How Outlaw Captured ‘Santa’ : Movies: The low-key independent film company has attracted the attention and respect of Hollywood with its hit ‘The Santa Clause.’

Outlaw Productions has one of the lowest profiles of any independent movie company in Hollywood. It has never been housed in a conventional office--let alone on a studio lot. Its principals have never even hired a personal publicist, despite its having produced 10 movies over the past seven years, including 1989’s art-house darling “sex, lies and videotape.”

But low-key may be a thing of the past at Outlaw headquarters--a spacious three-story house in the hills of Studio City--where the phones are ringing more than they ever have and the fax machine adjacent to the kitchen is humming.

Hollywood’s come calling at the company that produced this season’s runaway hit, “The Santa Clause,” starring Tim Allen. As of last weekend, the family comedy had grossed $96 million and is showing no signs of slowing down over the holidays.

“Everyone is congratulatory and then they want to talk about what business they can do with you. There have been a lot of phone calls . . . it’s terrific,” says Brian Reilly, who along with Outlaw owners Robert Newmyer and Jeff Silver produced the movie for Disney.

“We’re having a great few weeks here! And we’ve certainly seen a higher volume of scripts than was the case before,” says Newmyer. “We’re reading into the night.”

“And they’re better scripts,” adds Reilly.

Just like most of the projects they’ve brought to the big screen, the producers optioned the script to “The Santa Clause,” written by first-time screenwriters and former stand-up comics Steve Rudnick and Leo Benvenuti, out of their own pockets.

“It’s the best $10,000 we ever spent,” said Reilly, who was the on-set producer of the movie when it shot earlier this year on location in Toronto.

“Santa” is the first major studio hit for Outlaw, which--with the exception of “sex, lies” (which cost $1.2 million and grossed around $25 million)--has struggled with its share of duds, including “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” “The Opposite Sex,” “Crossing the Bridge,” “Indian Summer,” “Mr. Baseball” and “Wagons East.”

But in June, 1992, Reilly received a phone call from an agent at Creative Artists Agency that would change Outlaw’s luck. He pitched him the idea of “Santa Clause” on behalf of his clients, Rudnick and Benvenuti.

The Outlaw producers read the script and “within a few days, we had the writers in to meet with us because it was so fresh,” says Reilly. “We then optioned the script with our own money,” says Newmyer. Several drafts later the producers were ready to approach the studios for production money.

Meanwhile, the “Santa” script had found its way into the hands of Tim Allen, star of the hit ABC sitcom “Home Improvement,” through his personal managers. At the time, Jimmy Miller, who managed the screenwriters, was partnered with Allen’s managers, Richard Baker and Rick Maccina.

Miller remembers that when he talked to his two partners about the script “they flipped and said it was the perfect movie for Tim.” Miller, who’s now in partnership with Eric Gold (their clients include Jim Carrey), serves as the executive producer on “Santa” along with Baker and Maccina. Baker said he immediately moved to give the script to Allen, but “he was too busy to read it.” Allen, recalls Baker, did not read it until months later while vacationing in Palm Springs.

“Tim finally read the script and got very excited about it,” his manager said. “But Tim Allen was not Outlaw’s first pick. They were hoping to attract actors like Tom Hanks and a director like Ron Howard.”

Reilly readily admits that.

“They educated us about who he (Tim) was. They sent us tapes of his shows and we were really taken by him. We weren’t looking to attach talent at the time. They (Allen’s managers) came to us.” But the producers said it didn’t take much to convince them Allen was Santa. Allen himself contacted Jeffrey Katzenberg, then chairman of Disney Studios--which produced “Home Improvement” and had aggressively been looking for just the right movie vehicle to launch the TV star’s big-screen career--to say he had found the project he wanted to do.

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Katzenberg read the script on Thanksgiving Day, 1992, and “fell in love with it for Tim,” says Newmyer, recounting how when he returned from the holiday weekend on Sunday “my answering machine was full of messages from (then Hollywood Pictures’ president) Ricardo Mestres, (his senior vice president) Charles Hirschorn and Jeff Katzenberg.” Each message, Newmyer says, “was more irate than the last: ‘Where are you?’ ‘We want to buy this script!’ ”

Reilly and Silver were brought in on the intense negotiations. Katzenberg insisted on immediately taking the script off the market, demanding that Outlaw close a deal by midnight that night.

“Jeff said, ‘I’m not going to be interested in buying your script tomorrow!’ ” recalls Newmyer. And so a deal was closed. A Disney insider confirmed the studio paid around $500,000 for the script. Outlaw wanted it stipulated in the deal that Disney would put the movie on the fast track and make it early in 1993 for release that Christmas.

But a problem arose: “Tim couldn’t make the movie that year because of some commitments to do stand-up,” says Reilly.

Katzenberg insisted the movie be put on hold for Allen, “because he saw him as the perfect guy for Santa Claus,” says the producer, noting Outlaw agreed to wait. Cameras rolled on the $17-million film in April, 1994.

After the picture wrapped, Katzenberg left Disney and his successor, Joe Roth, came in and gave the movie a major marketing push, reportedly spending more than $20 million in pre-opening costs, a huge amount both by Disney and industry standards.

Outlaw, which collects a producer’s fee, may even wind up sharing in some of the movie’s profits if it grosses as much as expected: more than $150 million in the United States and Canada alone.

Under a deal the company signed a year ago May with Warner Bros. and Fuji Television Network to finance movies as well as to pay for overhead and development, the Outlaw producers are guaranteed a bigger piece of profits if the films they make are successful.

The first film the company has produced under the deal is tentatively titled “Katie,” a $14-million family movie about a 15-year-old boy and a captive gorilla, which Warners will release next year.

As for Outlaw’s future plans? “We’re looking for our next movie right now,” says Newmyer.