One of the more prominent smaller studios has been erased. New Line Cinema has been owned by Warner Bros for a while. Warner has decided to fold New Line into Warner's film division effectively leaving New Line a shell with a name. New Line is known as the House that Freddy built based on the fact that it's earliest successes were the Nightmare on Elm Street films. It has in recent years produced some classic films including the Lord of the Rings films. New Line had been having some bad times lately, except for Hairspray they hadn't had a hit in a while. They produced The Golden Compass which is getting a rep as one of the biggest bombs ever. I think there's more to it than that, probably a clash of personalities with the studio executives. All studios have bad times, movies are an inherently unpredictable business. New Line took one of the biggest gambles in movie history and won. The three Lord of the Rings films were all shot at the same time at a cost of some $300 million. If the first weekend of the first film has been a bust that would have resulted in a huge loss.
I read they were keeping New Line but it would no longer produce, distribute or market films. My first thought was 'what else does a studio do?'. After a little more thought I think they are keeping the name to attach to certain future films. For example if Warner makes the Hobbit films they will probably release them as New Line for legal or continuity reasons. New Line also has some films that haven't been released yet.
This could get interesting here in Canada. A company named Alliance is the biggest Canadian movie distributor. They tend to release a lot of the high profile award magnets (Atonement) as well as some lower films (Good Luck Chuck). They also release most Canadian films. New Line's films are distributed in Canada by Alliance and constitutes a large portion of Alliance's releases. Alliance will presumably release the New Line films that haven't come out yet but after that who knows?
Alliance was just bought by new owners including the Quebec government. Their investment may have just taken a turn for the worse.
There's an extensive posting on New Line at Cinematical. including a list of all their films. There's some real classics there.
1 comment:
As far as I remember the cost for the 3 LOTR films was around $270 millions. Just to add a minor detail.
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