‘Big Daddy’ Does Parent Firm Proud

For Sony-owned Columbia Pictures, the weekend’s stupendous opening of the Adam Sandler comedy “Big Daddy” at $41.5 million is the first piece of box-office business the studio brass has had a genuine reason to brag about in a long time.

The movie, which cost $34.2 million to produce, represents the first hit entirely home-grown and packaged by the regime headed by Sony Pictures Entertainment Chief Executive John Calley and Columbia President Amy Pascal since they came to power at the Japanese-owned movie studio more than 2 1/2 years ago.

“Big Daddy” grossed more in its opening weekend than any Columbia movie has in its entire domestic run so this year, the biggest being its teen targeted spring release “Cruel Intentions” at $38 million.

Hollywood has been baffled that such a formidable brain trust as Calley, Pascal and studio vice chairs Lucy Fisher and Gareth Wigan--who between them have decades of strong talent relationships and experience--has been so sluggish in putting together a more impressive slate of movies. And why such a creatively savvy quartet doesn’t have more hits to show for itself.

It’s a touchy subject for Pascal, 41, who’s feeling the pressure of having to serve up 24 movies a year under the watchful eye of the parent company as she’s being groomed by Calley to take over his post.

“We didn’t put movies together just to put movies together, which is always a risky proposition,” said Pascal, also attributing any perceived sluggishness to the lag time between regimes that it takes to put a full new slate in place.

For the most part, Pascal has been betting on moderately priced, lower-risk movies, many of them like “Can’t Hardly Wait,” “Spice World” and “The Big Hit” targeted at teens and young adults.

Although Sony hasn’t suffered any glaring losses in the last couple of years, the studio’s top executives cannot deny that their overall performance in movies has been underwhelming.

While having splashy movies “may be a momentary rush when you make an announcement, you’ve then got 14 months of terror until you see if you’re buried in it,” added Calley, making no apologies for acting prudently.

“We’re in the business of showing a profit to Sony. We’ve done it very consistently. I think we’re going to have the biggest year we’ve ever had this year, and we’re not doing it on gigantic blockbuster pictures that either work or fail abysmally.”

Perhaps that cautiousness is necessary to send a clear signal to Tokyo that this regime is more responsible than the previous one, which seemed to care more about making headlines with lucrative talent deals, expensive movies and lavish studio construction.

Calley and Pascal say that because of their relatively modest costs, films such as “Urban Legend,” “Spice World,” “Cruel Intentions,” “Go” and “Baby Geniuses” were profitable. They even claim to have come out ahead on director Joel Schumacher’s $52-million poorly received “8mm” starring Nicolas Cage because of the way it was financed through a German tax shelter.

Asked if their profits were enough to offset losses by such films as “Idle Hands,” “The Thirteenth Floor” and “Still Crazy,” Calley said, “We’re ahead on an aggregate basis so far this year by a significant eight figures.”

Yet Pascal and Calley say they want to be in the blockbuster business.

“We want to make big-event films and franchise movies,” said Pascal. “Because they’re what make your whole company work, and we are putting things now in the pipeline that are going to be those movies.” Among them are next summer’s big-budget outings “The Patriot,” starring Mel Gibson, Paul Verhoeven’s thriller “The Hollow Man” and “Sixth Day,” with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Also on the boards for 2000 are “Ali,” a bio-pic directed by Barry Sonnenfeld starring Will Smith, “Jumanji 2” and “Memoirs of a Geisha” from Steven Spielberg.

For the following year, Sony is planning a mega-production of comic book hero “Spider-Man,” which David Koepp is adapting.

Pascal said Sony’s “ideal model” is to release three event films, six star-driven vehicles and 12 targeted genre movies a year. “Did we do it this year? No,” she said.

Pascal acknowledged that Columbia’s year at the box office has been less than stellar, but she’s hoping for a profitable summer between “Big Daddy” and the upcoming Martin Lawrence comedy “Blue Streak” and Henson Productions’ “The Muppets From Space.”

“Big Daddy,” directed by Dennis Dugan, is the kind of hit any studio craves, because it cost less than the industry average and, with no financial partners or hefty profit participants, can yield big returns.

Because Pascal closed a deal with Sandler before “The Wedding Singer” became a surprise hit, the studio saved itself millions of dollars on “Daddy,” for which sources said it paid the star $8 million against 8% of the gross.

Calley, Pascal and other top executives were fortunate in their first year at Sony to have hits such as “Jerry Maguire” and “As Good as It Gets,” which were initiated by the former management team.

The quartet of executives can take credit for bringing stability to a studio that for years had experienced management upheaval, profligate spending and controversy.

But the current team has had some mistakes and controversial decisions of its own--such as greenlighting “8mm,” which critics skewered for its distasteful subject matter.

Calley and Pascal say that film wasn’t the movie they were expecting. “Joel made the movie he wanted to make, and it was too tough for a lot of people,” said Pascal, noting that Columbia was hoping for a thriller like “Seven” (written by “8mm” screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker).

Hollywood is surprised that Sony is spending more than $100 million on its Christmas release, “Stuart Little,” based on the E.B. White children’s classic.

“There’s a huge home-video family business, and we have output deals all over the world,” Calley said. “And that doesn’t include the merchandising that ‘Stuart Little’ will support.”

“Then, there’s the intangible of creating a franchise,” something Sony had hoped for but failed to do with “Godzilla,” though it grossed more than $370 million worldwide.

Calley, who turns 69 next month, denied that he plans to retire before his contract expires in 2 1/2 years. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I mean, I’m an old guy. Do I want to walk around with a soiled script under my arm trying to get [former Columbia Pictures chief-turned-producer] Mark Canton to return my calls?”

Exhibitor Relations supplied box-office statistics for this report.