A Studio Executive Tries His Hand at Wizardry

Bob Shaye didn’t know it at the time, but when he met with director Peter Jackson to discuss making “Lord of the Rings,” the New Line Cinema founder was the filmmaker’s last hope.

For several years, the quirky New Zealand writer-director had been working on the project of a lifetime, trying to find a way to turn the wondrously mythic saga of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” into a two-part series of films. Jackson’s efforts had initially been bankrolled by Miramax, which had released his breakthrough 1994 film “Heavenly Creatures.” Miramax had managed to get the “Rings” rights from producer Saul Zaentz, who’d owned them for years. But when Miramax was unable to get a partner to invest in the projected series, studio chiefs Harvey and Bob Weinstein decided to scale back the project. At a meeting with Jackson in June 1998, the Weinsteins suggested slimming the films down to one three-hour epic.

When Jackson balked, the Weinsteins gave him a three-week window to set up the project somewhere else. If he couldn’t interest another studio, the rights would revert back to Miramax. Even worse, anyone who bought the rights had to immediately pay Miramax $12 million in development outlays as well as give the Weinsteins executive producer credit and 5% of the film’s first-dollar gross.

The standoff couldn’t have come at a more inopportune time. Jackson’s latest film, a Universal horror movie called “The Frighteners,” had bombed. Universal was so put off by its failure that it pulled the plug on a Jackson remake of “King Kong.” Paramount and Warner Bros. weren’t interested in “Rings.” Disney had passed on a “Rings” co-production with Miramax. Twentieth Century Fox wouldn’t go near any Zaentz-related project, having feuded with the producer over “The English Patient.” Jackson had an encouraging meeting with PolyGram, only to see the company bought by Universal days afterward, effectively killing further interest.

So it was New Line or bust. To help sell his ideas, Jackson had prepared an elaborate 35-minute documentary spotlighting the visual effects research and development he’d been doing at his New Zealand production facilities. As Jackson explained his vision for the film, Shaye became increasingly excited about the possibilities for an epic film series. In recent years, Shaye had been frustrated by New Line’s inability to transform hits like “The Mask” and “Dumb and Dumber” into franchises that could replace the “Nightmare on Elm Street” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” series that had helped the studio survive during the 1980s and early ‘90s.

Finally Shaye had heard enough. “It’s not two movies,” he said. Jackson’s heart sank--he’d already heard this at Miramax. Then Shaye said the magic words. “Tolkien did your job for you. He wrote three books. You should make three movies.”

Sometimes you have to gamble to hit the jackpot. During pre-production on “Rings,” Shaye actually ordered the films’ budgets increased. “If we were going to do movies that had the quality and scope of films like ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Titanic,’ I felt we needed to give Peter the money to compete on that level,” Shaye told me.

It’s no wonder Shaye’s favorite character in the trilogy is the wizard Gandalf, played by Ian McKellen, whom Shaye personally recruited for the role, even delaying the start of production a week to fit McKellen’s busy schedule. In many ways, Shaye is the true wizard of “Lord of the Rings.” In an era when most studios are run like banks, doing anything to avoid risk, Shaye is the last riverboat gambler in Hollywood.

Even though New Line has been owned by Time Warner (which merged with AOL) since 1996, it’s the oldest remaining studio still run by its founder. And it shows. Often brusque, always demanding, Shaye watches every penny in the till, operating the studio like his family’s grocery business in Detroit--he calls moviegoers “our customers.” But Shaye also takes chances on young, home-grown talent--what other studio has developed or produced scripts written by executive assistants, mail-room workers and business affairs executives?

Shaye has often developed a paternal bond with his top lieutenants. His No. 1 son was Mike De Luca, who worked his way up from college intern to the studio’s head of production. After years of picking hits, he had a string of failures that caused an irreparable rift with Shaye, who let him go early this year. (De Luca now heads production at DreamWorks.) He was replaced by No. 2 son Toby Emmerich, the studio’s ex-music department head--only at New Line could someone have been promoted to production chief with such a slim resume. Emmerich also functions as an in-house script doctor. He wrote “Frequency,” a recent hit, did a polish on “Rush Hour 2” and is writing a script Shaye plans to direct himself.

Son No. 3 is Mark Ordesky, who runs the studio’s Fine Line art-house division and personally oversaw “Rings.” It was Ordesky who championed Jackson, who’d crashed on Ordesky’s couch years before when he was working on a never-produced “Nightmare on Elm Street” script. It’s unclear how much longer this familial setup will last. With nearly $300 million budgeted to produce the three-picture series, whose first installment, “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring,” opens Dec. 19, New Line has a lot riding on the movies, although the studio has sold off a healthy chunk of each film to overseas distributors.

The early reviews have been raves. But with AOL Time Warner making cutbacks everywhere, the movie’s box-office performance could play a major role in whether New Line survives as a stand-alone studio or is absorbed into big-sister company Warner Bros. Films. In short, “Rings” could be Shaye’s last hurrah, the final dice roll in his 34-year tenure at New Line.

The AOL Time Warner top brass just approved New Line’s budget for 2002, giving it a bump up from this year’s budget, so it’s unlikely that the ax is about to fall. But Shaye has good cause to worry. The AOL Time Warner top brass forced him to fire 20% of his staff earlier this year. And in a recent Times story, Richard Parsons, the company’s new CEO, refused to rule out a plan to absorb New Line into Warners, saying he’d “looked real hard” at merging the two film companies. As it is, Shaye and longtime partner New Line co-chairman Michael Lynne had to “voluntarily agree” to set a $50-million budget ceiling for all new projects

But Parsons should think twice before folding New Line into Warners. Warners releases roughly 30 movies a year, which is far too many films to put out with any quality control--despite its great end-of-the-year run, the studio put out far more bad pictures this year than anyone else. Making New Line part of the assembly line would just strain the system even more. Keeping New Line independent would allow it to focus on areas where it outperforms Warners.

While Warners has fumbled little gems like “The Dish,” New Line has excelled in making low-budget thrillers, comedies and urban films, like New Line’s wildly successful “Friday” series. In an era when every studio wants a franchise, New Line has also nurtured two monster franchises, “Austin Powers” and “Rush Hour,” as well as modestly budgeted series like “Blade” and “Final Destination,” which both have sequels coming next year. New Line also continues to attract gifted filmmakers like Alexander Payne (“Election”) and Andrew Niccol (“Gattica”), who both have films due in 2002.

Shaye has taken risks in the past that didn’t pay (“The Long Kiss Goodnight”) and lost a lot of money doing it, but it’s a pipe dream to think that movie-making will ever be a risk-free business. “Harry Potter” may be a cash cow, but safe-as-milk franchises don’t come along everyday. And they don’t always get much respect. It’s one reason why critics so far are more fond of “Lord of the Rings” than “Harry Potter.” Both movies are faithful to their origins, but one offers genuinely bold, imaginative filmmaking, the other a stodgy, sugar-coated crowd-pleaser. As Shaye puts it: “I think of us as the Indian restaurant, a little spicier and more unique, in a mall full of conventional places to eat.”

So why did Shaye bet on an unproven talent like Jackson? He doesn’t really have a good answer, which in itself speaks volumes about Shaye’s roll-of-the-dice approach to filmmaking. “There’s no question that Peter didn’t have the experience for a project this big and to be honest, I hadn’t liked all his movies,” Shaye says. “But he’d made one movie, ‘Heavenly Creatures,’ that I really liked. And I really liked him: He’s a decent guy with no arrogance or hubris. So I believed in his good faith and I bet on his ability. It doesn’t sound very rational, but sometimes trusting your instincts isn’t a very rational thing to do.”

That’s not necessarily the kind of answer you’d want to hear if you’re sitting in a corporate boardroom, but if you love movies that take us places we’ve never been before, it’s an answer you wish you heard more often in Hollywood.

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“The Big Picture” runs every Tuesday in Calendar. If you have questions, ideas or criticism, e-mail them to patrick.goldstein@latimes .com.