two veteran industry executives think they can and they've convinced several well-known producers including Ted Hope and Anne Carey and filmmaker brother Ridley and Tony Scott to bet on them.

Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher, financial consultants with a background experience in entertainment and sports have partnered to form New York-based DF Indie Studios. The duo say they have raised more than $50 million from individual investors and secured another $150 million in "output" deals. They expect to ultimately raise $100 million by this fall and aim to make and distribute ten-to-12 films a year in the $6 million-to-$8 million budget range.

"We are going old school and creating a company based on equity," said Dickinson, DFIS's chief executive officer. The start-up's strategy has been to tap money from individual investors -- usually about $5 million a pop -- rather than taking on a lot of bank debt.

The past couple of years has been rough on the independent and niche specialty film business. Warner Bros. shut down both Warner Independent Pictures and compacted New Line Cinema; Paramount folded Paramount Vantage into its bigger sister studio; Fox closed the genre label, Fox Atomic.

Movies in general and independent film in particular are generally considered to be a high-risk investment but apparently in this economy that's no longer the case, according to Fisher, DFIS's president and chief operating officer. "A lot of our investors used to be focused on hedge funds and are now looking for something that will give them a larger return," she said.

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Generous distribution fee makes Universal's 'Bruno' deal look a lot sexier

When Universal Pictures agreed in October 2006 to pay $42.5 million for the rights to distribute "Bruno" domestically and in eight key overseas markets, many in Hollywood scoffed.

After all, star Sacha Baron Cohen was an untested talent on the big screen: His first U.S. theatrical release, "Borat," based on a character from his "Da Ali G Show," hadn't even opened yet. Moreover, the pre-release audience polls were less than enthusiastic, making the film's box-office prospects highly uncertain.

And "Borat," which 20th Century Fox distributed, cost only $18 million to produce. By shelling out more than twice that for rights to the follow-up, Universal seemed to be grossly overpaying, even by Hollywood's profligate standards.

As it turns out, Universal executives might not have been as crazy as they looked at the time. That's because the studio negotiated a highly favorable deal point that helped justify the big upfront payment it made to the film's financier, Media Rights Capital.

According to two people familiar with the terms, the studio's distribution fee for releasing "Bruno" is 25%, which is at least twice the current industry standard. DreamWorks Animation and Marvel Studios, for instance, each pay an 8% distribution fee to Paramount Pictures to release such films as "Shrek 3" and "Iron Man."

A person close to MRC disputed that the "Bruno" fee is 25%, contending the figure was lower. 

Distribution fees are based on a percentage of revenues studios receive from releasing movies in theaters, on DVD and in other media. Typically, those fees do not exceed 15%, and are often much lower.

Universal gets to collect its distribution fee and recoup the $42.5 million and the tens of millions it spends to market the movie before it must pay MRC any cut of potential profits. MRC, which declined to say how much it spent to make "Bruno," will then divvy up its share with Baron Cohen and other profit participants.

Of course, now that "Bruno" is projected to sell more than $30 million worth of tickets this weekend in its U.S. debut and match or exceed that overseas, it's likely everyone involved in the film will profit quite handsomely.

"Bruno" grossed $1.7 million from Thursday midnight shows and has had strong matinees today across the country. It has also done well in overseas markets, including Australia, where it has generated $4.6 million since opening Tuesday.

"We're overjoyed that all the partners are going to make a lot of money," said MRC co-chairman Modi Wiczyk.

It's still not clear, however, whether "Bruno" will ultimately do as well as "Borat," a surprise hit that grossed $128.5 million at the domestic box office, $133.1 million from international markets, and sold more than an estimated 5.5 million video units in the U.S.

-- Claudia Eller and Ben Fritz

Picture: Sacha Baron Cohen at the Hollywood premiere of "Bruno." Credit: Frazer Harrison, Getty Images.

California may be teetering on financial collapse and about to pay its bills with IOUs, but that doesn't appear to be discouraging filmmakers and producers from seeking film tax credits from the state.

The California Film Commission said it received 56 applications for the tax credits on Monday, the first day companies could apply. The tax credits were adopted earlier this year by the state Legislature in an effort to keep movie and television production from migrating to other states.

"We got a great response,'' said Amy Lemisch, director of the California Film Commission, the state agency that is administering the program. Applicants included movies of the week to low-budget features, cable series and studio films, she said. "We got a little of everything."

The commission will review the applications over the next 20 days and send out "credit allocation letters" to those who qualify. Because of the interest, the commission has devised a lottery system to determine which applications will be reviewed first. The tax credits won't take effect until 2011.

To compete with cheaper locales, the Legislature this year agreed to allocate $500 million in film tax credits over a five-year period. Producers can obtain a tax credit totaling 20% to 25% of "qualified production expenses." There are a number of restrictions: Only feature films that cost $75 million or less are eligible. The program also is limited to new basic cable TV series, movies of the week or miniseries and existing TV series that move back to California.

-- Richard Verrier

Is the local drought in feature production coming to an end? Maybe not, but the latest data for on-location filming provides at least a glimmer of hope. Filming for on-location movie production in L.A. edged up 15% last week over the same week a year ago, when studios were winding down their filming in anticipation of a possible walkout by members of the Screen Actors Guild. Among the movies that began filming last week is "Cats & Dogs 2," a sequel to the Warner Bros. animal comedy. Still, in a grim reminder of the recession's toll, shoots for television shows and commercials fell 50% and 48%, respectively, below year-ago levels, according to the latest data from FilmL.A. Inc. See the chart below.

-- Richard Verrier

It was another bleak week for film production. Production days for on-location filming dropped 43% last week compared to the same time a year ago, with the biggest falloff occurring in feature films. See the latest figures and a sampling of what's shooting around Los Angeles in the weekly "On Location" chart below.

At a time when expensive adult dramas keep striking out at the box office, it appears not even Brad Pitt and director Steven Soderbergh can entice a Hollywood studio to spend about $57 million on a baseball movie.

Pitt and Soderbergh, who were given a short window to set up their adaptation of the 2003 bestselling book "Moneyball" at a rival studio after Sony Pictures unexpectedly killed the project just three days before production was to begin today, have been turned down by Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, which shared concerns about the film's high budget and limited commercial appeal.

Sony movie chief Amy Pascal had given them the weekend to try and set the movie up at the two studios where they have the closest ties. Pitt's production company is based at Paramount, and the actor and Soderbergh have made the "Ocean's 11" movies at Warner.

On Friday, as first reported by industry trade paper Daily Variety, Sony's Pascal pulled the plug on the production after Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the script by Steve Zaillian that she found unacceptable, according to people close to the situation. A person informed about the matter said that Pascal had liked Zaillian's adaptation of Michael Lewis' book about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, but when Soderbergh's rewrite came in last Wednesday, she was surprised that there were "substantial changes."

Pascal met with Soderbergh in her Culver City office to see if he was willing to revise his take, but the two couldn't agree on a vision for the film. They also disagreed over Soderbergh's plan to shoot the film in a more improvisational documentary style, the person said.

She then made a last-minute decision to scrap the production, shocking those who were about to start shooting, said one individual involved in the project.

By Monday, Paramount and Warner Bros. had already decided to pass. Similarly budgeted dramas aimed at adults, such as "State of Play," "Duplicity" and "The International," have all fared poorly at the box office this year. "Moneyball" has the added burden of being about baseball, which would not only limit its appeal among women, but also overseas audiences. International receipts from theatrical, television and DVD sales typically account for more than half of a film's total sales.

As studios continue to tighten their belts, those added up to more than enough reasons to flash a red light.

"In light of the economic climate, Warner and Paramount said they weren't going to make the movie," said Pitt's manager, Cynthia Pett-Dante. She added that Pitt "totally supports Steven all the way" in his vision for the movie.

Soderbergh's manager, Michael Sugar, declined comment on behalf of the director.

One executive who had considered bringing the project to his studio said the movie would have had to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office just to break even.

Sony is still weighing its options, which now appear limited to either convincing Soderbergh to alter his vision, proceeding with another director, or putting the entire project on the disabled list.

Either way, the studio will be on the hook for the nearly $10 million it has already spent on preproduction and screenplay development.

-- Claudia Eller, Ben Fritz and John Horn

Photos: Brad Pitt. Credit: Koichi Kamoshida, Getty Images. Steven Soderbergh. Credit: Peter Foley, European Pressphoto Agency.

 

Panavision Inc., the longtime supplier of motion picture camera equipment, has replaced Chief Executive William (Billy) M. Campbell  — after just 10 weeks on the job.

The Woodland Hills company, controlled by the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, said in a statement that William C. Bevins, a longtime associate of Perelman’s, had replaced Campbell, the former president of Discovery Networks who also had been an executive at ABC, CBS and Warner Bros. Television.

Bevins is the fourth CEO in six years at Panavision, which manufacturers and designs film and digital cameras that it rents out to film crews, along with lighting, grip and crane equipment.

Panavision offered no explanation for Campbell’s abrupt departure. The company's employees were stunned by the news, coming so soon after Perelman hailed him for his “visionary leadership” that would “take Panavision into the next phase of our business.”

Campbell had replaced Bob Beitcher, who had been tapped by Perelman in 2003 to revitalize the  business that had been slow to roll out new products and adapt to a changing digital market.

The management shake-up comes at time when many companies that service the film and TV business
are reeling from a sharp downturn in production. Sources close to Panavision say its business was especially hard-hit last year during the 100-day writers strike, which virtually shut down television production, and the subsequent slowdown caused by year-long contract dispute between the Screen Actors Guild and major studios. The recession also has prompted studios to make fewer movies, further depressing demand for camera equipment.

Panavision has laid off more than 100 workers from its offices around the world in the last 18 months and currently employs about 1,150, including nearly 300 in Woodland Hills.

Bevins is a former consultant to MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., Perleman’s main investment vehicle. A former chief financial officer for Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Bevins also previously ran New World Communications Group Inc. and Marvel Entertainment Group.

“He brings unparalleled operational experience to the table, which will help strengthen Panavision’s platform for future growth,” said Panavision Vice Chairman Ken Ziffren, a veteran entertainment industry attorney.

In a statement, Campbell called his short tenure with Panavision "a privilege" and said he would remain as an advisor to the company. A spokesperson said he was not available for further comment. Campbell was among the passengers of the USAirways plane that crash landed in the Hudson River last January.

-- Richard Verrier

20th Century Fox's high-profile stare-down with theater operators over who would pay for digital 3-D glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has been settled. But the issues underlying the dispute will almost certainly flare up again.

Fox, which had initially threatened to make theater owners bear the costs, has agreed to pick up the tab, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The glasses are supplied by RealD, the Beverly Hills-based company that provides 3-D technology to theaters.

In the past, studios have paid between 75 cents and $1 per moviegoer for the glasses. For a successful film, that can easily add up to as much as $10 million.

That's a sore point for studio executives, who privately complain that they shouldn't have to pay that fee, particularly because glasses that aren't stolen or damaged can be reused. Additionally, producing a movie in 3-D can cost as much as $15 million extra.

Tickets for 3-D movies come with a $2 to $3 surcharge, which is split between theater owners and studios.

For their part, exhibition companies note that they already are investing heavily in the new format. They  typically pay RealD an upfront licensing fee of $5,000 to $10,000 a screen for the use of their equipment, plus a royalty of about 50 cents per ticket.

Fox was the first studio whose concerns became public, when word got out during the ShoWest film industry trade show in late March that it was pressuring exhibitors to pay for the glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which comes out July 1 and is its first 3-D movie. Theater chains balked, with Regal, the nation's biggest, threatening to play the movie in 2-D only.

With nearly 50 3-D movies due out in the next two years, expect more dust-ups over the issue. Fox in particular is likely to continue pressuring exhibitors to pick up the tab for the glasses and pushing for theaters to reuse them. The studio has ample incentive to do so, since this December it will release the highest profile 3-D film to date: James Cameron's "Avatar."

-- Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier

Photo: Glasses for viewing digital 3-D films from RealD. Credit: Ken Hively, Los Angeles Times.

It hardly seems like the ideal time to launch a new independent movie studio. After all if the kings of the business -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein -- are struggling to stay afloat, can anyone make it work?

Two veteran industry executives think they can and they've convinced several well-known producers including Ted Hope and Anne Carey and filmmaker brother Ridley and Tony Scott to bet on them.

Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher, financial consultants with a background experience in entertainment and sports have partnered to form New York-based DF Indie Studios. The duo say they have raised more than $50 million from individual investors and secured another $150 million in "output" deals. They expect to ultimately raise $100 million by this fall and aim to make and distribute ten-to-12 films a year in the $6 million-to-$8 million budget range.

"We are going old school and creating a company based on equity," said Dickinson, DFIS's chief executive officer. The start-up's strategy has been to tap money from individual investors -- usually about $5 million a pop -- rather than taking on a lot of bank debt.

The past couple of years has been rough on the independent and niche specialty film business. Warner Bros. shut down both Warner Independent Pictures and compacted New Line Cinema; Paramount folded Paramount Vantage into its bigger sister studio; Fox closed the genre label, Fox Atomic.

Movies in general and independent film in particular are generally considered to be a high-risk investment but apparently in this economy that's no longer the case, according to Fisher, DFIS's president and chief operating officer. "A lot of our investors used to be focused on hedge funds and are now looking for something that will give them a larger return," she said.

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Producers line up for California film tax credits

California may be teetering on financial collapse and about to pay its bills with IOUs, but that doesn't appear to be discouraging filmmakers and producers from seeking film tax credits from the state.

The California Film Commission said it received 56 applications for the tax credits on Monday, the first day companies could apply. The tax credits were adopted earlier this year by the state Legislature in an effort to keep movie and television production from migrating to other states.

"We got a great response,'' said Amy Lemisch, director of the California Film Commission, the state agency that is administering the program. Applicants included movies of the week to low-budget features, cable series and studio films, she said. "We got a little of everything."

The commission will review the applications over the next 20 days and send out "credit allocation letters" to those who qualify. Because of the interest, the commission has devised a lottery system to determine which applications will be reviewed first. The tax credits won't take effect until 2011.

To compete with cheaper locales, the Legislature this year agreed to allocate $500 million in film tax credits over a five-year period. Producers can obtain a tax credit totaling 20% to 25% of "qualified production expenses." There are a number of restrictions: Only feature films that cost $75 million or less are eligible. The program also is limited to new basic cable TV series, movies of the week or miniseries and existing TV series that move back to California.

-- Richard Verrier

Is the local drought in feature production coming to an end? Maybe not, but the latest data for on-location filming provides at least a glimmer of hope. Filming for on-location movie production in L.A. edged up 15% last week over the same week a year ago, when studios were winding down their filming in anticipation of a possible walkout by members of the Screen Actors Guild. Among the movies that began filming last week is "Cats & Dogs 2," a sequel to the Warner Bros. animal comedy. Still, in a grim reminder of the recession's toll, shoots for television shows and commercials fell 50% and 48%, respectively, below year-ago levels, according to the latest data from FilmL.A. Inc. See the chart below.

-- Richard Verrier

It was another bleak week for film production. Production days for on-location filming dropped 43% last week compared to the same time a year ago, with the biggest falloff occurring in feature films. See the latest figures and a sampling of what's shooting around Los Angeles in the weekly "On Location" chart below.

At a time when expensive adult dramas keep striking out at the box office, it appears not even Brad Pitt and director Steven Soderbergh can entice a Hollywood studio to spend about $57 million on a baseball movie.

Pitt and Soderbergh, who were given a short window to set up their adaptation of the 2003 bestselling book "Moneyball" at a rival studio after Sony Pictures unexpectedly killed the project just three days before production was to begin today, have been turned down by Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, which shared concerns about the film's high budget and limited commercial appeal.

Sony movie chief Amy Pascal had given them the weekend to try and set the movie up at the two studios where they have the closest ties. Pitt's production company is based at Paramount, and the actor and Soderbergh have made the "Ocean's 11" movies at Warner.

On Friday, as first reported by industry trade paper Daily Variety, Sony's Pascal pulled the plug on the production after Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the script by Steve Zaillian that she found unacceptable, according to people close to the situation. A person informed about the matter said that Pascal had liked Zaillian's adaptation of Michael Lewis' book about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, but when Soderbergh's rewrite came in last Wednesday, she was surprised that there were "substantial changes."

Pascal met with Soderbergh in her Culver City office to see if he was willing to revise his take, but the two couldn't agree on a vision for the film. They also disagreed over Soderbergh's plan to shoot the film in a more improvisational documentary style, the person said.

She then made a last-minute decision to scrap the production, shocking those who were about to start shooting, said one individual involved in the project.

By Monday, Paramount and Warner Bros. had already decided to pass. Similarly budgeted dramas aimed at adults, such as "State of Play," "Duplicity" and "The International," have all fared poorly at the box office this year. "Moneyball" has the added burden of being about baseball, which would not only limit its appeal among women, but also overseas audiences. International receipts from theatrical, television and DVD sales typically account for more than half of a film's total sales.

As studios continue to tighten their belts, those added up to more than enough reasons to flash a red light.

"In light of the economic climate, Warner and Paramount said they weren't going to make the movie," said Pitt's manager, Cynthia Pett-Dante. She added that Pitt "totally supports Steven all the way" in his vision for the movie.

Soderbergh's manager, Michael Sugar, declined comment on behalf of the director.

One executive who had considered bringing the project to his studio said the movie would have had to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office just to break even.

Sony is still weighing its options, which now appear limited to either convincing Soderbergh to alter his vision, proceeding with another director, or putting the entire project on the disabled list.

Either way, the studio will be on the hook for the nearly $10 million it has already spent on preproduction and screenplay development.

-- Claudia Eller, Ben Fritz and John Horn

Photos: Brad Pitt. Credit: Koichi Kamoshida, Getty Images. Steven Soderbergh. Credit: Peter Foley, European Pressphoto Agency.

 

Panavision Inc., the longtime supplier of motion picture camera equipment, has replaced Chief Executive William (Billy) M. Campbell  — after just 10 weeks on the job.

The Woodland Hills company, controlled by the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, said in a statement that William C. Bevins, a longtime associate of Perelman’s, had replaced Campbell, the former president of Discovery Networks who also had been an executive at ABC, CBS and Warner Bros. Television.

Bevins is the fourth CEO in six years at Panavision, which manufacturers and designs film and digital cameras that it rents out to film crews, along with lighting, grip and crane equipment.

Panavision offered no explanation for Campbell’s abrupt departure. The company's employees were stunned by the news, coming so soon after Perelman hailed him for his “visionary leadership” that would “take Panavision into the next phase of our business.”

Campbell had replaced Bob Beitcher, who had been tapped by Perelman in 2003 to revitalize the  business that had been slow to roll out new products and adapt to a changing digital market.

The management shake-up comes at time when many companies that service the film and TV business
are reeling from a sharp downturn in production. Sources close to Panavision say its business was especially hard-hit last year during the 100-day writers strike, which virtually shut down television production, and the subsequent slowdown caused by year-long contract dispute between the Screen Actors Guild and major studios. The recession also has prompted studios to make fewer movies, further depressing demand for camera equipment.

Panavision has laid off more than 100 workers from its offices around the world in the last 18 months and currently employs about 1,150, including nearly 300 in Woodland Hills.

Bevins is a former consultant to MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., Perleman’s main investment vehicle. A former chief financial officer for Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Bevins also previously ran New World Communications Group Inc. and Marvel Entertainment Group.

“He brings unparalleled operational experience to the table, which will help strengthen Panavision’s platform for future growth,” said Panavision Vice Chairman Ken Ziffren, a veteran entertainment industry attorney.

In a statement, Campbell called his short tenure with Panavision "a privilege" and said he would remain as an advisor to the company. A spokesperson said he was not available for further comment. Campbell was among the passengers of the USAirways plane that crash landed in the Hudson River last January.

-- Richard Verrier

20th Century Fox's high-profile stare-down with theater operators over who would pay for digital 3-D glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has been settled. But the issues underlying the dispute will almost certainly flare up again.

Fox, which had initially threatened to make theater owners bear the costs, has agreed to pick up the tab, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The glasses are supplied by RealD, the Beverly Hills-based company that provides 3-D technology to theaters.

In the past, studios have paid between 75 cents and $1 per moviegoer for the glasses. For a successful film, that can easily add up to as much as $10 million.

That's a sore point for studio executives, who privately complain that they shouldn't have to pay that fee, particularly because glasses that aren't stolen or damaged can be reused. Additionally, producing a movie in 3-D can cost as much as $15 million extra.

Tickets for 3-D movies come with a $2 to $3 surcharge, which is split between theater owners and studios.

For their part, exhibition companies note that they already are investing heavily in the new format. They  typically pay RealD an upfront licensing fee of $5,000 to $10,000 a screen for the use of their equipment, plus a royalty of about 50 cents per ticket.

Fox was the first studio whose concerns became public, when word got out during the ShoWest film industry trade show in late March that it was pressuring exhibitors to pay for the glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which comes out July 1 and is its first 3-D movie. Theater chains balked, with Regal, the nation's biggest, threatening to play the movie in 2-D only.

With nearly 50 3-D movies due out in the next two years, expect more dust-ups over the issue. Fox in particular is likely to continue pressuring exhibitors to pick up the tab for the glasses and pushing for theaters to reuse them. The studio has ample incentive to do so, since this December it will release the highest profile 3-D film to date: James Cameron's "Avatar."

-- Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier

Photo: Glasses for viewing digital 3-D films from RealD. Credit: Ken Hively, Los Angeles Times.

It hardly seems like the ideal time to launch a new independent movie studio. After all if the kings of the business -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein -- are struggling to stay afloat, can anyone make it work?

Two veteran industry executives think they can and they've convinced several well-known producers including Ted Hope and Anne Carey and filmmaker brother Ridley and Tony Scott to bet on them.

Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher, financial consultants with a background experience in entertainment and sports have partnered to form New York-based DF Indie Studios. The duo say they have raised more than $50 million from individual investors and secured another $150 million in "output" deals. They expect to ultimately raise $100 million by this fall and aim to make and distribute ten-to-12 films a year in the $6 million-to-$8 million budget range.

"We are going old school and creating a company based on equity," said Dickinson, DFIS's chief executive officer. The start-up's strategy has been to tap money from individual investors -- usually about $5 million a pop -- rather than taking on a lot of bank debt.

The past couple of years has been rough on the independent and niche specialty film business. Warner Bros. shut down both Warner Independent Pictures and compacted New Line Cinema; Paramount folded Paramount Vantage into its bigger sister studio; Fox closed the genre label, Fox Atomic.

Movies in general and independent film in particular are generally considered to be a high-risk investment but apparently in this economy that's no longer the case, according to Fisher, DFIS's president and chief operating officer. "A lot of our investors used to be focused on hedge funds and are now looking for something that will give them a larger return," she said.

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

On-location filming for movies in Los Angeles edges up, but TV and commercials still way off

Is the local drought in feature production coming to an end? Maybe not, but the latest data for on-location filming provides at least a glimmer of hope. Filming for on-location movie production in L.A. edged up 15% last week over the same week a year ago, when studios were winding down their filming in anticipation of a possible walkout by members of the Screen Actors Guild. Among the movies that began filming last week is "Cats & Dogs 2," a sequel to the Warner Bros. animal comedy. Still, in a grim reminder of the recession's toll, shoots for television shows and commercials fell 50% and 48%, respectively, below year-ago levels, according to the latest data from FilmL.A. Inc. See the chart below.

-- Richard Verrier

It was another bleak week for film production. Production days for on-location filming dropped 43% last week compared to the same time a year ago, with the biggest falloff occurring in feature films. See the latest figures and a sampling of what's shooting around Los Angeles in the weekly "On Location" chart below.

At a time when expensive adult dramas keep striking out at the box office, it appears not even Brad Pitt and director Steven Soderbergh can entice a Hollywood studio to spend about $57 million on a baseball movie.

Pitt and Soderbergh, who were given a short window to set up their adaptation of the 2003 bestselling book "Moneyball" at a rival studio after Sony Pictures unexpectedly killed the project just three days before production was to begin today, have been turned down by Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, which shared concerns about the film's high budget and limited commercial appeal.

Sony movie chief Amy Pascal had given them the weekend to try and set the movie up at the two studios where they have the closest ties. Pitt's production company is based at Paramount, and the actor and Soderbergh have made the "Ocean's 11" movies at Warner.

On Friday, as first reported by industry trade paper Daily Variety, Sony's Pascal pulled the plug on the production after Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the script by Steve Zaillian that she found unacceptable, according to people close to the situation. A person informed about the matter said that Pascal had liked Zaillian's adaptation of Michael Lewis' book about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, but when Soderbergh's rewrite came in last Wednesday, she was surprised that there were "substantial changes."

Pascal met with Soderbergh in her Culver City office to see if he was willing to revise his take, but the two couldn't agree on a vision for the film. They also disagreed over Soderbergh's plan to shoot the film in a more improvisational documentary style, the person said.

She then made a last-minute decision to scrap the production, shocking those who were about to start shooting, said one individual involved in the project.

By Monday, Paramount and Warner Bros. had already decided to pass. Similarly budgeted dramas aimed at adults, such as "State of Play," "Duplicity" and "The International," have all fared poorly at the box office this year. "Moneyball" has the added burden of being about baseball, which would not only limit its appeal among women, but also overseas audiences. International receipts from theatrical, television and DVD sales typically account for more than half of a film's total sales.

As studios continue to tighten their belts, those added up to more than enough reasons to flash a red light.

"In light of the economic climate, Warner and Paramount said they weren't going to make the movie," said Pitt's manager, Cynthia Pett-Dante. She added that Pitt "totally supports Steven all the way" in his vision for the movie.

Soderbergh's manager, Michael Sugar, declined comment on behalf of the director.

One executive who had considered bringing the project to his studio said the movie would have had to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office just to break even.

Sony is still weighing its options, which now appear limited to either convincing Soderbergh to alter his vision, proceeding with another director, or putting the entire project on the disabled list.

Either way, the studio will be on the hook for the nearly $10 million it has already spent on preproduction and screenplay development.

-- Claudia Eller, Ben Fritz and John Horn

Photos: Brad Pitt. Credit: Koichi Kamoshida, Getty Images. Steven Soderbergh. Credit: Peter Foley, European Pressphoto Agency.

 

Panavision Inc., the longtime supplier of motion picture camera equipment, has replaced Chief Executive William (Billy) M. Campbell  — after just 10 weeks on the job.

The Woodland Hills company, controlled by the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, said in a statement that William C. Bevins, a longtime associate of Perelman’s, had replaced Campbell, the former president of Discovery Networks who also had been an executive at ABC, CBS and Warner Bros. Television.

Bevins is the fourth CEO in six years at Panavision, which manufacturers and designs film and digital cameras that it rents out to film crews, along with lighting, grip and crane equipment.

Panavision offered no explanation for Campbell’s abrupt departure. The company's employees were stunned by the news, coming so soon after Perelman hailed him for his “visionary leadership” that would “take Panavision into the next phase of our business.”

Campbell had replaced Bob Beitcher, who had been tapped by Perelman in 2003 to revitalize the  business that had been slow to roll out new products and adapt to a changing digital market.

The management shake-up comes at time when many companies that service the film and TV business
are reeling from a sharp downturn in production. Sources close to Panavision say its business was especially hard-hit last year during the 100-day writers strike, which virtually shut down television production, and the subsequent slowdown caused by year-long contract dispute between the Screen Actors Guild and major studios. The recession also has prompted studios to make fewer movies, further depressing demand for camera equipment.

Panavision has laid off more than 100 workers from its offices around the world in the last 18 months and currently employs about 1,150, including nearly 300 in Woodland Hills.

Bevins is a former consultant to MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., Perleman’s main investment vehicle. A former chief financial officer for Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Bevins also previously ran New World Communications Group Inc. and Marvel Entertainment Group.

“He brings unparalleled operational experience to the table, which will help strengthen Panavision’s platform for future growth,” said Panavision Vice Chairman Ken Ziffren, a veteran entertainment industry attorney.

In a statement, Campbell called his short tenure with Panavision "a privilege" and said he would remain as an advisor to the company. A spokesperson said he was not available for further comment. Campbell was among the passengers of the USAirways plane that crash landed in the Hudson River last January.

-- Richard Verrier

20th Century Fox's high-profile stare-down with theater operators over who would pay for digital 3-D glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has been settled. But the issues underlying the dispute will almost certainly flare up again.

Fox, which had initially threatened to make theater owners bear the costs, has agreed to pick up the tab, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The glasses are supplied by RealD, the Beverly Hills-based company that provides 3-D technology to theaters.

In the past, studios have paid between 75 cents and $1 per moviegoer for the glasses. For a successful film, that can easily add up to as much as $10 million.

That's a sore point for studio executives, who privately complain that they shouldn't have to pay that fee, particularly because glasses that aren't stolen or damaged can be reused. Additionally, producing a movie in 3-D can cost as much as $15 million extra.

Tickets for 3-D movies come with a $2 to $3 surcharge, which is split between theater owners and studios.

For their part, exhibition companies note that they already are investing heavily in the new format. They  typically pay RealD an upfront licensing fee of $5,000 to $10,000 a screen for the use of their equipment, plus a royalty of about 50 cents per ticket.

Fox was the first studio whose concerns became public, when word got out during the ShoWest film industry trade show in late March that it was pressuring exhibitors to pay for the glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which comes out July 1 and is its first 3-D movie. Theater chains balked, with Regal, the nation's biggest, threatening to play the movie in 2-D only.

With nearly 50 3-D movies due out in the next two years, expect more dust-ups over the issue. Fox in particular is likely to continue pressuring exhibitors to pick up the tab for the glasses and pushing for theaters to reuse them. The studio has ample incentive to do so, since this December it will release the highest profile 3-D film to date: James Cameron's "Avatar."

-- Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier

Photo: Glasses for viewing digital 3-D films from RealD. Credit: Ken Hively, Los Angeles Times.

It hardly seems like the ideal time to launch a new independent movie studio. After all if the kings of the business -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein -- are struggling to stay afloat, can anyone make it work?

Two veteran industry executives think they can and they've convinced several well-known producers including Ted Hope and Anne Carey and filmmaker brother Ridley and Tony Scott to bet on them.

Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher, financial consultants with a background experience in entertainment and sports have partnered to form New York-based DF Indie Studios. The duo say they have raised more than $50 million from individual investors and secured another $150 million in "output" deals. They expect to ultimately raise $100 million by this fall and aim to make and distribute ten-to-12 films a year in the $6 million-to-$8 million budget range.

"We are going old school and creating a company based on equity," said Dickinson, DFIS's chief executive officer. The start-up's strategy has been to tap money from individual investors -- usually about $5 million a pop -- rather than taking on a lot of bank debt.

The past couple of years has been rough on the independent and niche specialty film business. Warner Bros. shut down both Warner Independent Pictures and compacted New Line Cinema; Paramount folded Paramount Vantage into its bigger sister studio; Fox closed the genre label, Fox Atomic.

Movies in general and independent film in particular are generally considered to be a high-risk investment but apparently in this economy that's no longer the case, according to Fisher, DFIS's president and chief operating officer. "A lot of our investors used to be focused on hedge funds and are now looking for something that will give them a larger return," she said.

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

On location filming down 43% in Los Angeles

It was another bleak week for film production. Production days for on-location filming dropped 43% last week compared to the same time a year ago, with the biggest falloff occurring in feature films. See the latest figures and a sampling of what's shooting around Los Angeles in the weekly "On Location" chart below.

At a time when expensive adult dramas keep striking out at the box office, it appears not even Brad Pitt and director Steven Soderbergh can entice a Hollywood studio to spend about $57 million on a baseball movie.

Pitt and Soderbergh, who were given a short window to set up their adaptation of the 2003 bestselling book "Moneyball" at a rival studio after Sony Pictures unexpectedly killed the project just three days before production was to begin today, have been turned down by Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, which shared concerns about the film's high budget and limited commercial appeal.

Sony movie chief Amy Pascal had given them the weekend to try and set the movie up at the two studios where they have the closest ties. Pitt's production company is based at Paramount, and the actor and Soderbergh have made the "Ocean's 11" movies at Warner.

On Friday, as first reported by industry trade paper Daily Variety, Sony's Pascal pulled the plug on the production after Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the script by Steve Zaillian that she found unacceptable, according to people close to the situation. A person informed about the matter said that Pascal had liked Zaillian's adaptation of Michael Lewis' book about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, but when Soderbergh's rewrite came in last Wednesday, she was surprised that there were "substantial changes."

Pascal met with Soderbergh in her Culver City office to see if he was willing to revise his take, but the two couldn't agree on a vision for the film. They also disagreed over Soderbergh's plan to shoot the film in a more improvisational documentary style, the person said.

She then made a last-minute decision to scrap the production, shocking those who were about to start shooting, said one individual involved in the project.

By Monday, Paramount and Warner Bros. had already decided to pass. Similarly budgeted dramas aimed at adults, such as "State of Play," "Duplicity" and "The International," have all fared poorly at the box office this year. "Moneyball" has the added burden of being about baseball, which would not only limit its appeal among women, but also overseas audiences. International receipts from theatrical, television and DVD sales typically account for more than half of a film's total sales.

As studios continue to tighten their belts, those added up to more than enough reasons to flash a red light.

"In light of the economic climate, Warner and Paramount said they weren't going to make the movie," said Pitt's manager, Cynthia Pett-Dante. She added that Pitt "totally supports Steven all the way" in his vision for the movie.

Soderbergh's manager, Michael Sugar, declined comment on behalf of the director.

One executive who had considered bringing the project to his studio said the movie would have had to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office just to break even.

Sony is still weighing its options, which now appear limited to either convincing Soderbergh to alter his vision, proceeding with another director, or putting the entire project on the disabled list.

Either way, the studio will be on the hook for the nearly $10 million it has already spent on preproduction and screenplay development.

-- Claudia Eller, Ben Fritz and John Horn

Photos: Brad Pitt. Credit: Koichi Kamoshida, Getty Images. Steven Soderbergh. Credit: Peter Foley, European Pressphoto Agency.

 

Panavision Inc., the longtime supplier of motion picture camera equipment, has replaced Chief Executive William (Billy) M. Campbell  — after just 10 weeks on the job.

The Woodland Hills company, controlled by the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, said in a statement that William C. Bevins, a longtime associate of Perelman’s, had replaced Campbell, the former president of Discovery Networks who also had been an executive at ABC, CBS and Warner Bros. Television.

Bevins is the fourth CEO in six years at Panavision, which manufacturers and designs film and digital cameras that it rents out to film crews, along with lighting, grip and crane equipment.

Panavision offered no explanation for Campbell’s abrupt departure. The company's employees were stunned by the news, coming so soon after Perelman hailed him for his “visionary leadership” that would “take Panavision into the next phase of our business.”

Campbell had replaced Bob Beitcher, who had been tapped by Perelman in 2003 to revitalize the  business that had been slow to roll out new products and adapt to a changing digital market.

The management shake-up comes at time when many companies that service the film and TV business
are reeling from a sharp downturn in production. Sources close to Panavision say its business was especially hard-hit last year during the 100-day writers strike, which virtually shut down television production, and the subsequent slowdown caused by year-long contract dispute between the Screen Actors Guild and major studios. The recession also has prompted studios to make fewer movies, further depressing demand for camera equipment.

Panavision has laid off more than 100 workers from its offices around the world in the last 18 months and currently employs about 1,150, including nearly 300 in Woodland Hills.

Bevins is a former consultant to MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., Perleman’s main investment vehicle. A former chief financial officer for Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Bevins also previously ran New World Communications Group Inc. and Marvel Entertainment Group.

“He brings unparalleled operational experience to the table, which will help strengthen Panavision’s platform for future growth,” said Panavision Vice Chairman Ken Ziffren, a veteran entertainment industry attorney.

In a statement, Campbell called his short tenure with Panavision "a privilege" and said he would remain as an advisor to the company. A spokesperson said he was not available for further comment. Campbell was among the passengers of the USAirways plane that crash landed in the Hudson River last January.

-- Richard Verrier

20th Century Fox's high-profile stare-down with theater operators over who would pay for digital 3-D glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has been settled. But the issues underlying the dispute will almost certainly flare up again.

Fox, which had initially threatened to make theater owners bear the costs, has agreed to pick up the tab, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The glasses are supplied by RealD, the Beverly Hills-based company that provides 3-D technology to theaters.

In the past, studios have paid between 75 cents and $1 per moviegoer for the glasses. For a successful film, that can easily add up to as much as $10 million.

That's a sore point for studio executives, who privately complain that they shouldn't have to pay that fee, particularly because glasses that aren't stolen or damaged can be reused. Additionally, producing a movie in 3-D can cost as much as $15 million extra.

Tickets for 3-D movies come with a $2 to $3 surcharge, which is split between theater owners and studios.

For their part, exhibition companies note that they already are investing heavily in the new format. They  typically pay RealD an upfront licensing fee of $5,000 to $10,000 a screen for the use of their equipment, plus a royalty of about 50 cents per ticket.

Fox was the first studio whose concerns became public, when word got out during the ShoWest film industry trade show in late March that it was pressuring exhibitors to pay for the glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which comes out July 1 and is its first 3-D movie. Theater chains balked, with Regal, the nation's biggest, threatening to play the movie in 2-D only.

With nearly 50 3-D movies due out in the next two years, expect more dust-ups over the issue. Fox in particular is likely to continue pressuring exhibitors to pick up the tab for the glasses and pushing for theaters to reuse them. The studio has ample incentive to do so, since this December it will release the highest profile 3-D film to date: James Cameron's "Avatar."

-- Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier

Photo: Glasses for viewing digital 3-D films from RealD. Credit: Ken Hively, Los Angeles Times.

It hardly seems like the ideal time to launch a new independent movie studio. After all if the kings of the business -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein -- are struggling to stay afloat, can anyone make it work?

Two veteran industry executives think they can and they've convinced several well-known producers including Ted Hope and Anne Carey and filmmaker brother Ridley and Tony Scott to bet on them.

Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher, financial consultants with a background experience in entertainment and sports have partnered to form New York-based DF Indie Studios. The duo say they have raised more than $50 million from individual investors and secured another $150 million in "output" deals. They expect to ultimately raise $100 million by this fall and aim to make and distribute ten-to-12 films a year in the $6 million-to-$8 million budget range.

"We are going old school and creating a company based on equity," said Dickinson, DFIS's chief executive officer. The start-up's strategy has been to tap money from individual investors -- usually about $5 million a pop -- rather than taking on a lot of bank debt.

The past couple of years has been rough on the independent and niche specialty film business. Warner Bros. shut down both Warner Independent Pictures and compacted New Line Cinema; Paramount folded Paramount Vantage into its bigger sister studio; Fox closed the genre label, Fox Atomic.

Movies in general and independent film in particular are generally considered to be a high-risk investment but apparently in this economy that's no longer the case, according to Fisher, DFIS's president and chief operating officer. "A lot of our investors used to be focused on hedge funds and are now looking for something that will give them a larger return," she said.

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

'Moneyball' can't find a place in Hollywood's lineup

At a time when expensive adult dramas keep striking out at the box office, it appears not even Brad Pitt and director Steven Soderbergh can entice a Hollywood studio to spend about $57 million on a baseball movie.

Pitt and Soderbergh, who were given a short window to set up their adaptation of the 2003 bestselling book "Moneyball" at a rival studio after Sony Pictures unexpectedly killed the project just three days before production was to begin today, have been turned down by Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, which shared concerns about the film's high budget and limited commercial appeal.

Sony movie chief Amy Pascal had given them the weekend to try and set the movie up at the two studios where they have the closest ties. Pitt's production company is based at Paramount, and the actor and Soderbergh have made the "Ocean's 11" movies at Warner.

On Friday, as first reported by industry trade paper Daily Variety, Sony's Pascal pulled the plug on the production after Soderbergh turned in a rewrite of the script by Steve Zaillian that she found unacceptable, according to people close to the situation. A person informed about the matter said that Pascal had liked Zaillian's adaptation of Michael Lewis' book about Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane, but when Soderbergh's rewrite came in last Wednesday, she was surprised that there were "substantial changes."

Pascal met with Soderbergh in her Culver City office to see if he was willing to revise his take, but the two couldn't agree on a vision for the film. They also disagreed over Soderbergh's plan to shoot the film in a more improvisational documentary style, the person said.

She then made a last-minute decision to scrap the production, shocking those who were about to start shooting, said one individual involved in the project.

By Monday, Paramount and Warner Bros. had already decided to pass. Similarly budgeted dramas aimed at adults, such as "State of Play," "Duplicity" and "The International," have all fared poorly at the box office this year. "Moneyball" has the added burden of being about baseball, which would not only limit its appeal among women, but also overseas audiences. International receipts from theatrical, television and DVD sales typically account for more than half of a film's total sales.

As studios continue to tighten their belts, those added up to more than enough reasons to flash a red light.

"In light of the economic climate, Warner and Paramount said they weren't going to make the movie," said Pitt's manager, Cynthia Pett-Dante. She added that Pitt "totally supports Steven all the way" in his vision for the movie.

Soderbergh's manager, Michael Sugar, declined comment on behalf of the director.

One executive who had considered bringing the project to his studio said the movie would have had to gross more than $100 million at the domestic box office just to break even.

Sony is still weighing its options, which now appear limited to either convincing Soderbergh to alter his vision, proceeding with another director, or putting the entire project on the disabled list.

Either way, the studio will be on the hook for the nearly $10 million it has already spent on preproduction and screenplay development.

-- Claudia Eller, Ben Fritz and John Horn

Photos: Brad Pitt. Credit: Koichi Kamoshida, Getty Images. Steven Soderbergh. Credit: Peter Foley, European Pressphoto Agency.

 

Panavision Inc., the longtime supplier of motion picture camera equipment, has replaced Chief Executive William (Billy) M. Campbell  — after just 10 weeks on the job.

The Woodland Hills company, controlled by the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, said in a statement that William C. Bevins, a longtime associate of Perelman’s, had replaced Campbell, the former president of Discovery Networks who also had been an executive at ABC, CBS and Warner Bros. Television.

Bevins is the fourth CEO in six years at Panavision, which manufacturers and designs film and digital cameras that it rents out to film crews, along with lighting, grip and crane equipment.

Panavision offered no explanation for Campbell’s abrupt departure. The company's employees were stunned by the news, coming so soon after Perelman hailed him for his “visionary leadership” that would “take Panavision into the next phase of our business.”

Campbell had replaced Bob Beitcher, who had been tapped by Perelman in 2003 to revitalize the  business that had been slow to roll out new products and adapt to a changing digital market.

The management shake-up comes at time when many companies that service the film and TV business
are reeling from a sharp downturn in production. Sources close to Panavision say its business was especially hard-hit last year during the 100-day writers strike, which virtually shut down television production, and the subsequent slowdown caused by year-long contract dispute between the Screen Actors Guild and major studios. The recession also has prompted studios to make fewer movies, further depressing demand for camera equipment.

Panavision has laid off more than 100 workers from its offices around the world in the last 18 months and currently employs about 1,150, including nearly 300 in Woodland Hills.

Bevins is a former consultant to MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., Perleman’s main investment vehicle. A former chief financial officer for Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Bevins also previously ran New World Communications Group Inc. and Marvel Entertainment Group.

“He brings unparalleled operational experience to the table, which will help strengthen Panavision’s platform for future growth,” said Panavision Vice Chairman Ken Ziffren, a veteran entertainment industry attorney.

In a statement, Campbell called his short tenure with Panavision "a privilege" and said he would remain as an advisor to the company. A spokesperson said he was not available for further comment. Campbell was among the passengers of the USAirways plane that crash landed in the Hudson River last January.

-- Richard Verrier

20th Century Fox's high-profile stare-down with theater operators over who would pay for digital 3-D glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has been settled. But the issues underlying the dispute will almost certainly flare up again.

Fox, which had initially threatened to make theater owners bear the costs, has agreed to pick up the tab, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The glasses are supplied by RealD, the Beverly Hills-based company that provides 3-D technology to theaters.

In the past, studios have paid between 75 cents and $1 per moviegoer for the glasses. For a successful film, that can easily add up to as much as $10 million.

That's a sore point for studio executives, who privately complain that they shouldn't have to pay that fee, particularly because glasses that aren't stolen or damaged can be reused. Additionally, producing a movie in 3-D can cost as much as $15 million extra.

Tickets for 3-D movies come with a $2 to $3 surcharge, which is split between theater owners and studios.

For their part, exhibition companies note that they already are investing heavily in the new format. They  typically pay RealD an upfront licensing fee of $5,000 to $10,000 a screen for the use of their equipment, plus a royalty of about 50 cents per ticket.

Fox was the first studio whose concerns became public, when word got out during the ShoWest film industry trade show in late March that it was pressuring exhibitors to pay for the glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which comes out July 1 and is its first 3-D movie. Theater chains balked, with Regal, the nation's biggest, threatening to play the movie in 2-D only.

With nearly 50 3-D movies due out in the next two years, expect more dust-ups over the issue. Fox in particular is likely to continue pressuring exhibitors to pick up the tab for the glasses and pushing for theaters to reuse them. The studio has ample incentive to do so, since this December it will release the highest profile 3-D film to date: James Cameron's "Avatar."

-- Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier

Photo: Glasses for viewing digital 3-D films from RealD. Credit: Ken Hively, Los Angeles Times.

It hardly seems like the ideal time to launch a new independent movie studio. After all if the kings of the business -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein -- are struggling to stay afloat, can anyone make it work?

Two veteran industry executives think they can and they've convinced several well-known producers including Ted Hope and Anne Carey and filmmaker brother Ridley and Tony Scott to bet on them.

Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher, financial consultants with a background experience in entertainment and sports have partnered to form New York-based DF Indie Studios. The duo say they have raised more than $50 million from individual investors and secured another $150 million in "output" deals. They expect to ultimately raise $100 million by this fall and aim to make and distribute ten-to-12 films a year in the $6 million-to-$8 million budget range.

"We are going old school and creating a company based on equity," said Dickinson, DFIS's chief executive officer. The start-up's strategy has been to tap money from individual investors -- usually about $5 million a pop -- rather than taking on a lot of bank debt.

The past couple of years has been rough on the independent and niche specialty film business. Warner Bros. shut down both Warner Independent Pictures and compacted New Line Cinema; Paramount folded Paramount Vantage into its bigger sister studio; Fox closed the genre label, Fox Atomic.

Movies in general and independent film in particular are generally considered to be a high-risk investment but apparently in this economy that's no longer the case, according to Fisher, DFIS's president and chief operating officer. "A lot of our investors used to be focused on hedge funds and are now looking for something that will give them a larger return," she said.

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Panavision shake-up: Campbell out, Bevins in

 

Panavision Inc., the longtime supplier of motion picture camera equipment, has replaced Chief Executive William (Billy) M. Campbell  — after just 10 weeks on the job.

The Woodland Hills company, controlled by the billionaire Ronald O. Perelman, said in a statement that William C. Bevins, a longtime associate of Perelman’s, had replaced Campbell, the former president of Discovery Networks who also had been an executive at ABC, CBS and Warner Bros. Television.

Bevins is the fourth CEO in six years at Panavision, which manufacturers and designs film and digital cameras that it rents out to film crews, along with lighting, grip and crane equipment.

Panavision offered no explanation for Campbell’s abrupt departure. The company's employees were stunned by the news, coming so soon after Perelman hailed him for his “visionary leadership” that would “take Panavision into the next phase of our business.”

Campbell had replaced Bob Beitcher, who had been tapped by Perelman in 2003 to revitalize the  business that had been slow to roll out new products and adapt to a changing digital market.

The management shake-up comes at time when many companies that service the film and TV business
are reeling from a sharp downturn in production. Sources close to Panavision say its business was especially hard-hit last year during the 100-day writers strike, which virtually shut down television production, and the subsequent slowdown caused by year-long contract dispute between the Screen Actors Guild and major studios. The recession also has prompted studios to make fewer movies, further depressing demand for camera equipment.

Panavision has laid off more than 100 workers from its offices around the world in the last 18 months and currently employs about 1,150, including nearly 300 in Woodland Hills.

Bevins is a former consultant to MacAndrews & Forbes Holdings Inc., Perleman’s main investment vehicle. A former chief financial officer for Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Bevins also previously ran New World Communications Group Inc. and Marvel Entertainment Group.

“He brings unparalleled operational experience to the table, which will help strengthen Panavision’s platform for future growth,” said Panavision Vice Chairman Ken Ziffren, a veteran entertainment industry attorney.

In a statement, Campbell called his short tenure with Panavision "a privilege" and said he would remain as an advisor to the company. A spokesperson said he was not available for further comment. Campbell was among the passengers of the USAirways plane that crash landed in the Hudson River last January.

-- Richard Verrier

20th Century Fox's high-profile stare-down with theater operators over who would pay for digital 3-D glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has been settled. But the issues underlying the dispute will almost certainly flare up again.

Fox, which had initially threatened to make theater owners bear the costs, has agreed to pick up the tab, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The glasses are supplied by RealD, the Beverly Hills-based company that provides 3-D technology to theaters.

In the past, studios have paid between 75 cents and $1 per moviegoer for the glasses. For a successful film, that can easily add up to as much as $10 million.

That's a sore point for studio executives, who privately complain that they shouldn't have to pay that fee, particularly because glasses that aren't stolen or damaged can be reused. Additionally, producing a movie in 3-D can cost as much as $15 million extra.

Tickets for 3-D movies come with a $2 to $3 surcharge, which is split between theater owners and studios.

For their part, exhibition companies note that they already are investing heavily in the new format. They  typically pay RealD an upfront licensing fee of $5,000 to $10,000 a screen for the use of their equipment, plus a royalty of about 50 cents per ticket.

Fox was the first studio whose concerns became public, when word got out during the ShoWest film industry trade show in late March that it was pressuring exhibitors to pay for the glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which comes out July 1 and is its first 3-D movie. Theater chains balked, with Regal, the nation's biggest, threatening to play the movie in 2-D only.

With nearly 50 3-D movies due out in the next two years, expect more dust-ups over the issue. Fox in particular is likely to continue pressuring exhibitors to pick up the tab for the glasses and pushing for theaters to reuse them. The studio has ample incentive to do so, since this December it will release the highest profile 3-D film to date: James Cameron's "Avatar."

-- Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier

Photo: Glasses for viewing digital 3-D films from RealD. Credit: Ken Hively, Los Angeles Times.

It hardly seems like the ideal time to launch a new independent movie studio. After all if the kings of the business -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein -- are struggling to stay afloat, can anyone make it work?

Two veteran industry executives think they can and they've convinced several well-known producers including Ted Hope and Anne Carey and filmmaker brother Ridley and Tony Scott to bet on them.

Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher, financial consultants with a background experience in entertainment and sports have partnered to form New York-based DF Indie Studios. The duo say they have raised more than $50 million from individual investors and secured another $150 million in "output" deals. They expect to ultimately raise $100 million by this fall and aim to make and distribute ten-to-12 films a year in the $6 million-to-$8 million budget range.

"We are going old school and creating a company based on equity," said Dickinson, DFIS's chief executive officer. The start-up's strategy has been to tap money from individual investors -- usually about $5 million a pop -- rather than taking on a lot of bank debt.

The past couple of years has been rough on the independent and niche specialty film business. Warner Bros. shut down both Warner Independent Pictures and compacted New Line Cinema; Paramount folded Paramount Vantage into its bigger sister studio; Fox closed the genre label, Fox Atomic.

Movies in general and independent film in particular are generally considered to be a high-risk investment but apparently in this economy that's no longer the case, according to Fisher, DFIS's president and chief operating officer. "A lot of our investors used to be focused on hedge funds and are now looking for something that will give them a larger return," she said.

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Fox paying for 'Ice Age's' 3-D glasses, but Hollywood remains peeved

20th Century Fox's high-profile stare-down with theater operators over who would pay for digital 3-D glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" has been settled. But the issues underlying the dispute will almost certainly flare up again.

Fox, which had initially threatened to make theater owners bear the costs, has agreed to pick up the tab, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The glasses are supplied by RealD, the Beverly Hills-based company that provides 3-D technology to theaters.

In the past, studios have paid between 75 cents and $1 per moviegoer for the glasses. For a successful film, that can easily add up to as much as $10 million.

That's a sore point for studio executives, who privately complain that they shouldn't have to pay that fee, particularly because glasses that aren't stolen or damaged can be reused. Additionally, producing a movie in 3-D can cost as much as $15 million extra.

Tickets for 3-D movies come with a $2 to $3 surcharge, which is split between theater owners and studios.

For their part, exhibition companies note that they already are investing heavily in the new format. They  typically pay RealD an upfront licensing fee of $5,000 to $10,000 a screen for the use of their equipment, plus a royalty of about 50 cents per ticket.

Fox was the first studio whose concerns became public, when word got out during the ShoWest film industry trade show in late March that it was pressuring exhibitors to pay for the glasses to go with "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which comes out July 1 and is its first 3-D movie. Theater chains balked, with Regal, the nation's biggest, threatening to play the movie in 2-D only.

With nearly 50 3-D movies due out in the next two years, expect more dust-ups over the issue. Fox in particular is likely to continue pressuring exhibitors to pick up the tab for the glasses and pushing for theaters to reuse them. The studio has ample incentive to do so, since this December it will release the highest profile 3-D film to date: James Cameron's "Avatar."

-- Ben Fritz and Richard Verrier

Photo: Glasses for viewing digital 3-D films from RealD. Credit: Ken Hively, Los Angeles Times.

It hardly seems like the ideal time to launch a new independent movie studio. After all if the kings of the business -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein -- are struggling to stay afloat, can anyone make it work?

Two veteran industry executives think they can and they've convinced several well-known producers including Ted Hope and Anne Carey and filmmaker brother Ridley and Tony Scott to bet on them.

Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher, financial consultants with a background experience in entertainment and sports have partnered to form New York-based DF Indie Studios. The duo say they have raised more than $50 million from individual investors and secured another $150 million in "output" deals. They expect to ultimately raise $100 million by this fall and aim to make and distribute ten-to-12 films a year in the $6 million-to-$8 million budget range.

"We are going old school and creating a company based on equity," said Dickinson, DFIS's chief executive officer. The start-up's strategy has been to tap money from individual investors -- usually about $5 million a pop -- rather than taking on a lot of bank debt.

The past couple of years has been rough on the independent and niche specialty film business. Warner Bros. shut down both Warner Independent Pictures and compacted New Line Cinema; Paramount folded Paramount Vantage into its bigger sister studio; Fox closed the genre label, Fox Atomic.

Movies in general and independent film in particular are generally considered to be a high-risk investment but apparently in this economy that's no longer the case, according to Fisher, DFIS's president and chief operating officer. "A lot of our investors used to be focused on hedge funds and are now looking for something that will give them a larger return," she said.

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

DF Indie Studios, new producer and distributor, seeks to fill gap in independent film

It hardly seems like the ideal time to launch a new independent movie studio. After all if the kings of the business -- Bob and Harvey Weinstein -- are struggling to stay afloat, can anyone make it work?

Two veteran industry executives think they can and they've convinced several well-known producers including Ted Hope and Anne Carey and filmmaker brother Ridley and Tony Scott to bet on them.

Mary Dickinson and Charlene Fisher, financial consultants with a background experience in entertainment and sports have partnered to form New York-based DF Indie Studios. The duo say they have raised more than $50 million from individual investors and secured another $150 million in "output" deals. They expect to ultimately raise $100 million by this fall and aim to make and distribute ten-to-12 films a year in the $6 million-to-$8 million budget range.

"We are going old school and creating a company based on equity," said Dickinson, DFIS's chief executive officer. The start-up's strategy has been to tap money from individual investors -- usually about $5 million a pop -- rather than taking on a lot of bank debt.

The past couple of years has been rough on the independent and niche specialty film business. Warner Bros. shut down both Warner Independent Pictures and compacted New Line Cinema; Paramount folded Paramount Vantage into its bigger sister studio; Fox closed the genre label, Fox Atomic.

Movies in general and independent film in particular are generally considered to be a high-risk investment but apparently in this economy that's no longer the case, according to Fisher, DFIS's president and chief operating officer. "A lot of our investors used to be focused on hedge funds and are now looking for something that will give them a larger return," she said.

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images

Coppola hawks his wine and, oh yeah, a new movie

Call it clever and eye-catching -- or perhaps just shameless self-promotion. But you have to hand it to Francis Ford Coppola. In an era when marketers try to seamlessly and subliminally blend products into movies, Coppola would rather come out and just hit you over the head with a bottle -- literally.

Looking at the full-page ad for "Tetro" in today's Los Angeles Times, it's hard to tell who is the star of the film -- Vincent Gallo or a bottle of Coppola's Claret Diamond red wine. And that's just how "The Godfather" director wants it.

"In a way, everyone who buys a bottle of the wine is a participating producer of my movie," Coppola said in a phone interview from his home in Napa Valley, where the 70-year-old filmmaker lives and for years has operated wineries. "I wouldn't be able to make and finance personal independent films without having a very successful business behind me."

Coppola, a Hollywood outcast by choice, financed and is distributing "Tetro," a family drama starring Gallo and set in Buenos Aires that he filmed in black and white for under $15 million in Argentina on widescreen high-definition video. The movie is playing for a week in limited release in Los Angeles and New York and will expand next Friday into other cities including Chicago, Seattle and San Francisco.

It's just the kind of movie Holllywood studios would sneer at. And, that's just fine with Coppola: "There are very few independent distributors now and everyone is just looking to make money. This is an art film -- an exotic animal these days."

Coppola says "Tetro," which explores the complicated relationships and dynamics of a big creative family, is only semi-autobiographical. "Of course you raid your own life to put flesh on it, but the story never happened that way in my family," he noted.

The other thing that makes Coppola's hybrid movie-wine ad so eye-catching is the juxtaposition of the last name of the film's star and the bottle of Claret: Gallo. (No, Vincent Gallo is not related to Ernest and Julio, in case you were wondering!)

Coppola hopes that if his ad sells enough bottles of wine, he can expand the run of his movie even more than originally planned.

As for the uniqueness of his ad, the writer-director-producer said: "When you're paying the bills you can do what you want. Can you imagine if I had suggested an ad like this to a corporation? There would be 50 levels of meetings." 

He has a point. Now, please pass the wine.

-- Claudia Eller

Photo Credit: Francis Ford Coppola by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images