NY TIMES: For New Line, an Identity CrisisBy SHARON WAXMANPublished: February 19, 2007LOS ANGELES, Feb. 18 — For six weeks in 2005, Robert K. Shaye, the founder and co-chairman of New Line Cinema, lay in a coma in a New York City hospital, fending off death from a sudden infection.
He survived, narrowly, and over many months quietly made his way back to health, a dizzying and unexpected turn for one of Hollywood’s mavericks.
Now Mr. Shaye, 67, is back to what he has done for nearly 40 years, running New Line, a midsize studio in a world of competitive behemoths, at a time when the company, owned by Time Warner, has been beset by rumors of dysfunction and executive change, and bedeviled by a slate of unsuccessful films in 2006.
That too is an unexpected turn for a studio that three years ago capped the phenomenally popular “Lord of the Rings” series with a best picture Oscar for the last installment, “The Return of the King” — a first for the studio.
Since then, according to both Mr. Shaye and Jeffrey L. Bewkes, the president of Time Warner, the studio has been financially successful, earning more than $100 million every year for the last three, largely in revenue from previous hits that continues to stream in through DVD and other post-theatrical sales. “New Line is very profitable,” Mr. Bewkes said in an interview. “We’re making money hand over fist.”
But in Hollywood and on Wall Street, some question the focus at New Line. After the success of “Lord of the Rings,” some had expected the studio to pursue a more ambitious agenda than the urban comedies and horror films of its past. That might have included pressing ahead with “The Hobbit,” from the “Rings” author J. R. R. Tolkien, to which New Line shares the rights.
Instead, Mr. Shaye has been trading insults with the “Rings” director Peter Jackson, while the studio has struggled to find a new breakout hit.
“I wouldn’t characterize it as financial crisis, even if they had a bad year,” said Harold L. Vogel, an entertainment analyst. “It’s more like an identity crisis. It’s a fair question: where do you go from here? Everyone has the same problem, whether you’re 90 or you’re 20. And they’re facing it now with a little more emphasis.”
If critics have observed that the studio seems distracted, there may be good reason. Mr. Shaye’s illness, the seriousness of which was not disclosed to the public before now, apparently derailed the studio for a portion of 2005 and affected the slate in 2006. And last year he took time to direct his own movie, “The Last Mimzy,” a family-oriented science fiction adventure (co-written by New Line’s president of production, Toby Emmerich) that will open in theaters next month.
In an interview in his office in Los Angeles last week, Mr. Shaye said that he had as much enthusiasm for running his studio as ever, and said he believed that this year’s releases would do well. “I started this company in 1967,” he said. “I still come to work every day. I still have the same passion I had then.”
Mr. Shaye acknowledged his disappointment in the studio’s performance in 2006, with duds like “Snakes on a Plane,” which cost $33 million to make and took in only that much in domestic theaters despite higher expectations, and “Tenacious D: ‘The Pick of Destiny,” the Jack Black comedy with a budget of less than $20 million, which took in a scant $8 million in domestic ticket sales.
“After last year I will take a more considered approach to the green-light process,” he said. “I will act as more of an adversary, or critic, of the decisions advocated by others.”
But he said the studio would continue to aim for its traditional zone of comedies and genre films, with a couple of highbrow dramas and one or two big-budget bets, in the range of $100 million and above.
For this year, those big bets include “Rush Hour 3,” the next in the successful series of martial arts comedies, and “The Golden Compass,” a fantasy adventure with special effects and a budget of $150 million, a potential new franchise for the studio.
The studio has also secured a $350 million line of credit in a financing deal with the Royal Bank of Scotland, giving it a financial cushion.
Mr. Shaye spoke in detail for the first time about the illness that almost killed him two years ago. In March 2005, he said he suddenly came down with a lethal form of pneumonia, from streptococcus A bacteria, similar to a rare illness that precipitously killed Jim Henson, the “Muppets” creator, at age 53 in 1990.
On the advice of a doctor, Mr. Shaye checked into NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital and was placed in a medically induced coma in the intensive care unit for six weeks. (In his film “Mimzy,” Mr. Shaye names one character Dr. Sherman, in tribute to one of his caregivers.)
He emerged from the coma and after two months in the hospital, he was permitted to go home to his Manhattan residence. Even then he took many months to recover, unable initially to walk for more than two or three minutes at a time, and slowly taking up work again.
But Mr. Shaye says he thinks more clearly now than he did before his illness. “It’s difficult to explain, but I have a clarity of thought and, I believe, of reason, which was one of the gifts” of his illness, he said. And, he added, “I certainly appreciate the normal functioning of life a lot more.”
One thing that has not been blunted by illness is Mr. Shaye’s temper, which flared last year when he was asked about a lawsuit filed by Mr. Jackson over profits from “The Lord of the Rings.”
Mr. Shaye, criticizing what he called Mr. Jackson’s “arrogance” and calling the director “myopic,” told Sci-Fi Wire: “I don’t care about Peter Jackson anymore.” He added, “He wants to have another $100 million or $50 million, whatever he’s suing us for. He doesn’t want to sit down and talk about it. He thinks that we owe him something after we’ve paid him over a quarter of a billion dollars.”
Asked about the remarks last week, Mr. Shaye said that he made the statement “in a moment of emotion” but did not regret it. “I regret losing a friend,” he said, as he showed a visitor a Gandalf sword that Mr. Jackson had sent him as a gift, before the lawsuit.
A representative for Mr. Jackson declined to comment.
But the ill will has held up plans to make “The Hobbit.” Without specifically saying he would not make the film with Mr. Jackson, Mr. Shaye made it plain that he had no interest in working with difficult filmmakers. “Some directors are impossible,” he said. “Are there a few people I wouldn’t work with? Yes, but I won’t name names.”
And he would not comment on reports in the news media that the “Spider-Man” director Sam Raimi had been asked to direct “The Hobbit.” He said, however, that although there was no workable script yet for the film, he intended to release it in 2009.
The Hollywood rumor mill has worked overtime in debating the future of New Line, which has had to justify its existence repeatedly over its 40-year history. Some people have questioned, for example, why the studio that made Will Ferrell’s breakout hit “Elf” in 2003 has not made other movies with him.
Until now. This month New Line began production on “Semi-Pro,” starring Mr. Ferrell; Mr. Shaye said that Mr. Ferrell had not found material he wanted to make at New Line until now, and chose not to make a sequel to “Elf.”
And although the studio is now part of Time Warner, current and former executives said that it continues to operate much like a family. Mr. Shaye, the father figure of the group, described his partnership with his co-chairman, Michael Lynne, this way : “I’m emotion. He’s reason.”
But as in a family, some producers and agents complained of confusion in their business dealings with the studio. Several said they had made deals with Mr. Emmerich or another executive at the studio, only to have Mr. Shaye redefine the terms later.
An executive connected with the coming film “Rendition” said the same thing happened on that project, a big-budget production under way in Morocco, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon and Meryl Streep. Weeks after the producers closed the deal with the studio, said the executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect his business relationships, Mr. Shaye came back to them and placed additional conditions, like finding a financing partner.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Emmerich disputed that account, saying that Mr. Shaye had reservations about the script from the start.
Still, some agents and producers point out that the loose atmosphere at New Line can also lead to daring decisions, like the one that led to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
Mr. Shaye denied that any executive changes were in the works, and said that Mr. Emmerich would continue to run production, while Russell Schwartz would continue to run domestic marketing.
Mr. Bewkes, the Time Warner president, said that he regarded the three years of success with “Rings” to be an anomaly — albeit one that brought in well over $3 billion in revenue to New Line.
“The business they’re in is a combination of all those ‘little titles,’ which add up to a steady stream for the indie business, and occasional but pretty regular big commercial franchises, like ‘Rush Hour,’ ‘Lord of the Rings’ or ‘The Golden Compass,’ ” he said. “I feel confident about New Line’s future.”
And Mr. Shaye, whose contract is up in 2008, seemed to fully agree. “It’s never business as usual, because the business is unusual,” he said, adding, “but we’d rather work on movies than anything else — every one of us.”
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