A Studio That Says, ‘Roll ‘Em’

Development hell is a place no writer or director in Hollywood wants to be. It is the movie business’s equivalent of limbo, the place where your project--after being optioned by a studio--is rewritten, recast and endlessly fiddled with, but never made.

Bill Block, Mark Curcio and Amir Malin--the three men who took over beleaguered video and film distributor Live Entertainment a year ago this month, changed its name to Artisan and loudly vowed to turn it into the preeminent independent motion picture studio--know all about development hell.

And they’ve decided to do away with it.

“Studio X might offer you $500,000 to option your script. We’ll pay you $150,000 to spend on getting your movie made,” explained Curcio, Artisan’s chief executive officer. “[Use it to] hire a line producer. Polish the script. You want to direct? Over the next two months, let’s get this project ready to go. Come back in 60 days and we’ll give you a go / no-go. That’s our notion of development.”

It’s an unconventional strategy. But then, it’s an unusual trio that runs Artisan these days. Block, a former ICM agent, and Malin, a former partner at October Films, are the company’s presidents. They set Artisan’s creative course. Curcio, a former financial consultant at the Boston-based Bain & Co., which now owns the majority stake in Artisan, watches the bottom line.

Together, they have agreed that making quick yes-or-no decisions about greenlighting projects is cheaper than keeping scores of unfinished projects simmering. But the three men seek to do more than pinch pennies. By moving swiftly and keeping filmmakers happy, they want to forge a reputation as the mini-studio where passion projects get made.

“We’re trying to do something here that we believe in very strongly: Offer an alternative,” said Malin, admitting that as the new studio on the block, they have a lot to prove--both to their competitors and to individual writers and directors. “Right now, we will spit blood [for] every one of our films. Because success in this town breeds success.”

Lately, that attitude has helped them sign some big names. “The Ninth Gate,” Artisan’s $30-million supernatural thriller that is currently shooting in Europe, teams director Roman Polanski and actor Johnny Depp. Respected screenwriter David Koepp has agreed to direct his script “A Stir of Echoes,” a $12-million to $15-million thriller starring Kevin Bacon. And director Steven Soderbergh is following his critically acclaimed “Out of Sight” with a movie for Artisan: “The Limey,” a $6-million to $8-million action-drama set in Los Angeles.

The company has also made some high-profile acquisitions, buying the worldwide distribution rights to Sundance Film Festival favorite “Pi,” Darren Aronofsky’s directorial debut that opened last week; and North American rights to Ken Loach’s “My Name Is Joe.” Loach’s film won the best actor prize for Peter Mullan at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and opens in October.

As they begin to unveil their slate, seeking to fill niche markets that are opening up as once-indie-oriented studios begin to make bigger-budget pictures, industry veterans are watching closely.

“They’re poised to launch into orbit,” said Brad Krevoy, president of the Motion Picture Corp. of America, who was once an executive at Orion Pictures. “They’re in the right place at the right time [to] basically take over the indie slot that Orion, New Line and Miramax once occupied. With a little bit of luck, they’re unstoppable.”

Artisan has a built-in source of revenue to draw upon: its formidable library, which with 2,600 film titles is one of the world’s largest. Among the blockbusters whose video and DVD rights they sell around the world: “Total Recall,” “Basic Instinct” and “T2: Judgment Day.” They own all rights to the romantic 1987 film “Dirty Dancing,” which despite its age still ships 450,000 units a year.

Artisan has also attracted new investors, most notably investment bank Allen & Co. (one of the original backers of October Films), which is also serving as the mini-studio’s financial advisor. This year, for the first time, the company was invited to send someone to Herbert J. Allen’s corporate retreat in Sun Valley, Idaho, where media moguls gather each year to work and play.

This year was also Artisan’s first visit to Cannes--an occasion that Malin jokingly called the company’s “coming-out party” on the international film scene. Artisan, which had just beefed up its global sales operation by teaming with London-based Summit Entertainment, threw a swank cocktail party on the beach for Polanski and Depp and was an aggressive bidder for the best films of the festival.

On the home front, the company has set out to shed the schlocky image that clung to Live Entertainment, known more for films such as “Candyman 2” and for its slain chairman (Jose Menendez, who was murdered by his sons) than for quality product.

“We’re not a little piss-ant company,” said Curcio, noting that its revenues are expected to easily top $200 million this fiscal year. “But we have a little bit of the Rodney Dangerfield syndrome. We are tarnished by the past.”

In addition to shedding the Live name, Artisan improved its New York offices, moving out of Manhattan’s corporate Pennsylvania Plaza to a spacious loft overlooking the Hudson River in funky TriBeCa, the same neighborhood where Miramax is housed. Artisan also upgraded its headquarters here, vacating its dingy Van Nuys offices for a 41,000-square-foot spread (complete with a planned 55-seat screening room) in Santa Monica’s hip MTV building.

John Ptak, a senior agent at Creative Artists Agency who was a consultant for Artisan when it attempted to buy French production company CIBY 2000, says, “You have to really hand it to these guys for turning around a company that used to be the last door at the end of the hallway.”

Some people still see Artisan that way. In the words of one screenwriter who asked not to be named: “How many movies have they made? If anything I write gets bought by them, it’ll be made at such a low level that it’s not worth it.”

But that perception appears to be changing. Soderbergh, for example, said Artisan’s enthusiasm for his project led him to sign with them without waiting to hear back from other studios he had pitched.

“We approached them with the project, they looked at it and said, ‘Yes, let’s go,’ within a day or two. They didn’t monkey around,” Soderbergh recalled.

“It was nice to be in a room where before you finished a sentence they knew what you were talking about,” he said.

Unprompted, Soderbergh and Koepp--whose writing credits include such films as “Jurassic Park,” “Mission: Impossible” and Brian De Palma’s upcoming “Snake Eyes”--used the same word to describe what Artisan offered that big studios didn’t: clarity.

“I’ve found them to be incredibly straightforward,” Koepp said. “A lot of movies get diluted by being rewritten and re-shot. What was once original is watered down. Maybe it’s because [the Artisan executives] haven’t been burned by enough filmmakers yet to be as deeply distrustful as they should be, but they’re interested in betting on the filmmaker and following the bet.”

Aronofsky, whose says his black-and-white movie “Pi” is about “God, math and bad-ass Jews,” said, “Artisan wants to fill the vacuum for edgy films.” He said that he had initially expected the company to request changes in “Pi.” “My friends who [have had their films acquired] have gone through re-cutting and re-shooting hell. But Malin said, ‘If you touch one [expletive] frame of that brilliant piece of work, I’ll cut your head off.’ ”

Director David Veloz, who was about to shoot the feature film “Permanent Midnight,” starring Ben Stiller, for the company when the new owners took over, had the unusual experience of having his budget increased.

“Everything I’ve asked for from Bill [Block] . . . he’s been there,” said Veloz, whose movie--based on Jerry Stahl’s memoir about his struggle with heroin addiction--opens in the fall. “Extended post-production time, money for re-shooting, increased music and sound budgets. He’s never done anything but believe in this film.”

Block calls this approach “the most exciting way to get behind a picture,” and he seems to have similar enthusiasm for every Artisan film.

“When Hype Williams first came to us, he had directed a lot of terrific MTV videos,” he said of the young African American writer-director whose debut feature, “Belly,” will be released by Artisan in November. “He had a unique visual signature. He had a unique voice as a writer. We said, ‘Go!’ ”

Other upcoming Artisan projects include “The Cruise,” a documentary about a New York City tour guide that will be screened at this year’s Toronto Film Festival, and several films that are scheduled for a 1999 release: “The Breaks,” a comedy written by and starring stand-up comic Mitch Mullany as a white ne’er-do-well who is adopted by a successful African American family; “The Lost Son,” a thriller starring Nastassja Kinski and Daniel Auteuil; and the Spanish film “Open Your Eyes.”

If all that weren’t proof enough that Artisan means business, the mini-studio has this in common with seemingly every major studio in town: It has a project in the works with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. The script, which is currently being rewritten, is based on the true story of a group of Stanford University students who were part of a mock prison experiment that went awry in 1971. DiCaprio is developing the project with, among other people, his manager Rick Yorn and his father, George.

“We’re not going to do 30 to 40 films a year. No dig against Harvey and Bob [Weinstein, the founders of Miramax], but we don’t want to lose sight of our films,” said Malin, who expects Artisan to make or acquire eight to 10 films annually.

“We’re going to make horror films, thrillers, action movies, comedies and dramas,” he said. “One thing we can promise you is they’re not going to be derivative. They may not succeed. But there will be that brand identification of Artisan on each film.”