A lot of people trashed Tom Rothman. But Nikki Finke respects and Steven Spielberg decides to direct a film for him.... Do it mean something?
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/wh...-marc-shmuger/
http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/wh...-marc-shmuger/
Quote:
| In 2008, the usually successful studio Twentieth Century Fox had one of its worst summers in recent memory. Almost immediately, certain journalists predicted heads would roll among the long stable management because of what was suddenly seen as deep systemic problems at the studio. Prior to the summer, Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos had been lauded for doing more with less: spending little money and smartly laying off risk on highly commercial movies that outperformed with moviegoers if not the critics. Rothman especially was rumored ready to be axed that summer, and the relentless media rushed to print the minuscule Rotten Tomatoes scores for his slate of swill. (Ring a bell, LA Times columnist/blogger Patrick Goldstein?) But what the film community didn't know (and it even took Fox a long time to find out) is that those stories were no coincidence. They were planted by Shmuger who pushed and prodded and pressured entertainment and business journalists to badmouth the rival studio. He gave reporters all the ammunition they needed, from pithy off-the-record quotes about how Rothman had "ruined" the movie biz, to emailed handouts with facts and figures. He even put together the list of Rotten Tomatoes scores for all of Fox movies in recent years. His motivation for going to the media was that Fox made junk while he was making edgy and important movies at Universal. He depicted himself as the one truly creative mogul. And when some journalists wouldn't play his nasty parlor game [Full Disclosure: I refused, arguing that successful slates were cyclical and the place for this criticism was in my weekly box office reports and not my banner headlines], he froze them out. Flash forward to 2009 when suddenly it's Universal's turn to fall apart at the box office. To their credit, the Fox moguls didn't return the favor when now it was Shmuger's time for public humiliation. And that's why no one is crying a river for Shmuger now. If anything, the feeling is he's getting what he deserved. Certainly, Uni's movie slate isn't getting any better since the summer. Love Happens didn't with audiences, and that upcoming Vince Vaughn starrer Couples Retreat has little box office heat. True, Nancy Meyer's It's Complicated does have considerable buzz, but it's a comedy aimed at adults. As a result, Universal won’t make its numbers this year, which would mean that for the first time in a long while the studio won't be quietly contributing is annual $1 billion profit into GE coffers. |
