Still Scratching Our Collective Heads Over New Line
In today’s online edition of Variety, an article reports that Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes addressed the employees of the mini-major New Line Cinema over their fate as the studio gets folded under the Warner Bros banner.
“New Line has been the most successful independent studio in history,” he said to his surely shell-shocked employees (many of whom will be getting their pink slips in the coming weeks as Warner does its New Line house-cleaning). Does that statement strike you as odd? If New Line is so successful — for God’s sake, they distributed the Lord of the Rings and the Rush Hour movies, franchises that grossed billions worldwide — why is it suddenly and ingloriously being shuttered?
It’s these bizarre windfalls in the business world that I will never quite get. Bewkes went on to say how the shutting-down has nothing to do with the company’s performance. Well, then, what’s it have to do with? New Line co-CEO’s Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne were noticeably absent from the gathering (”For everyone’s sake, they need to step back from the process,” said Bewkes), and I’m wondering if there’s bad blood, dirty laundry, and some foul-up’s in the fiscal goings-on in New Line’s camp that we will never be privy to.
New Line was a shining beacon in Hollywood — a studio that got to operate outside the corporate gates of the major studios — and it actually gave the smaller studios (i.e. Lionsgate, Miramax, etc.) hope of flourishing in the business without kowtowing to a parent company. Also, it gave commercial-minded but independent-spirited filmmakers like Peter Jackson a studio with which they do business and still stay true to their visions.
But I guess the world doesn’t spin that way. Did Shaye and Lynne screw up a beautiful thing? If so, when, how, why? Or is this just the way the cookie crumbles when Time Warner runs the kitchen? If anyone’s got the real deal on this…raw deal…we’d love to know!
