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Tuesday, Nov 24, 2009
"Lord of the Rings" vs. "Harry Potter"! The inside story of how a pair of AOL Time Warner movie studios are facing off with the two biggest movie releases of the new millennium.
Nov 15, 2001 | In May, a group of executives from AOL Time Warner took a break from meetings at their New York offices to watch a 26-minute promo reel. It was their first substantive glimpse of the company's $300 million gamble on a three-part film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings."
The AOL TW chiefs watched as images flickered by of charming but less-than-earthshaking footage of the pastoral life of hobbits in a glimmering shire set in preindustrial Middle Earth; but then sat engrossed at a thrilling battle as members of the titular "Fellowship of the Ring" (which included actor Elijah Wood, reduced on screen into a 3-foot, hairy-footed hobbit, Frodo; Ian McKellen as the towering wizard, Gandalf the Gray; and Viggo Mortensen's warrior prince, Aragon) are attacked by an evil balrog in the Mines of Moria, and then desperately jump to safety from a towering stone footbridge. The reel ended with an impressively disparate quick run-through of scenes from all three of the forthcoming films.
Robert Shaye, the chairman and CEO of New Line Cinema -- one of AOL TW's two major film production and distribution units -- had brought the footage to New York after its gleeful debut at the Cannes Film Festival just days before. Also in the room were a smattering of AOL TW bigwigs, including CEO Gerald Levin and top deputies Richard Parsons and Robert Pittman, and Warner Bros. studio heads Alan Horn and Barry Meyer.
None of them was there because of an abiding fascination with J.R.R. Tolkien. Warner Brothers -- the blue-chip Hollywood studio that for years was synonymous with Clint Eastwood, private planes and blockbusters like "Batman" and "Lethal Weapon" -- had escaped nearly unscathed during the first round of cuts that had hit the conglomerate in the wake of the 2000 merger that made it the biggest media company in the world.
The comparatively blue-collar New Line -- the scrappy division that had made Freddy Krueger and Ninja Turtles iconic figures of pop culture -- had not been so lucky. Shaye had recently been forced to cut New Line's staff by nearly 20 percent and been told to return to making lower-budgeted genre movies.
At the time of the meeting, AOL TW executives had been closely following the parallel progress of "Lord of the Rings" and Warners' own wizard tale, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." Warners, true to form, had the safer bet: Chris Columbus was bringing his $125 million-plus vision of British author J.K. Rowling's novel to the big screen.
Some estimates put the budget as high as $150 million, but Columbus is the treacly, highly commercial director of massive hits like "Home Alone" and "Mrs. Doubtfire," and the kid-lit juggernaut looked to be fireproof financially, no matter who directed it; handled with sufficient care, it could be turned into a lucrative franchise for years.
Meanwhile, New Line had an unprecedented, astonishing $300 million riding on a three-part adaptation on Tolkien's abidingly popular but somewhat dated fantasy novels. The three films have been simultaneously shot over a 14-month period by Peter Jackson, the New Zealand director whose only previous studio-backed film was a 1996 bust, "The Frighteners," starring Michael J. Fox.
It looked like the holiday season was shaping up to be an internecine War of the Wizards between "Harry Potter" and "Lord of the Rings"; but any rivalry that may have been brewing took a back seat to increased pressure for New Line just to stay alive in the new AOL Time Warner complex. Much more was at stake than bragging rights over whose box-office wand was bigger.
The "Lord of The Rings" trailer played well during the New York get-together, and as the lights came up in the executive screening room, the corporate chieftains were elated (or relieved). Shaye and his New Line contingent, glowing in the approbation, got a glimpse of what it was like to be the favored child -- if only for a short time.
