Changes at Warner Bros.--Will It Be Smooth Sailing?

Big films. Big stars. Big directors.

As the era of Warner Bros. co-chairmen Bob Daly and Terry Semel winds down following the announcement they are stepping down at year’s end, the slate of films now in the studio pipeline in many ways reflects the style and talent relationships these two powerful executives have cultivated over the past two decades.

Only last week, for example, Clint Eastwood--long a favorite of the studio’s top brass--began principal photography on the Warner Bros. sci-fi film “Space Cowboys,” the story of a retired Air Force pilot who is recruited to retrieve a malfunctioning satellite.

This week, filming get underway on director Wolfgang Petersen’s “The Perfect Storm,” starring George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg. The film is based on the nonfiction bestseller about fishermen stranded at sea in what was called the “storm of the century.”

On Aug. 9, principal photography begins on the Keanu Reeves-Gene Hackman football film, “The Replacements,” a story rooted in the 1987 National Football League players’ strike; and, on Aug. 29, Val Kilmer goes before the cameras in the space thriller “Mars,” which is being filmed in Australia and Iceland. Meanwhile, Oliver Stone is busy finishing “Any Given Sunday,” a football-themed movie starring Al Pacino and Cameron Diaz.

Just as Sony delivered hits like “Jerry Maguire” and “Air Force One” in 1997 after then-studio chief Mark Canton was forced to step down, and Universal’s studio chief Casey Silver left before he could see movies he greenlighted like “The Mummy” and “Patch Adams” became box-office hits, Daly and Semel, too, are leaving with some potential hits waiting to be released.

One movie that is generating terrific buzz far in advance of its fall opening, for example, is “Three Kings,” starring Clooney, Wahlberg and Ice Cube in an adventure about American soldiers in Iraq on the trail of a cache of gold.

Meanwhile, studio executives are salivating over the potential box-office riches that could be generated by the Nov. 12 release of “Pokemon,” an animated Japanese film based on the popular game that is sweeping the nation. Warners also has Oscar aspirations for Tom Hanks’ next film, a prison drama called “The Green Mile,” which is scheduled to open in mid-December.

More than any other studio, Hollywood observers say, Warners has the resources and the inventory that should enable its production staff to withstand any corporate turmoil.

After all, this is a studio that waited 17 years to develop “The Bodyguard” until it found the right stars in Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. And this is the studio that continues to maintain close ties to many of Hollywood’s biggest stars and has shown with “Batman” and “Lethal Weapon” that it can create a valuable franchise if given the right property.

The problem for Warners--and, indeed, all studios--is that making movies has never been more difficult. “Years ago, we’d get a script, get a cast and settle on a budget and make the movie,” said one Warners executive. “Now, every time you greenlight a movie, there’s a crisis and you’re panicking all the way through production. If it’s a hit, you say, ‘Well, we dodged that bullet,’ and if it’s not a success, you’re sitting there with third-degree burns looking for a piece of gauze.”

For Filmmakers, It’s Business as Usual

Many believe that Warners must wean itself off the habit of relying on established stars to make movies, and reach out to young, cutting-edge talent that might be more in tune with younger audiences--just as New Line Cinema has done with films like “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”

“I don’t sense a lot of panic,” said one mid-level studio executive. “I think this company has a lot of deep roots. I think if you look at Warner Bros., we’ve always had a certain cast of talent we relied on. Now, the job is updating that cast and dealing with newer people--growing them or getting into business with those people who are the next wave.”

Interviews with various producers on the Warner Bros. lot indicate that far from a studio in turmoil, the mood from a filmmaking standpoint is business as usual.

In Baltimore, where he is making last-minute preparations for “The Replacements,” producer Dylan Sellers surveyed the corporate upheaval underway a continent away and frankly admitted the point man on his film is studio production chief Lorenzo di Bonaventura, not Daly and Semel.

“The one guy calling the shots on this project is Lorenzo,” Sellers said. “As long as he’s there, he’s the man. For people who have a relationship with Bob and Terry, their departure will be very significant, but for those of us who don’t deal with Bob and Terry, it won’t make that much of a difference.

“I’ve got one job 18 hours a day and that’s trying to make a great movie,” Sellers added. “If it turns out great and they love it, [the studio] will put a lot into it; if not, they won’t.”

While a new studio chief will invariably cause some projects now on the front burner to be jettisoned, filmmakers and studio insiders say the last thing Warners needs right now is to spread panic throughout the creative community. “I don’t sense anything slowing down at all,” said one producer. “The production has got to move forward. Bob and Terry ran the corporation, they are not the heads of production. There’s a big difference.”

Lauren Shuler-Donner, one of the producers of Stone’s “Any Given Sunday,” noted that Warners is the one studio that has a long history of consistency. But she conceded that it is human nature for people to worry whenever change is imminent.

“You’re always uneasy with the unknown,” Shuler-Donner said. “It’s uneasy until we know who’s coming in.”

A mid-level Warners executive, when asked how the Daly-Semel announcement is affecting production, put it this way:

“There are no delays; it’s business as usual. We’re having all the same meetings with all the same faces. I think Bob and Terry set the tone for the studio culture. I would worry more about the whole movie business than about Warner Bros.”

David Foster, who with co-producer Peter Macgregor-Scott is developing a script about a terrorist bombing called “Collateral Damage,” said it is useless to worry about who will take over the studio because, in the final analysis, good scripts will attract talent and the studio will make pictures with the right script and the right talent.

“All this concern over do we know who the new management team will be, will they throw it out, do they have different tastes, I disagree with that,” Foster said. “First of all, Lorenzo di Bonaventura is here. He’s the guy we deal with--him and his staff. We don’t deal with Terry Semel and Bob Daly every time there is a problem and every time there is a rewrite. That is [Di Bonaventura’s] responsibility.”

For nearly two decades, Warner Bros. not only sported one of the most stable filmmaking environments, it remained at or near the top of market share year after year. But in recent years, the crown became tarnished as the studio released a string of big-budget bombs like “The Postman,” “Mad City” and “Fathers’ Day.”

Only in the last seven months has the studio begun to rebound with hits like “You’ve Got Mail,” “Analyze This” and “The Matrix.” And, while this summer’s “Wild Wild West” has been a disappointment, it has made more than $100 million and should do well in foreign release and on video.

As one studio insider put it: “I think Warners Bros. is no worse off than anyone else who is making movies.”