Eye Of The Tiger wrote:Quite fittingly, this continues the run of bad luck for Babs and Michael since dumping Brosnan in favor of that hack Daniel Craig. It's great to see that moron Barbara-B have everything falling down around her. Not surprising either.
Thanks!James wrote:Eye Of The Tiger wrote:Quite fittingly, this continues the run of bad luck for Babs and Michael since dumping Brosnan in favor of that hack Daniel Craig. It's great to see that moron Barbara-B have everything falling down around her. Not surprising either.
Nice to see you pop in again EOTT. I recall your days on AJB.
Dalton didn't leave because he wanted to, he left because Cubby asked him to. After the poor performance of TLD and then an even worse outcome from LTK, the studio twisted Cubbys arm to ask Dalton to leave. It's all in Cubbys autobiography 'When The Snow Melts'.Omega wrote:Hi Tiger. I doubt anyone here will care either way. Welcome.
Does any one know if Craig contract is like Dalton's? Because they took so long to make another Bond after LTK his contract was up. He could have continued but chose not to.
Some people eat turkey every Christmas, even though they find it bland, dry and boring, because it is the traditional thing to do. Others keep going back to the same holiday resort because once or twice they had a really good time there, even though in recent years the tone of the place has declined, the best restaurants seem to have closed and the beach is more crowded.
My equivalent of this is to go, with a sense of religious devotion, to each new James Bond film when it is released. I haven't seen what I considered to be a really good one since the departure of the celebrated Scottish Nationalist Sir Sean Connery from the top of the cast list. There have been some that had their moments – I rather liked Pierce Brosnan driving a BMW by remote control at high speed round a multi-storey car park in Tomorrow Never Dies – but more and more have been real turkeys. And the last two, with Daniel Craig rather believable as a Bond for the 21st century (if that is not a contradiction in terms), were otherwise slightly weird, and radiated a strange sense of emptiness.
Bond has a licence to kill, but the films have always been a licence to print money. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that production of the 23rd Bond film has been suspended because of the parlous financial state of MGM, the business that now owns the rights to the franchise. The lion now squeaks rather than roars, it appears, and will only do that if there is cash up front.
It has been a long decline for this 86-year-old Hollywood studio. Its official motto, wreathing Leo the Lion, is "Art for art's sake"; its unofficial one was "More stars than are in the heavens", which was more or less true in the glory days of MGM, from about 1930 to 1950. Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland and Joan Crawford were among those under contract. MGM made The Wizard of Oz and distributed Gone with the Wind. It also had Laurel and Hardy on its books. As it fell out with or lost several of its big names in the 1940s, it kept on top by producing some of the best-known musicals of the era – Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, Show Boat and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers among them.
However, the golden age ended in a series of deals, mergers, takeovers and other attempts at leveraging that never quite worked out. One of these was the purchase, in 1981, of United Artists, and with it the Bond franchise. What has gone wrong with MGM is perhaps illustrated by its inability now to make a film that might actually make it some money. Perhaps at some point there will have to be a fire sale, in which its share of the Bond films might be the only thing that would give the firm's innumerable creditors something to look forward to.
Still, it is hard to imagine even the bankruptcy of MGM killing off James Bond on celluloid, something the world's leading villains have completely failed to do in nearly 50 years: he and his adventures are always going to be a most marketable asset for anyone strapped for cash. But perhaps the pause in normal service is an ideal moment for those who might shape the next Bond film to ponder on what it ought to be.
What I felt was missing from the last two Bond films – Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace – were jokes. Craig, as I have said, was believable as an MI6 agent; but that raised the question of how believable James Bond is supposed to be. He is a complete fantasy figure, and that is his appeal. In the real world, people do not jump out of aircraft at 30,000 feet, have a fight on the way down, and survive. They do not consume strong drink (and, in the old days, cigarettes) with the abandon that Bond does without ending up on a mortuary slab fairly early on. They do not drive performance cars round multi-storey car parks, while being shot at, using their mobile telephones to keep the thing on course. They don't jump from one building to another and inevitably land safely. Also, when most villains tell someone that they are going to be killed, they normally get killed pretty sharpish, and not after a theatrical delay that allows them to overpower their captors and make an escape.
Most telling of all, there is not top international totty waiting for them at every pause, with whom an astonishing degree of intimacy is immediately and profoundly established, with the best lobster, foie gras and finest vintage of Pol Roger to hand. It is the sheer incredibility of Bond that hauls suckers like me back to the cinema every time a new film comes out, and prises open our wallets in the cause of MGM's surviving for a few more months before the bailiffs come in. And I fear the last couple of films were not incredible enough, nor Craig sufficiently charismatic: not, I concede, that it is easy to exude charisma when an agent of a foreign power is smacking one's testicles with a knotted rope.
One of the most baleful features of much modern cinema is the ubiquity of special effects, and their use as a substitute for interesting plot, characters and dialogue. One of the things that has made Bond films stand out in the era of special effects is that they are so spectacular – especially the stunts – and they were often complemented by, rather than being the replacement for, jokes, good dialogue and a just-about-comprehensible plot.
Even before special effects as we know them today, in the Connery films, character was pretty weak. Apart from Bond himself, and the odd woman who was allowed to become more than one-dimensional (notably Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore), and of course the usual pantomime villain (chosen, one always thought, for his ability to convey the correct sinister inflection on the phrase "Meeeeestair Bondt"), everyone else was fleeting and cardboard. That hardly mattered; the film was not about them. But the original levels of invention and originality have not been maintained.
Perhaps it is hard to do so when the same old material has to be recycled in order to keep going: Ian Fleming, whose lifestyle was in some toxic respects similar to that of his creation, died aged 56, when the series was in its infancy. A lot of bricks have had to be made with very little straw since then. Stunts, gadgets, the parade of women and fabulous cars, and the defiance of certain death do, though, go a long way to cheering up those in search of absurd escapism. So may Bond be back, and may he show us next time that turkey can, if cooked properly, be surprisingly good.
Christian Bale to be the Next James Bond after Daniel Craig?
William Hill have cut the price of Christian Bale being the next Bond from 7/1 to 5/1. This comes just days after seeing money for Daniel Craig to do NO more Bond films which is now 4/1 from 8/1.
"The good news for Bond fans is that everyone seems sure that we have not seen the end of Bond, but we might have seen the end of the current Bond!" said Hill's spokesman Rupert Adams.
Who will play the Next 007 AFTER Daniel Craig?:
William Hill bet 5/2 Sam Worthington, 5/1 Christian Bale, 7/1 Will Smith, , 8/1 Clive Owen, 10/1 Dougray Scott, 10/1 Alex O'Loughlin, 12/1 Orlando Bloom, 16/1 James Purefoy, 16/1 Henry Carvill, 20/1 Julian McMahon, 20/1 Goran Visnjic, 25/1 Ewan McGregor, 33/1 Jude Law, 33/1 Robert Pattinson, 50/1 Brad Pitt, 50/1 Colin Farrell, 50/1 Tom Cruise, 100/1 Simon Cowell, 100/1 Alex Reid.
How many more Bond films will Daniel Craig Play 007: 4/1 One, 2/1 Two, 7/4 Three, 4/1 None, 5/1 Four, 8/1 Five, 12/1 Six or more
That's Simon Heffer in the Telegraph. I don't agree with his politics but he's on the money here with James Bond.JackWade CIA wrote:I am split on Craig retiring or returning. This columnist nails what Craig is suppsoed to be and also opens the door to the question is it what Bond is suppsoed to be. Which I believe is the question the producers need to be asking themselves right now. Regardless of actor.
No question in my mind if Craig were to leave they need to reboot the reboot, done right this will leave them on solid ground for the next 20 years easily.
Some people eat turkey every Christmas, even though they find it bland, dry and boring, because it is the traditional thing to do. Others keep going back to the same holiday resort because once or twice they had a really good time there, even though in recent years the tone of the place has declined, the best restaurants seem to have closed and the beach is more crowded.
My equivalent of this is to go, with a sense of religious devotion, to each new James Bond film when it is released. I haven't seen what I considered to be a really good one since the departure of the celebrated Scottish Nationalist Sir Sean Connery from the top of the cast list. There have been some that had their moments – I rather liked Pierce Brosnan driving a BMW by remote control at high speed round a multi-storey car park in Tomorrow Never Dies – but more and more have been real turkeys. And the last two, with Daniel Craig rather believable as a Bond for the 21st century (if that is not a contradiction in terms), were otherwise slightly weird, and radiated a strange sense of emptiness.
Bond has a licence to kill, but the films have always been a licence to print money. It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that production of the 23rd Bond film has been suspended because of the parlous financial state of MGM, the business that now owns the rights to the franchise. The lion now squeaks rather than roars, it appears, and will only do that if there is cash up front.
It has been a long decline for this 86-year-old Hollywood studio. Its official motto, wreathing Leo the Lion, is "Art for art's sake"; its unofficial one was "More stars than are in the heavens", which was more or less true in the glory days of MGM, from about 1930 to 1950. Greta Garbo, Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Judy Garland and Joan Crawford were among those under contract. MGM made The Wizard of Oz and distributed Gone with the Wind. It also had Laurel and Hardy on its books. As it fell out with or lost several of its big names in the 1940s, it kept on top by producing some of the best-known musicals of the era – Singin' in the Rain, An American in Paris, Show Boat and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers among them.
However, the golden age ended in a series of deals, mergers, takeovers and other attempts at leveraging that never quite worked out. One of these was the purchase, in 1981, of United Artists, and with it the Bond franchise. What has gone wrong with MGM is perhaps illustrated by its inability now to make a film that might actually make it some money. Perhaps at some point there will have to be a fire sale, in which its share of the Bond films might be the only thing that would give the firm's innumerable creditors something to look forward to.
Still, it is hard to imagine even the bankruptcy of MGM killing off James Bond on celluloid, something the world's leading villains have completely failed to do in nearly 50 years: he and his adventures are always going to be a most marketable asset for anyone strapped for cash. But perhaps the pause in normal service is an ideal moment for those who might shape the next Bond film to ponder on what it ought to be.
What I felt was missing from the last two Bond films – Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace – were jokes. Craig, as I have said, was believable as an MI6 agent; but that raised the question of how believable James Bond is supposed to be. He is a complete fantasy figure, and that is his appeal. In the real world, people do not jump out of aircraft at 30,000 feet, have a fight on the way down, and survive. They do not consume strong drink (and, in the old days, cigarettes) with the abandon that Bond does without ending up on a mortuary slab fairly early on. They do not drive performance cars round multi-storey car parks, while being shot at, using their mobile telephones to keep the thing on course. They don't jump from one building to another and inevitably land safely. Also, when most villains tell someone that they are going to be killed, they normally get killed pretty sharpish, and not after a theatrical delay that allows them to overpower their captors and make an escape.
Most telling of all, there is not top international totty waiting for them at every pause, with whom an astonishing degree of intimacy is immediately and profoundly established, with the best lobster, foie gras and finest vintage of Pol Roger to hand. It is the sheer incredibility of Bond that hauls suckers like me back to the cinema every time a new film comes out, and prises open our wallets in the cause of MGM's surviving for a few more months before the bailiffs come in. And I fear the last couple of films were not incredible enough, nor Craig sufficiently charismatic: not, I concede, that it is easy to exude charisma when an agent of a foreign power is smacking one's testicles with a knotted rope.
One of the most baleful features of much modern cinema is the ubiquity of special effects, and their use as a substitute for interesting plot, characters and dialogue. One of the things that has made Bond films stand out in the era of special effects is that they are so spectacular – especially the stunts – and they were often complemented by, rather than being the replacement for, jokes, good dialogue and a just-about-comprehensible plot.
Even before special effects as we know them today, in the Connery films, character was pretty weak. Apart from Bond himself, and the odd woman who was allowed to become more than one-dimensional (notably Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore), and of course the usual pantomime villain (chosen, one always thought, for his ability to convey the correct sinister inflection on the phrase "Meeeeestair Bondt"), everyone else was fleeting and cardboard. That hardly mattered; the film was not about them. But the original levels of invention and originality have not been maintained.
Perhaps it is hard to do so when the same old material has to be recycled in order to keep going: Ian Fleming, whose lifestyle was in some toxic respects similar to that of his creation, died aged 56, when the series was in its infancy. A lot of bricks have had to be made with very little straw since then. Stunts, gadgets, the parade of women and fabulous cars, and the defiance of certain death do, though, go a long way to cheering up those in search of absurd escapism. So may Bond be back, and may he show us next time that turkey can, if cooked properly, be surprisingly good.
Re: Shaken 007 producers put James Bond on ice
No, it's not you. I'd like to think that this is going to have a happy(ish) ending, but I think a hiatus is going to happen. Any prayers at this point would probably be useless,I'm sad to say.Blowfeld wrote:The more I think about it the more like 1989 hiatus it begins to feel.
Eon going to the extreme to call attention to the Bond 23 postponement, something more has to be going on and I don't think it is a simple as money problems at MGM. Something big enough to scar them off is scary to me, I hope I am wrong, maybe I'm simply reading too much in the tea leaves.
Don't think I've heard of him Capt.Capt. Sir Dominic Flandry wrote:We should add Simon Heffer to the celebrities who do not like Craig's Bond list. He can be added to the Craig lookalikes thread too.
Chief of Staff, 007's gone round the bend. Says someone's been trying to feed him a poisoned banana. Fellow's lost his nerve. Been in the hospital too long. Better call him home.
Christian Bale odds cut to be Next 007 James Bond
BetNose sniffs out the betting news from William Hill.
Hills have cut the price of Christian Bale being the next Bond from 7/1 to 5/1. This comes just days after seeing money for Daniel Craig to do NO more Bond films which is now 4/1 from 8/1.
"The good news for Bond fans is that everyone seems sure that we have not seen the end of Bond, but we might have seen the end of the current Bond!" said Hill's spokesman Rupert Adams.
Who will play the Next 007 AFTER Daniel Craig?: 5/2 Sam Worthington, 5/1 Christian Bale, 7/1 Will Smith, , 8/1 Clive Owen, 10/1 Dougray Scott, 10/1 Alex O'Loughlin, 12/1 Orlando Bloom, 16/1 James Purefoy, 16/1 Henry Carvill, 20/1 Julian McMahon, 20/1 Goran Visnjic, 25/1 Ewan McGregor, 33/1 Jude Law, 33/1 Robert Pattinson, 50/1 Brad Pitt, 50/1 Colin Farrell, 50/1 Tom Cruise, 100/1 Simon Cowell, 100/1 Alex Reid.
Re: Shaken 007 producers put James Bond on ice
Who cares who's playing the lead?
One of cinema's most recognisable faces, that of Freddy Krueger, has been replaced. Kaleem Aftab reports on the trend in Hollywood that is undermining the power of the actor
Friday, 30 April 2010The latest incarnation of A Nightmare on Elm Street sees Robert Englund ditched from the Freddy Krueger role that he has become synonymous with and replaced by Jackie Earle Haley. Changing the actor playing a famous character has become the vogue in Hollywood, where studios will try anything to keep a franchise going, and this is a trend that actually seems to be finding favour with the movie-going public.
Cut: Jackie Earle Haley has picked up the glove from Robert Englund (pictured) as Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street series
Jackie Earle Haley's career has had something of a renaissance ever since he chilled as a convicted sex offender in Little Children opposite Kate Winslet in 2006. He seems a perfectly good candidate to play the famous horror candidate, yet there is a sense of sacrilege that Englund has been ditched. Movie fan site Ain't It Cool News captured the mood of the public when it posited: "Once one looks beyond the 'Freddy Isn't Robert Englund!' prejudice... this isn't altogether unreasonable casting at all."
The phenomenon of actors bringing new life to a character is something that has always been apparent in theatre, and in movies it has always been fair game to do it for well-known characters adapted from other mediums, such as comic books and plays, but there has for a long time been a sense that, if an actor gets too old to play a part that he made famous on screen, then the character should be retired too. William Shatner as Captain James T Kirk was once the prime example of this.
It used to be that audiences would only be able to argue over which James Bond was the best. He was the cinema character where it seemed fun to compare, and which actor one preferred as Bond said a lot about an audience members' taste and age. It was helped by the fact that the Bond stories usually worked as stand-alone films with separate narratives. Yet this did create the bizarre situation in 1983 when both Octopussy, starring Roger Moore, and Never Say Never Again, with Sean Connery, were released within months of each other.
Now though, it's not just James Bond who has had as many face-changes as Doctor Who. With the increasing number of remakes, reboots and sequels that seem to appear in every passing year, cinema audiences are getting more used to casting changes. It's also the clearest sign that, over the past decade, actors have become less important in terms of getting bums on seats.
In the eight years from Tim Burton's Batman in 1989 until 1997's Batman and Robin, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer and George Clooney all donned the tights without the merest hint of a "holy cow" from Robin. When Ang Lee's Hulk starring Erik Bana didn't live up to box-office expectations in 2003, the studio tried again five years later with Ed Norton in the title role trying to give the franchise a new lease of life. It has become the ready-made excuse for producers when a franchise fails, to blame the actor, rather than the product or themselves for failure.
Actors are not yet completely defunct, as the right actor in the right role can still make it difficult for a franchise to replace them. For example, when Matt Damon announced that he was following the lead of Paul Greengrass and refusing to do another Bourne movie, it seemed to signal the end of the franchise, despite Bourne often being referred to as the American Bond.
The caveat is that studios have become rather adept at keeping franchises going through the phenomenon of the reboot. A reboot is the restarting of a franchise from the beginning. Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire's decision not to do another Spider-Man movie wasn't met with tears in the Sony studio office but the drawing up of a plan of how to reboot the webbed crusader. Similar soundbites have been made about Bourne, where it has been suggested that the plot will revolve around his younger years.
Last year, JJ Abrams did a remarkable job with his reboot of Star Trek, successfully managing both to replace the seemingly irreplaceable William Shatner as James T Kirk with Chris Pine and also finding space for both the original Spock, Leonard Nimoy, to line up next to his new doppelganger Zachary Quinto.
Star Trek was the prime example of a franchise that had previously tried not to replace iconic characters with new characters. Instead of reboots, they had spin-offs such as Star Trek: The Next Generation with all-new characters, as it seemed foolhardy and impossible to replace Shatner as Captain Kirk. Yet modern audiences seem happier than ever to make this jump. Christopher Nolan's Batman reboot saw Christopher Bale don the cape and Bale has also been in an attempt to keep the Terminator franchise going long after Arnold Schwarzenegger showed that he would not necessarily be back.
Occasionally the death of an actor, such as that of Heath Ledger, will result in the need for a casting change. And this was one aspect that director Terry Gilliam successfully negotiated in The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, even creating a light-hearted moment when Johnny Depp seems shocked as he purveys his own reflection and the character seems surprised not to look like Ledger. Another tool being used by studios is through the use of "synthespians", short for synthetic thespians. These are artificial actors created on the desk of a special-effects boffin. James Cameron has already suggested that the technology used in Avatar could be used to bring actors back to the screen long after they have died. Indeed, Avatar itself takes a step in that direction.
One obvious advantage for studios of the diminishing role of the actor is that actors have become cheaper to employ. In the end, whether an actor reprises a role often comes down to money, but if audiences don't care if the face changes the bargaining position of the actor is severely weakened.
However, audiences still seem to prefer to see the same actors play characters, which is why studios now take so much care to usually option actors for three movies when they think they might have a franchise on their hands. Given the changing nature of actors it's amazing that the principal actors of the Harry Potter franchise will have stayed together through eight movies.
It's not just blockbusters that have taken advantage of this phenomenon. When Todd Solondz decided to make a sequel to his 1998 hit Happiness, he abandoned the usual convention of asking the same actors to reprise their roles. Instead, in his follow-up Life During Wartime, he started the casting process from scratch. Solondz has a history of doing this sort of thing. In his last outing, Palindromes
, he employed eight different actors to play the 13- year-old girl who is determined to enter motherhood.
The rationale, as explained by Solondz then, was that he wanted each young actress to portray a different aspect of the main character's personality, so someone different would play Aviva when she was happy to the girl who would play her when she was sad. It's also extremely plausible to argue that young actresses only have a limited range, and so multiple casting of the same role is helpful rather than being a hindrance.
For actors outside of childhood this could perhaps be taken as a dismissal of their ability, although Todd Haynes did successfully tread this very line in his Dylan biopic I'm Not There, where he also used the alternative-actor ruse to show different aspects of his main protagonist's personality.
However, to dismiss Solondz's casting as a gimmick is to miss the point that, rather than looking at actors as mere pawns, the bespectacled director is showing that different actors elicit different reactions from the audience, even if they are playing the same part or acting out very similar scenes. Each actor brings something unique to the party and, as such, becomes more, rather than less, important because of the interchange.
Of course, some could also argue that Solondz recast because of financial constraints and an inability to recast the same actors. Getting Hoffman back to play a role that may have offended some of his post-Oscar fan-base would have been extremely difficult no matter how much money was on the table. Instead Solondz found a way, taking the lead from blockbuster movies, to make a sequel without breaking tight budgetary constraints.
Likewise, the team behind A Nightmare on Elm Street have made a marketing splash about the fact that a new actor is playing Freddy, and it has become the big reason why this reboot should be seen.
'A Nightmare on Elm Street' is released in the UK on May 7
This story can be found at Bale tipped as a potential James BondWelsh actor Bale tipped as a potential James Bond
May 2 2010 by Robin Turner, Wales On Sunday
BOOKIES have slashed the odds on hellraising Welsh actor Christian Bale becoming the new James Bond.
William Hill are seriously considering the Haverfordwest-born star for one of the most wanted roles in movies, cutting the odds from 7-1 to 5-1.
And an influential film reviewer stateside even believes Catherine Zeta-Jones could be the first female 007.
William Hill’s move comes after veteran producers Michael Wilson and Barbara Broccoli declared that work on the 23rd Bond movie has been suspended indefinitely because of uncertainty over the future of the MGM studio.
It has prompted speculation that Bond incumbent Daniel Craig – currently on location in Toronto filming Dream House – could leave the role.
The only Welshman to so far play Bond, Colwyn Bay-born Timothy Dalton, quit the role when there was a similar delay after making Licence To Kill, his second Bond movie.
William Hill’s spokesman Rupert Adams said: “The good news for Bond fans is that everyone seems sure that we have not seen the end of Bond, but we might have seen the end of the current Bond.”
The delay in filming the next Bond spectacular has led to speculation about who could play the role after Daniel Craig reaching fever point.
William Hill has Australian Avatar star, Sam Worthington, as favourite at 5-2 with US box office star Will Smith as an 8-1 possibility to play the first black James Bond.
But Reed Tucker, the New York Post’s movie reviewer, believes Swansea’s Zeta Jones is in with a good shout, while website Alternative Bond also tips Cardiff-born Fantastic Four and Hornblower star Ioan Gruffudd.
On Zeta Jones, Tucker told New Yorkers: “Her name is often mentioned in wild speculation.
“Pros: She’s hot and Welsh. Can do action.
“Cons: James Bond does not have ovaries.”
Assessing 36-year-old Bale’s chances, he wrote:
“Pros: Genius actor who would bring the right kind of intensity. As the Batman franchise proves, he’s capable of the physicality Bond requires.
“Cons: He’s already in too many other franchises, including Terminator and Batman.”
Tucker considered Twilight vampire Robert Pattinson “too fey” and “brooding” to stand a chance, but plumped for Trainspotting star Ewan McGregor, saying: “He’d be my choice if I had to pick today.
“Has great acting chops and lots of charm.”
A spokesman for Alternative Bond said American Psycho star Bale was a favourite among film fans.
“He’s the equal of Daniel Craig as an actor and would have fitted a young Bond project far better,” he said.
Bale was born in Haverfordwest and spent his early childhood in Wales
MGM obtains fifth extension
Studio receives two more months on debt payments
Variety
By DAVE MCNARY
The Lion issued the statement Thursday, a day before the fourth extension was due to expire.
"MGM said today its lenders agreed to extend the forbearance period and therefore will not seek remedies in connection with the nonpayment of interest and principal due on the company's bank debt, including the revolving credit facility, until July 14, 2010," MGM said. "The lenders took this action in support of the company's ongoing efforts to evaluate long-term strategic alternatives to maximize value for its stakeholders. MGM appreciates the continued support of its lender group for the process it is undertaking."
The announcement didn't address what steps MGM may take next -- whether it will seek another round of bidding or recapitalize itself, probably through a pre-packaged bankruptcy. But with bids having come in far lower than the debtholders hoped, the possibility of a sale has lessened.
MGM ousted Harry Sloan as chairman last August and replaced him with turnaround specialist Stephen Cooper. The studio put itself up for sale in November, drawing a trio of binding offers in mid-March -- with Lionsgate bailing out a week later, and Len Blavatnik's Access Industries dropping out earlier this month, leaving only Time Warner as a possible buyer.
The bids from Time Warner and Access were believed to be far below the $2 billion-plus threshold price sought by MGM and its debtholders. A bankruptcy filing would likely take several months and likely result in the laying off of some of its 400 staffers. MGM agreed last month to have Sony handle the global theatrical distribution for "Zookeeper," which the studios co-produced. Producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli announced several weeks ago that they've put plans on hold for the next James Bond pic due to the "continuing uncertainty" surrounding the future of MGM.
MGM carries debt of $3.7 billion. Its assets include its name and logo, the United Artists operations, a library with more than 4,000 titles, the James Bond franchise, half of "The Hobbit" franchise and a bare-bones film and TV operation.
MGM's lone release this year, "Hot Tub Time Machine," grossed $48 million in seven weeks. Studio's still planning to release a remake of "Red Dawn" in November and 3D pic "Cabin in the Woods" in January.
Cerberus in talks with ailing MGM over standalone deal
19 May 2010. Source: AltAssets
Cerberus Capital Management is among the strategic partners in discussions with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer about a standalone deal to prop up the troubled film studio.
According to reports, MGM has been in talks with Summit Entertainment, Cerebus-owned Spyglass Entertainment and ex-Yahoo executive Terry Semel, about a plan to keep the iconic film house afloat following a tepid auction response.
The plan would involve filing for pre-packaged bankruptcy, would involve $1bn in capital including $500m in new equity and would reportedly leave the company open to make between four and ten films a year.
The company was bought in 2005 for $5bn by a consortium made up of Sony Corporation of America and Comcast in association with US private equity firms TPG and Providence, DLJ and Quadrangle, but is struggling with its $3.7bn debt load, leading to the ousting of CEO Harry Sloane in August 2009. The proposed new deal could involve a management shake-up that would also see the departure of replacement CEO Mary Parent.
Founded in 1924, MGM has a film library of over 4,000 titles, including the Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, Gone with the Wind and the James Bond series. The latest installment of the bond franchise, which American Beauty’s Sam Mendes slated to direct, has been put on indefinite hold as a result of MGM’s financial woes.
The studio has received an extension on debt payments from its creditors until 14 July.
