Can ICM president restore its glitter?

By Lorenza Munoz

Aug. 17, 2007 12 AM PT

Times Staff Writer

When Jim Wiatt left International Creative Management as co-chairman eight years ago to become head of the William Morris Agency, many Hollywood insiders marked the departure as the beginning of a slow bleed for ICM’s movie department. Wiatt took along with him a roster of A-list clients that included Julia Roberts and Eddie Murphy.

This week, the defections continued when Ed Limato, who was considered by many industry watchers as the last pillar of the talent agency’s movie star business, departed for William Morris, taking with him clients such as Mel Gibson, Denzel Washington and Steve Martin.

Once the runner up to powerhouse Creative Artists Agency, ICM is no longer part of the big leagues in the movie business.

The question now is whether Chris Silbermann, the 39-year-old television agent being groomed to lead ICM into the future, can recover some of the agency’s former glitter.

That could be the most difficult mountain Silbermann, an avid hiker, has ever climbed. The ICM president, who until recently shared that title with Limato, is highly regarded in the television world, having put together the talent for one of ABC’s biggest shows, “Grey’s Anatomy.”

But Silbermann is a virtual unknown in movie circles. Most of Hollywood’s top studio executives, including Sony Pictures’ Amy Pascal, DreamWorks SKG’s Stacey Snider and Warner Bros.’ production chief Jeff Robinov, have either never met Silbermann or have had little contact with him since he joined ICM a year ago.

The television business in some years can account for the lion’s share of a top talent agency’s profit. But it is the big movie stars that are key to packaging projects that tantalize the major studios and give emerging talent confidence that plum career opportunities will come their way.

Agencies have increasingly poached clients and agents from one another, but ICM has been unable to replace many of the big names it has lost, such as directors Peter Jackson, Robert Rodriguez, Ed Zwick and Baz Luhrmann and movie stars such as Cameron Diaz, Murphy and Roberts.

Silbermann acknowledges that he would like more A-list stars, but he said one of the agency’s current priorities is cultivating emerging talent.

Since being tapped by ICM Chairman Jeff Berg a year ago, Silbermann said much of his energies have focused on rebuilding the culture at the agency in an attempt to tear down walls between the notoriously turf-bound departments and to reward younger agents that are its future. Such a structure, he says, is essential at a time when stars such as ICM’s Beyonce want careers that transcend a single medium to span television, music, movies and advertising.

“Change can be tough, but Jeff and I are committed to growing and restructuring the agency for long-term success,” Silbermann said. “The moves that we’ve implemented over the past year have improved ICM’s culture and empowered our next generation of leaders.”

Silbermann is trying to replicate a team approach he helped establish at Broder Webb Chervin Silbermann, a boutique talent agency specializing in television that ICM acquired a year ago.

“The problem he is having right now is that he has come into an atmosphere at ICM where it’s less the whole than the sum of its parts,” said movie producer Mark Johnson, who is a fan of Silbermann and has worked on television projects with him. “I hear from enough people that the agents are not into sharing their clients. Chris is completely a team player.”

The ICM culture was fashioned in large part by Berg, 60, who has led the agency since 1985.

Since the acquisition of Broder, Berg has been publicly circumspect about his own plans amid speculation that he would leave ICM in the near future. In 2005, Berg sold controlling interest in the Hollywood talent agency to a private equity group led by Suhail Rizvi and Merrill Lynch, which together own more than 70% of ICM.

The largest individual shareholder, Berg has privately told people that he plans to stick around. It will take several years for Silbermann to learn the movie, literary and music sides of the business. At the moment, Berg is trying to shore up the movie department either by bringing in an agent with big clients or by making an acquisition, according to people close to the agency.

Berg declined to comment.

Silbermann’s attempts to foster a culture of teamwork seems to contradict what some industry insiders see as a lack of good sportsmanship shown recently by ICM to some of its highest-profile agents.

Limato, 71, who had been at ICM for more than 30 years, found out last month that he was being stripped of his title as co-president when his assistant read the news to him from an internal e-mail announcing the personnel change sent by Berg.

This week, ICM lost a bid to prevent Limato from getting out of his employment contract, which was to expire in 2010, when a state judge ruled in an arbitration hearing that he was free to leave and could take his clients with him. William Morris announced Thursday that Limato would return to the firm, where he worked as an agent from 1978 to 1988.

Limato declined to comment.

The Limato incident, which has fostered ill will toward Berg and Silbermann in the movie industry, comes on the heels of an embarrassing public mudslinging in March, when ICM went to court to prevent literary agent Richard Abate from defecting to Endeavor to start a New York literary division. ICM lost that battle.

Last year, veteran television agent Nancy Josephson -- who was credited with bringing in the lucrative “Friends” package and whose father, Marvin, was one of the agency’s founders -- was fired over the telephone by Berg when she was at home recuperating from surgery, two people familiar with the incident said.

Josephson moved on to Endeavor, where she was later joined by one of ICM’s top film agents, Robert Newman.

Although people close to Silbermann say his lack of motion picture experience could be his Achilles heel, those who know him say he should not be underestimated.

“He will learn the business quickly,” said veteran movie producer Mark Gordon, who launched his television career with Silbermann and is an executive producer of “Grey’s Anatomy.” “He listens and he is extremely bright. I think that he will certainly succeed in movies the same way he has in television.”

ICM has historically been a major contender in the television business and the purchase of Broder only strengthened its hand.

The agency collects lucrative fees for helping put together the creative elements behind such shows as “Grey’s Anatomy,” “House,” “Two and a Half Men,” “The Simpsons” and “America’s Next Top Model.” It also collects millions of dollars in royalties from such syndicated shows as “Friends” and “Sex and the City.”

The television revenue is particularly important to ICM’s new owners. Unlike the other major agencies, which are privately held and controlled by their partners, ICM is owned by financial partners that are extremely focused on the bottom line.

That could make it particularly difficult to rebuild ICM’s film and literary departments, which can take years to pay any dividends. For actors and directors to become major stars, they must often take roles in lower-budget prestige movies that are less profitable for their agents but help build careers.

Silbermann acknowledges that his first year was challenging but says the transition is now complete and the remaining agents are bound by a shared philosophy.

“You are either on the bus or off the bus,” he said. “We want to build a winning culture.”

lorenza.munoz@latimes.com

Begin test of infobox

ICM roster

Current movie clients

* Samuel L. Jackson, recent work: “1408”

* Halle Berry, “X-Men: The Last Stand”

* Jodie Foster, “Flightplan”

* Julia Stiles, “The Bourne Ultimatum”

* Susan Sarandon, “In the Valley of Elah”

* Holly Hunter, “Saving Grace” (TV show)

* Hayden Christensen, “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith”