De Laurentiis Trying Comeback in Hollywood

Dino De Laurentiis, the Italian-born independent movie producer whose string of big-budget box-office bombs during the 1980s helped drive his production company into bankruptcy in 1988, said Friday that he has formed a new movie firm with European businessman and longtime friend Giancarlo Parretti.

The new movie production and distribution company, called Dino De Laurentiis Communications, will take over the activities of Film & Television Co., a motion picture production firm started by De Laurentiis in 1988 after the collapse of De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, his ill-fated publicly held company. DEG filed for protection from creditors in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in August, 1988.

Film & Television Co. is currently finishing the Michael Cimino film “Desperate Hours.” De Laurentiis, 70, says his new company will start production on a half-dozen other projects this year.

“This company will differ from my other entities in that DDLC will concentrate on producing films with larger budgets, top stars and creative talents,” De Laurentiis said through a spokesman. He added that “Desperate Hours,” starring Mickey Rourke and Anthony Hopkins, represents the kind of films that he hopes to produce.

De Laurentiis did not release details on how deep the pockets of his financial backers are. But Parretti last year took control of the independent production company Cannon Group, now called Pathe Communications.

Despite the failure of De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, one Wall Street analyst said De Laurentiis was too talented to be written off yet.

“The key thing that happened last time was he didn’t have his domestic distribution and marketing covered,” said Lee S. Isgur, an entertainment industry analyst for Paine Webber. Big budgets and big stars are “not what’s going to make or break his (new) company,” Isgur continued. “What’s going to make or break it is the whole financial structure. For the moment, the public markets are probably closed to him. On the other hand, the guy has a track record with talent” and can probably raise substantial financing from private sources.

A splashy re-entry into Hollywood would be in keeping with the early movie career of De Laurentiis, the son of a Naples pasta maker who earned a reputation as the Cecil B. DeMille of Italy by producing big-budget costume dramas such as “The Bible,” “Ulysses” and “Barbarella.” De Laurentiis also made several critically acclaimed films with Federico Fellini including “La Strada” and “Nights of Cabiria.”

But his performance in the U.S. film market has been mixed. While there were occasional critical or commercial successes such as “Serpicio” (1974) and “Three Days of the Condor” (1975), De Laurentiis in the 1980s produced a long and expensive list of commercial failures: “Ragtime” (1981), “The Bounty” (1984), “Dune” (1984), “Red Sonja” (1985) and “Tai-pan” (1986), among others.

Still, the indefatigable De Laurentiis persevered through it all, pursuing an ambitious plan to establish DEG as a major player in Hollywood. He bought a movie distribution company, Embassy Pictures, and a film library. Then he added a 32-acre movie studio in Wilmington, N.C.

Yet just three years after going public in 1985 and raising a total of $240 million from various banks and stock offerings, the company filed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition, listing $199.7 million in liabilities and $163 million in assets.