DE LAURENTIIS’ EPIC PLAN FOR EMBASSY

Dino De Laurentiis presents . . . “King Kong.” Dino De Laurentiis presents . . . “Flash Gordon.” Dino De Laurentiis presents . . . “Hurricane.”

And now, Dino De Laurentiis presents . . . Embassy Pictures.

Since the announcement 10 days ago that the Coca-Cola Co. had sold Embassy Pictures to De Laurentiis, the questions kicking around Hollywood have been: Will Embassy be just another burst De Laurentiis bubble, or will the flamboyant producer finally have a hit? And, just what is he buying anyway?

Certainly, the budget--he is said to be paying between $35 million and $50 million for Embassy--is in line with most De Laurentiis productions: the two “Conan” movies, “Ragtime,” “Dune,” the upcoming “Tai-Pan.” He rarely thinks small.

De Laurentiis, who launched his producing career in 1948 with the now-classic Italian film “Bitter Rice,” has said he is buying Embassy because he is tired of giving up pay-cable and videocassette markets for his films in order to get American distribution.

His Embassy (or De Laurentiis Pictures or Humungous Inc., whatever he chooses to call it) will release five or six of his productions each year, plus a half-dozen or more pictures he picks up from other independents. De Laurentiis says his company will be an alternative for producers who want to keep their post-theatrical rights.

That sounds almost charitable, but studio people familiar with that old bugaboo of overhead doubt that he can be that magnanimous.

“All film makers think they’re getting cheated by the studios,” said a distribution executive at one of the majors. “They figure that if only they could control their pictures all the way, they’d do better. Well, he’ll find out.”

With Embassy Pictures, which was sold last July to the Coca-Cola Co. along with Embassy’s rich television division, De Laurentiis inherits a payroll of 180 employees, expenses for operating its Century City headquarters and 12 branch offices, and a library of 270 films.

According to sources close to the deal, De Laurentiis did not get Richard Attenborough’s “A Chorus Line,” Rob Reiner’s “The Body” or either of three other unreleased Embassy films, “The Goodbye People,” “Crimewave”and “Saving Grace.” Those films belong to a separate company still owned by former Embassy partners Norman Lear and Jerry Perenchio.

The value of the Embassy library is questionable. “The Graduate” is its most famous title, but most are low-budget action and horror fare. Most Embassy films may already be played out on domestic TV and of little syndication value, but the expanding TV markets abroad give the library new life. Still, it’s clear that De Laurentiis is not buying Embassy for its past.

De Laurentiis is taking over a distribution network that has been hamstrung by a lack of steady product. Without a future slate of films, Embassy’s sales staff has been unable to get consistently good first-run theaters or to hold theaters against competition from the majors.

Most people believe that Rob Reiner’s “The Sure Thing,” a critical hit early this year, would have made $10 million to $20 million more than its $15.5-million gross had it been released by someone else.

“They (Embassy) didn’t have the product to protect ‘The Sure Thing,’ ” said a chain theater film buyer. “Most of us had to pull the film after four weeks, even though it was doing great business, because we’d booked other studios’ movies. Had it been released by a major, we all could have adjusted. But who owes Embassy anything? Nobody!”

De Laurentiis can undoubtedly supply a steady flow of product and has already announced several projects for Embassy’s 1986 schedule. Among them: Michael Cimino’s “Hand Carved Coffins” from the Truman Capote novel; the sequel to De Laurentiis’ 1977 remake of “King Kong,” and “Triple Identity,” an action film starring the suddenly hot Arnold Schwarzenegger.

In the meantime, De Laurentiis is obligated to deliver two more movies to MGM/UA, which can ill afford to lose anything, and one-- “Tai Pan”--to Orion.

De Laurentiis’ Embassy won’t be a major studio right away, but he will have most of the ingredients necessary.

The 65-year-old producer built his own studio complex in North Carolina a few years back and launched it with a series of suspense and horror films based on Stephen King novels and short stories (“Firestarter,” “Dead Zone,” “Cat’s Eye”) and Cimino’s “The Year of the Dragon.” If he follows through with his announced intention of buying a major company in the ancillary market--a cable company, perhaps?--he will indeed be one of the Big Players in town.

People who say they’re bored with the homogenized personalities of the modern studios and the ever-changing cast of colorless chief executives have to acknowledge that things are heating up.

No one knows how Ted Turner will affect MGM once he’s taken over that studio (he reportedly asked the MGM staff why they don’t make more movies like “Gone With the Wind” and “Shane”). Or how newspaper baron Rupert Murdoch will affect 20th Century Fox (imagine the title his New York Post editors could dream up for Fox’s upcoming sequel to “Alien”).

The movies may not get any better, but the news is bound to be more fun.

ROOM WITH VU: When Garth Drabinsky took over the Gordon Theater on La Brea last April, we all knew what he’d do with it: Carve it up into so many 50-seat dens just like those in the Beverly Cineplex, his 14-room rabbit warren on the seventh level of the Beverly Center.

Surprise. The Gordon, renamed Cineplex Odeon Cinema Showcase, reopens Friday with Istvan Szabo’s “Colonel Redl” and it’s as if Drabinsky had turned the clock back nearly 50 years.

The immaculate 800-seat theater is as regal in its refurbished dress as the day in 1938 that it opened. Cineplex Odeon Corp., one of the great success stories of modern movie exhibition, spent $500,000 restoring the Gordon--from its ceiling and wall murals to its Art Deco ticket booth--and is now drawing up plans for a $750,000 restoration of the Fairfax triplex a couple of miles west.

Drabinsky, who started the cineplex concept in Toronto in 1979, said he decided against dicing and slicing the Gordon because he wanted to preserve its architectural integrity and because he didn’t need to.

Even in its most rundown condition, it did first-run business, he says. “Pumping Iron II,” one of the last films to play the Gordon before it closed for renovation, grossed $25,000 the first week.

Cineplex Odeon Corp., which recently bought the Plitt theater chain, is now one of the largest movie operators in North America, and Drabinsky, its president and chief executive officer, says he isn’t through yet in Los Angeles.

The company just got approval to add two 500-seat theaters on the roof level of the Beverly Center, and plans are under way to turn the Century City Plitt theaters into a multiplex.

“I’m determined to offer an alternative to Westwood and Hollywood,” says Drabinsky.

PRICE IS RIGHT: Ivan Reitman, who produced and directed major hits for Frank Price when he was head of Columbia Pictures, will try to work some of the same magic for Price at Universal with “Legal Eagles,” a romantic comedy starring Robert Redford, Debra Winger and Daryl Hannah.

“Legal Eagles” (a working title) will be Redford’s first comedy since “The Sting” and Winger’s first film of any sort since “Terms of Endearment.” (“Mike’s Murder” was released after “Terms” but filmed before.)

Reitman wouldn’t give details about the story line, except to say that Redford plays a district attorney in modern New York City and Winger plays the lawyer he meets and falls in love with during a legal imbroglio involving a performance artist, played by Hannah.

The film goes into production next month with a release scheduled for next June.

Although “Legal Eagles” will feature none of the special optical effects that drove the budget up to $30 million for Reitman’s “Ghostbusters,” Universal doesn’t figure to get off much cheaper.

Neither Reitman nor the studio would comment on the budget, but the above-the-line costs (fees paid to Reitman and his three stars) is expected to be between $7 million and $10 million.

In any event, it’s a coup for Price, who is rumored to be on his way to MGM.

“That would be ironic,” says Reitman, who says his relationship with Price was a major factor in taking “Legal Eagles” to Universal. “I made the deal on ‘Ghostbusters’ with him at Columbia and he left.”