Is Sony Pictures’ Calley Minding the Movie Pipeline?

Sony Pictures chief John Calley is in the enviable position of capitalizing on the success of the former regime’s handpicked movies, but after nearly nine months at the studio’s helm, he still hasn’t given birth to one of his own productions.

Hollywood insiders are beginning to ask, what gives?

All sorts of explanations are being postulated, including a provocative though arguably farfetched one that the studio’s lack of spending on newly conceived productions is more intentional than incidental.

According to this theory, Sony is more concerned with showing a clean balance sheet than with having future movies in anticipation of an eventual sale or partial spinoff of its entertainment assets. And what better way to achieve that than by hanging on to the dollars flowing in from Sony’s remarkable box-office run with such hits as “Air Force One,” “Men in Black,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Jerry Maguire”?

Sony officials dismissed that scenario, pointing out that Sony Corp. chief Nobuyuki Idei’s mantra continues to be that the studio is not for sale. However, he has never ruled out the possibility of a public offering of the entertainment assets at some point.

One prominent talent agent suggested that perhaps Calley was hesitant to green-light a new slate of movies for fear it wouldn’t live up to the hot streak of the current program.

Dogged by years of management turmoil at its Columbia and TriStar movie units and a prolonged box-office drought, Sony has the top year-to-date market share (23.2%) among distributors with a total box-office gross of $839 million, more than double last year’s 9.7% and $327 million for the same period.

Sony executives say the dearth of new product is attributable to the routine transition from one management team to the next. Sources on the lot also note that the slowdown is due to a paucity of strong development projects left over from previous regimes.

“We inherited a pretty bare cupboard,” says one top Sony executive.

Sony executives say they are in the throes of packaging a number of star vehicles including Ray Stark’s long-in-the-works “Houdini,” which Paul Verhoeven will direct and Tom Cruise may headline, and Wolfgang Petersen’s “Endurance,” which Mel Gibson opted not to do in favor of making “Lethal Weapon 4” for Warner Bros.

Calley, who took over last November and has been busy stabilizing a studio that was in major disarray, lost a few months assembling his own executive team to oversee creative and business affairs at Sony’s Columbia and TriStar Pictures.

But, that doesn’t fully explain why he has been so slow to pull the trigger on new movies.

At the last minute, Calley canceled a scheduled interview with The Times this week after agreeing to discuss why the green-lighting process seems to be in slow motion.

Sources at Sony and in Hollywood’s creative community say Calley and his creative team have a much more cautious operating style than their predecessors and rivals.

During his tenure as head of the smaller United Artists studio, Calley green-lit few movies. Columbia Pictures president Amy Pascal had a similar reputation as the former movie chief at Turner Pictures.

But Sony executives make no apologies for their modus operandi.

“John has no desire to make mediocre movies just for the sake of saying we’re in business,” says Lucy Fisher, vice chair of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Group. “John is much too much a professional to rush films before they’re ready.”

Sources say Sony executives decided to scrap plans to make a $60-million sequel to “Bad Boys” with a first-time director after being dissatisfied with the script and will wait to put the project together with original “Bad Boys” director Michael Bay and stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.

There’s certainly an argument to be made for not acting too hastily, given how many flops have resulted from movies that were rushed into production prematurely, including Sony’s “The Devil’s Own” and “Last Action Hero.”

But are Calley and his team being overly cautious and pragmatic in a business that relies somewhat on creative spontaneity and following the gut, not just intellect?

“John’s not a gambler. He and his executives want to see every ‘i’ dotted and ‘t’ crossed before they jump,” says a source associated with the studio. “They try to operate as if there is a system and formula for success, and that’s a mistake.”

Calley also has a much more conservative philosophy about the process of developing and putting movies together than many of his competitors.

He opts for far fewer projects in development--50 to 75 versus hundreds--and a higher development-to-production ratio than most studios.

Calley has long stated that he feels no pressure from corporate headquarters in Tokyo to rush a prescribed number of movies into production strictly to have titles to fill out the pipeline.

At the same time, he knows that worldwide distribution systems need a certain amount of product to pay for overhead.

“You can’t run a major studio and not have new movies,” says a rival studio executive.

So far, Calley has only pushed into production projects that were well underway before he joined the studio, including next year’s “Godzilla” (due out May 20) and “The Mask of Zorro” (March).

Sony will in fact have plenty of movies to release between now and the first half of next year (thanks in part to output deals with Peter Guber’s Mandalay Entertainment and Mike Medavoy’s Phoenix Pictures), but so far has only two big movies on tap for summer, “Godzilla” and “Step Mom,” starring Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon, which begins production in the fall.

Beyond that the studio could face a major gap in its release schedule if Calley doesn’t get off the mark soon.

Critics say Calley is the luckiest executive in Hollywood.