Company Town : TV Continues to Lure Film Heavyweights

With the “Dream Team” juggernaut of Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg and David Geffen making their first big splash in television instead of the film business under the Capital Cities/ABC deal announced Monday, executives better known for TV are likewise crossing over to movies.

The walls that once strictly divided “TV people” from “film people” fell a long time ago. But now the cross-pollination is so common that no one bats an eye when “Home Improvement” star Tim Allen also pops up in the box office hit, “The Santa Clause.”

Executives such as Katzenberg and Spielberg have long juggled projects in both worlds, even though their public cachet comes from movies. Cable TV is a magnet for film producers seeking more creative freedom, as symbolized by such projects as “Barbarians at the Gate.” And TV producers who have made tens of millions of dollars from prime-time series often see the film world as the next big challenge, or at least a way to get out from under laugh tracks.

Two of the top TV production companies are among the most zealously committed to movies.

Wind Dancer Production Group, the team behind “Roseanne” and “Home Improvement,” has more than 10 projects in development around town. Witt-Thomas of “Golden Girls” and “The John Laroquette Show” fame is similarly ramping up movie production, after dabbling in the business with hits such as “Dead Poets Society” and misses such as “Final Analysis.”

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“The biggest players in this industry are not drawing lines anymore between TV and film,” said Wind Dancer President Rick Leed. “People in TV aspire to movies for the art form more than the money, and because it’s a stretch. And people in film are going to TV because you’re bank account does not distinguish between money made in TV and money made in film.”

Wind Dancer has only one movie to its credit so far: Disney’s low-budget “Wild Hearts Can’t Be Broken.” But partners Matt Williams, Carmen Finestra and David McFadzean are largely spending their own money to develop everything from specialized to commercial projects.

They include “Since I Fell for You,” a love story under development at Touchstone Pictures; “Ump,” a tale about a female umpire, at 20th Century Fox, and an unnamed project by Robert Schenkkan, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, “The Kentucky Cycle.”

Leed says Wind Dancer’s goal is to complete at least one movie a year while simultaneously producing a handful of TV series. The company is based at Disney’s Burbank lot under a TV distribution deal that has one year to go, but is a free agent when it comes to film. One of its creative executives is Theresa Welty, who formerly worked for star film director Ridley Scott. Leed says the industry resistance to TV people making movies has largely eased.

“Most of the boundaries fade (if the project is good),” Leed said. “Once in a while someone may write us off as TV people, but those are people having knee-jerk reactions.”

Paul Junger Witt of Witt-Thomas says another reason barriers have fallen is that so many senior film executives used to work in TV, including Walt Disney Co. Chairman Michael Eisner, Warner Bros. Co-Chairman Robert Daly and 20th Century Fox Chairman Peter Chernin. “There’s a synergy now rather than a barrier,” Witt said.

Witt and Tony Thomas first partnered some 20 years ago on the acclaimed TV movie, “Brian’s Song.” They intended to move into features next, but instead became involved in the lucrative sitcom world of “Soap,” “Golden Girls,” “Benson” and “The John Laroquette Show.”

Now, after dabbling in the production of movies such as “Dead Poets Society,” they have committed to making feature films a significant part of their business.

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“TV is an all-consuming medium,” Witt said. “It doesn’t leave you a lot of time to do anything else. But our success opened a lot of doors when it came to the film company.”

The movie unit, headed by Stuart Oken, has “Mixed Nuts” with Steve Martin due for release from TriStar Pictures next month. Also on the fast track at Warner Bros., where Witt-Thomas is based, are the science fiction tale, “Man-Plus;” “Eureka,” a remake of the 1950 comedy, “The Man in the White Suit,” and “3 Days to Half Dome,” a fantasy about what might have occurred if environmentalist John Muir had kidnaped President Theodore Roosevelt.

Witt concedes that the company may always be better known for TV, but says Warner Bros. and the other studios are aware that they are committed to making at least two movies a year.

“You have to deal with the fact that you can be worth more money to someone doing television than film,” he added. “But that’s just a question of intent. And at this point everyone knows that we’re very serious (about film). . . . The two areas are totally different forms of expression. Having done so many series and so many episodes, it’s not that we’ve run out of things to say. We’re just eager to express ourselves in different ways.”

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Marvel Comics says “Spider-Man” is about to become a father after years of such non-procreative activity as “vanquishing villains and capturing criminals.” The “amazingly agile, albeit ever angst-ridden” Spider-Man reacts to the news with jubilation, according to Marvel. But this being comic book land, storm clouds loom over the blessed event.

“The filaments of fear gather around the young couple as they plan for their baby’s birth,” says the announcement, which goes on to pose these questions: “Will Mary Jane (Mrs. Spider-Man) be forced to raise her child as a single mother? Will Aunt May leave Spider-Man and Mary Jane distraught and rudderless? Will the baby be a boy or a girl or, because of Spider-Man’s irradiated blood, some other species entirely?”

Oh, no, not a studio executive.

* THEIR FIRST DEAL

The “Dream Team” will develop TV shows for Capital Cities/ABC. A1