Can she restore the roar?

Who says no one takes risks in Hollywood anymore?

Until late last week, Mary Parent had one of the great jobs in the movie business. After helping preside over a string of hits as a top executive at Universal Pictures, Parent left the studio two years ago to produce films with Scott Stuber, a longtime friend and fellow Universal executive. Their deal with Universal, which gave them 5% of their projects’ first-dollar gross, was one of the richest producer deals in Hollywood.

In a move that sent ripples of surprise all over town, Parent turned in her producer stripes for another studio gig. The good news is that it’s a big job, making her head of a motion picture group. But what has industry insiders scratching their heads is that she’s headed to MGM, a studio that has been widely rumored to be on the verge of collapse after pursuing the failed strategy of relying on independent producers to supply it with hit movies.

MGM’s recent track record has been pretty abysmal. In 2007, when the studio released 22 films, only two -- “1408” and “Halloween” -- made more than $30 million. Both were made by the Weinstein Co., which has what might charitably be called a fractious relationship with the studio, having loudly complained about MGM’s poor marketing and lack of clout with exhibitors.

It’s a sign of how bad things are at MGM that when news surfaced last week about Parent’s arrival, no one was asking why MGM Chairman Harry Sloan wanted Parent, but why Parent had taken the job. As one agent put it: “It’s sort of like becoming captain of the Titanic after it’s already hit the iceberg.”

Parent’s hiring came just days after Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke agreed to pump up to $200 billion into the banking system in an attempt to ease the credit market crisis. In a way Sloan is doing the same thing -- he’s using the arrival of Parent, an executive respected by both above-the-line talent and industry insiders, as a way to restore Hollywood’s confidence in his troubled studio.

Schooled under two of the best modern-day studio executives, Michael DeLuca at New Line and Stacey Snider at Universal, Parent has a great eye for material and strong talent relationships. However, it had been slow going for her at Universal lately, with nearly all of the Stuber/Parent films -- “The Kingdom,” for example -- coming from Stuber.

Parent insists that she wasn’t unhappy. “Scott and I will always be partners in our heart and soul,” she told me Friday. “This was just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. There’s a lot to leave behind, but at MGM we have a chance to build something new. This is perhaps the last time there’ll be a privately owned studio in Hollywood. I couldn’t imagine a more exciting challenge than being part of the rebirth of a studio with such a great heritage.”

MGM certainly has a great heritage, but its box-office woes have left it in a precarious state. Using MGM’s access to a lucrative pay-TV deal with Showtime, Sloan had tried to run a studio on the cheap, enhancing an aging movie library by outsourcing movie production to a variety of independent companies. The hiring of Parent is a tacit admission that Sloan’s rent-a-studio strategy was a bust. It resulted in a slate of substandard films, putting the studio at a huge disadvantage in a marketplace where it was competing with studios armed with potent “Spider-Man” and “Harry Potter” franchises.

Even when MGM had a potential hit on its hands, it dropped the ball. Last year the studio released “Rescue Dawn,” a Christian Bale-starring action adventure film from Werner Herzog that earned rave reviews. But instead of giving it a chance to build an audience in the spring or fall, MGM released the movie in July, with barely any marketing support. It died, overwhelmed by summer releases from studios with far bigger resources.

Sloan acknowledges that the rent-a-studio strategy “wasn’t as successful as we’d hoped it would be. We just couldn’t get the juice out of our third-party product. So we need a production team. By hiring Mary, we can develop and exploit our franchises.” He says the studio plans to make 10 to 12 movies a year, with outside producers continuing to chip in another 8 or 10 films.

Things have been so bad in recent months that there has been widespread speculation that MGM’s principal backers were ready to pull the plug, even though the company does have access to several major-movie franchises. The studio plans to make new installments in the James Bond and “Pink Panther” series which could be ready for release in 2010. The studio also hopes to make two installments of “The Hobbit,” with Peter Jackson producing.

Sloan insists he has no money woes. “We have $950 million in revolving credit available for making movies,” he says, citing a $450-million credit facility with JP Morgan as well as $500 million in Merrill Lynch money that was raised to support production at the revived United Artists label led by Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner.

“They are our DreamWorks,” Sloan said. “We own 65% of UA. Their films are a key part of our production slate.”

But even United Artists hasn’t been happy with MGM, contending that UA’s debut release, “Lions for Lambs,” was a disaster partly because of MGM’s inexperienced marketing team and inability to get good theater play for the film.

UA believes that MGM’s lack of clout with exhibitors was responsible for the fact that “Lambs” -- though a film about American politics, not a subject that would normally translate well to global audiences -- has done three times as much business overseas, where it was handled by the far more powerful 20th Century Fox, which distributes most MGM movies outside of the U.S.

It’s impossible to know how dire MGM’s money woes are. Sloan sounds bullish about the studio’s ability to tap into a series of box-office-friendly franchises even as his detractors paint him as a man jetting around the world, desperate to recruit more investment capital. But give him credit -- he is a world-class salesman, shrewd enough to realize that what MGM needed wasn’t just money but an image transplant.

In Hollywood, talent equals credibility. If you want to get a movie made, you sign a gifted director, since A-list filmmakers attract A-list actors. If you want to keep a studio afloat, you need a charismatic studio chief, and in Parent, Sloan has found a talent magnet. Until now, MGM was the very last stop in town for any hot project. Parent’s arrival encourages agents and managers to spend a bit of political capital to persuade their stars to consider making a movie there.

It’s still a bit puzzling to see Parent take the plunge. In today’s Hollywood, few people view running a studio as the ultimate career achievement. The glory days are long gone. Today’s studio bosses are managers, not owners. They don’t make movies, they preside over the creation of franchises, running a company that is a tiny sliver of some giant media conglomerate’s overall business.

But for some, running a studio still has an ineffable allure, which perhaps accounts for why Brad Grey gave up a lucrative career as a talent manager to run the then-troubled Paramount. When you step into Amy Pascal’s office at Sony, situated on the old MGM lot, you know you’re walking into the same office where Louis B. Mayer offered career advice to his starlets and admonished Mickey Rooney when he misbehaved, telling him, “You’re Andy Hardy! You’re the Stars and Stripes!”

Of course, Parent has joined the new MGM, which is located in an anonymous high-rise. She’ll have to make her own history. When I asked her what makes a good studio executive, she responded: “You have to follow what’s going on in the culture. You’re making decisions about films that won’t be in the theaters for two years, so you have to be connected to people, to life, to what’s in the zeitgeist. I know it’s easy to be thrown off track, but you have to be true to your vision.”

Parent must have read my mind, because she fell silent for a moment, before saying, “When other people don’t believe, you have to believe.” That’s her real new job at MGM, turning a town of skeptics into believers.

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The Big Picture runs Tuesdays in Calendar. E-mail ideas or criticism to patrick.goldstein @latimes.com.