Backlot Buzz—Roth Planning an Aggressive First Slate

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How can you make a romantic comedy starring Julia Roberts on a $40 million budget these days when Robert’s lattes and trainer’s fees would amount to half of that? Leave it to Joe Roth, former head of both the Fox and Disney studios and now the head of Revolution Studios, which linked with Sony, Fox and Encore as equity distribution partners in a $3 billion deal.

Roth’s first big project is “America’s Sweethearts” starring Roberts, and he has revealed that he is doing it on a $40 million budget.

“When you have your own studio, you want to start out impressing everyone with low budgets and big stars,” said Robert Buxbaum of Reel Source Inc. “That is how Miramax did it.”

Reading between the lines, it’s Roth’s ability to schmooze up his A-list actor friends into taking pay cuts and back-end percentages out of friendship and the fact that Roth is positioning himself now to be a much bigger player in the future and eventually be his own distributor.

Roberts (who now gets $25 million per picture) “will most likely take only $12 million for this picture and a percentage of the gross,” said Buxbaum, “it is worth it to cement the future of their friendship.”

And Roberts is apparently not the only star that Roth has sweet-talked into doing “Sweethearts” on the cheap.

“It looks like Roth has convinced the other stars of ‘America’s Sweethearts’ like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Hank Azaria and John Cusak to also take smaller fees and to align themselves with him for the future.”

Roth, who is counting on this movie to put Revolution into the black, stands to make a killing on the deal, along with Billy Crystal, who wrote the script and is executive producing it. Roth will direct the film himself.

Media reports have stated that Roth is going to produce and finance some 12 movies over the next two years, but in a short chat at the People’s Choice Awards on Jan. 7, Roth asserted that all dozen films will be produced before the actor’s strike date in June. An ambitious plan indeed.

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How is the TV industry preparing for the possible actors’ strike?

Jamie Kellner, chief executive, and Susanne Daniels, president of entertainment at Warner Bros., said they are taking steps to film many episodes ahead of time.

At Twentieth Century Fox, 23 series (400 episodes costing between $700,000 to $2 million each) have already been filmed over the past year.

Contributing reporter Anita Talbert can be reached at [email protected].

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