Columbia’s Film Drought : Studio Has Released Only Two Movies So Far This Year

More studio films are due to open in 1994 than in any year since 1988. But you’d never know it from looking at the Columbia Pictures schedule. During the first five months of this year, the studio distributed only two movies--compared to seven during the same period in 1993. From mid-February through mid-June, when “City Slickers II” is due to hit the screens, not a single Columbia release will have surfaced.

The situation is unusual for a major Hollywood studio--particularly one with pockets as deep as those of Sony Corp., which bought Columbia and TriStar Pictures in 1989. Though part of the dry spell can be chalked up to the fact that Mike Nichols’ “Wolf” was pushed back from March to June, the four-month void, industry observers say, reflects a marked lack of depth.

“Various management changes have led to an ongoing transitional period, which can occasionally result in a thinning of the release schedule,” says Lisbeth Barron, a senior vice president at S.G. Warburg, an investment management firm. “And Columbia obviously feels it’s not prudent to rush what movies it has out. The caution also reflects the fact that Sony is watching the performance of its purchase with a lot of interest. The more familiar it becomes with the movie business, the more it realizes how volatile it is.”

Columbia’s refusal to reshuffle the schedule also reflects a lesson learned from last summer’s “Last Action Hero” fiasco: As eager as the studio is to bolster its paltry 2.7% market share, release dates should not take precedence over everything else.

“We considered moving ‘Karate Kid 4’ and ‘Blankman’ up, but didn’t want to panic,” says Lisa Henson, Columbia’s head of production. “Though the movies were far ahead of schedule, we needed time to build awareness.”

It would be easy to assume that the failure of the $80-million-plus “Last Action Hero”--along with other costly flops like “Lost in Yonkers,” “Geronimo” and “I’ll Do Anything”--depleted last year’s development and production budgets and led to the current shortfall. Not so, say industry analysts. Such funds, they point out, are allocated in advance. Though cash flow at Columbia was tight at times, the root of the problem was more creative than fiscal.

For starters, “Last Action Hero” consumed a disproportionate amount of time and energy--studio denials to the contrary. (“The only impact was on our sleep patterns . . . and then only for a couple of months after testing began last May,” insists Sidney Ganis, vice chairman of Columbia Pictures.) Mark Canton, chairman of Columbia/TriStar Pictures, was integrally involved in day-to-day production and post-production of the movie, which also turned into a major distraction for ex-production president Michael Nathanson and executive vice president of production Barry Josephson.

“A good six months before the release of the film last summer, Columbia was obsessed with making the movie and finishing it by the announced release date,” observes entertainment lawyer David Colden. “Because the focus was on the present rather than the future, the studio wasn’t as aggressive in developing material.”

That was an oversight Columbia could ill afford, since, late in 1991, the studio had decided to place its bets on internal development instead of on the costly outside acquisition that characterized the early days of the Peter Guber-Jon Peters regime. No longer was it routinely laying out a fortune to buy star “packages” like “A League of Their Own” or $1 million to a first-time writer for “Radio Flyer,” a box-office bomb. And several expensive projects haven’t congealed as quickly as hoped. Getting a film greenlighted at Columbia has also been tough. Without an important relationship with a filmmaker in the Columbia family, a deal with the studio or heavy-duty A-list talent attached, a writer’s chance of selling a project ranged from remote to none.

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This year, the studio will release 14 to 16 movies--compared with 20 in 1993. One-third of them, including three this summer, are produced by Castle Rock Entertainment, recently purchased by Ted Turner after negotiations between Columbia and the independent fizzled out. Castle Rock’s domestic distribution deal with Columbia expires in 1997, provided it delivers the agreed-upon number of films by that date.

“You can’t blame it all on us,” says a producer of Columbia’s current plight. “It’s very demoralizing. You can only be a ‘volume’ producer if the person buying says ‘yes.’ ”

“Yes,” by all accounts, was a rare occurrence under the regime of Sony Pictures president Alan Levine and ex-president of the Motion Picture Group Jonathan Dolgen, who recently left to become chairman of Viacom Entertainment Group. After sounding out Sony Pictures Entertainment chairman Peter Guber about the movies he wanted to make, Canton had to contend with the business end, where resistance--to movies ranging from “Groundhog Day” and “The Age of Innocence” to “Geronimo”--was a given.

“Every time out was a fight,” recalls one executive. “Insisting that movies come in for $4 million or $5 million less than requested precluded getting the star power necessary for a green light. We lost a lot of opportunities to assemble movies.”

Too many producers and too little access to what product there was contributed to the exodus of talent such as the Laurie MacDonald/Walter Parkes team and Michael Douglas. Yet Irwin Winkler (“Raging Bull”) has no complaints. The studio recently shelled out $1.5 million for George Dawes Green’s upcoming book “The Juror,” plus a hefty sum to screenwriter Ted Tally (“Silence of the Lambs”) for the screen adaptation Winkler is set to produce.

Last summer’s arrival of Henson--a Warner Bros. colleague of Canton and daughter of the late Jim Henson--was both a shot in the arm and another bump on Columbia’s production path. New management frequently discards the material of its predecessor--and Henson is said to have been displeased with her inheritance.

“We didn’t take all the high-profile projects and throw them away,” Henson says. “The only movie that was derailed after I arrived was Barbet Schroeder’s ‘Before and After.’ Almost everything we’re making was in some form of development already . . . and no four-month hiatuses are planned in the future.”

The last couple of months have seen signs of a turnaround. Four films are before the cameras and two others are due to start by late July. Kenneth Branagh’s “Sense and Sensibility”--written by and starring Emma Thompson--was greenlighted two weeks ago. Columbia producer Doug Wick (“Wolf”), for one, is optimistic: “We’ve got a great boat and a big sail--and the wind is on the rise.”

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If Winkler detects a “discernible lift” in Columbia’s spirits, those at TriStar are flagging. Though the sister studio has released six films this year for a 9% market share, there’s the feeling that Canton--who took over from studio chief Mike Medavoy in January--has concentrated more on his initial charge than on his newly adopted one.

TriStar President Marc Platt and head of production Stacey Snider were said to be frustrated by Canton’s lack of organization and the difficulty of getting projects approved. But with Mike Newell’s “Old Friends” and the big-budget “Jumanji” given a “go” in recent weeks, Platt says he’s encouraged.

“The success of Sony depends on the success of both studios,” says the executive. “And now that Mark has had time to familiarize himself with TriStar’s projects, people and process, he’s become a very effective leader.”

If Canton has his hands full, industry veterans say this, too, will pass. The film industry is basically an endurance test, they observe, in which today’s crises become yesterday’s news.

“While a four-month vacuum is not a good sign, neither does it have to be life-threatening,” says Harold Vogel, an entertainment industry analyst with Merrill Lynch and Co. “All you need is a big movie or two. Universal was way down in market share and, after ‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘Schindler’s List,’ shot right up again.”