June
3
Paramount Folds Vantage Into Studio
Specialty labels are feeling the economic pinch. After Time Warner turned New Line Cinema into a production label in April, laying off 450 staffers, and then in May shuttered Warner Independent Pictures and Picturehouse, Paramount Pictures is now folding the marketing, distribution and physical production departments of Paramount Vantage into the larger studio. Here's the story.
Vantage, which was launched by ex-agent John Lesher with much fanfare at the Cannes Fest in 2006, will continue to be run as a production label under the direction of prexy Nick Meyer. Lesher took on the title of Paramount Film Group prexy in January, while his prestigious slate of films, Sean Penn’s Into the Wild and two co-productions with Miramax, There Will be Blood and No Country for Old Men, were in the midst of costly Oscar campaigns. Lesher also shepherded An Inconvenient Truth and Babel through the Oscars. Meyer, who came over as co-prexy from Lionsgate in 2006, took over the sole presidency of Vantage.
The cost of producing, marketing and distribution of specialty films has skyrocketed as so-called “indie” divisions come under increased scrutiny from corporate parents. With narrow profit margins becoming narrower still, the good reasons for being in this business have become harder to argue with fiscally demanding bosses.
The advantages are clear for the likes of experienced indie execs with enlightened bosses----from Fox Searchlight and Sony Pictures Classics to Miramax and Focus Features-- who understand the vagaries of the indie sector, which has been bloated with easy money and is now undergoing its own harsh reality check.
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Posted by: hollywoodsmart | June 04, 2008 at 02:56 AM