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Taking Charge Just in Time for a Rebound

A Strong Debut Helps, as a New Chief Tackles Sony's Movie Problems

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May 26, 1997, Section 1, Page 31Buy Reprints
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John Calley might seem an unlikely choice to run a major movie company in the late 1990's.

After all, Mr. Calley, eager for a more mellow life style, had already decamped once from Hollywood, in 1980, living first as a virtual hermit on Fishers Island in Long Island Sound, then in rural Connecticut, reading lots of books but rarely watching television or movies.

To stave off restlessness, he did produce a few films independently, including, with his friend Mike Nichols as co-producer, the Oscar-nominated ''Remains of the Day,'' which was released in 1993.

And yes, Mr. Calley did agree in 1993 to step in as president to gussy up and turn around the fading United Artists so that MGM could sell it -- ''putting rouge on the corpse,'' to use his phrase. But he put out only a few films for United Artists, nothing like the fierce tempo he had maintained two decades earlier, when as a senior Warner Brothers executive Mr. Calley produced a film a month, on average, including commercial successes like ''The Exorcist'' and ''Superman.''

So last Tuesday, when he took off for the annual management meeting of Sony's top brass in Tokyo, even Mr. Calley could scarcely believe the good news he was bearing, just six months after taking over as president of the troubled Sony Pictures Entertainment. So far this year, Sony's two studios, Columbia Pictures and Tristar Pictures, have already brought in a combined $447 million at the box office -- a record pace for the film industry.

The success of movies like ''Jerry Maguire'' and ''Anaconda'' has helped Sony grab 20.7 percent of the market. And the company is expected to lead the industry in market share for the year on the projected strength of coming big-budget, mass-appeal films like ''Men in Black,'' a comedy set for release in July.

''It is my life again,'' Mr. Calley, who is 66, said of his return to full-time movie making during a recent interview at his office in Los Angeles.

It is also an unlikely turnaround for Sony. Just three years ago, the company was forced to take an embarrassing $2.7 billion write-off -- a concession that Sony's purchase of Columbia Pictures in 1989 and the ensuing reign of profligacy by the film executives Peter Guber and Jon Peters had been a strategic disaster. And Alan J. Levine, whom Sony then gave the task of trying to turn the studios around, lasted only two years before resigning under pressure in November.

That is when Nobuyuki Idei, president of the Sony Corporation, brought in Mr. Calley in a calculated bet that his maturity and movie-making track record would compensate for his having spent so many years on the popular-culture sidelines. So far, the bet seems to be paying off.

Certainly, Mr. Calley cannot claim much credit for ''Jerry Maguire,'' a Tom Cruise vehicle approved more than a year before he came aboard. But it was Mr. Calley who oversaw last-minute changes in the marketing plans and expanded the promotional budget, moves widely credited for turning a potentially popular film into the blockbuster it has become.

Just as important, he is seen as seeking a new and necessary stability for Sony's movie-making business, which had seen four presidents come and go at Columbia, and three at Tristar, between 1991 and 1996.

Mr. Calley has installed Amy Pascal, former head of Turner Pictures, as president of Columbia Pictures. And having ushered out Robert Cooper from Tristar, he has entrusted the operation there to Chris Lee, president of production.

Entertainment executives outside Sony detect a new mood.

''There is a reservoir of good will toward the company and John in particular,'' said Robert Bookman, an agent at Creative Artists Agency, which represents many top actors, writers and directors.

But Mr. Calley's initial victories at Sony Pictures are no guarantee of long-term success, for his task is a daunting one. To begin with, once the current schedule of releases runs out, few films will be left in the pipeline. That is why Mr. Calley now spends many weekends reading two dozen scripts or more, though he says he is looking for quality, not quantity.

''I don't think you can decide how many films you are going to make,'' he said. ''You have to make films you are crazy about.''

Then, too, despite the initial good feeling, there is still much morale mending to be done at Sony's studios, where ''paranoia among managers left people feeling they had to look after themselves and were pitted against one another,'' said one agent, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Perhaps Sony's biggest entertainment challenge is one that Mr. Calley, at his level in the hierarchy, can do precious little about.

Today, most other big studios have crucial corporate ties that insure steady ancillary markets for their films. The Walt Disney Company has a ready buyer in its ABC television network, for example. Warner Brothers, a unit of Time Warner Inc., has its parent's HBO cable channel, the Turner cable network and the WB television network. And 20th Century Fox, a unit of the News Corporation, can rely on its parent's Fox television network in the United States and satellite networks in Europe and Asia.

But Sony, despite all its talk over the years of media ''synergy,'' has no direct ties to other media distribution systems.

There is strength in Sony's television programming business, which is overseen by Mr. Calley's co-president, Jeffrey Sagansky, and which is responsible for such prime-time and first-run syndication hits as ''Mad About You,'' ''The Nanny,'' ''Wheel of Fortune'' and ''Jeopardy.''

But in the absence of a guaranteed television distribution network, that business, like Mr. Calley's movie operation, remains riskily reliant on producing a continual string of hits.

''How well can Sony do up against these giant distribution and content machines like Disney and Time Warner and even News Corporation?'' said Harold Vogel, an entertainment analyst at Cowen & Company.

Mr. Calley, however, notes that Sony, as a global company, takes an international perspective to distribution. He said the company was racing to lock up distribution deals with overseas television and cable companies for its American-made movies and TV programs. Recently, for example, Sony invested in Rupert Murdoch's Japan Sky Broadcasting, a digital satellite-television service in Japan.

The company has also begun producing local entertainment programming for various foreign markets, including 300 hours so far this year in China.

''One of the advantages that Sony has is the advantage of looking over everyone's mistakes over the last 10 years and deciding what they want to be in,'' Mr. Calley said.

As for the supposed cultural chasm between Japanese corporate types and American entertainment executives -- which some of his predecessors blamed for their troubles at Sony -- Mr. Calley said he experienced a far greater culture shock in returning to Hollywood in the early 90's after more than a decade away.

''When I first came back to United Artists, I felt like I was in a George Orwell novel,'' he said. ''They would talk about films I hadn't seen, made by people I didn't know.''

But he said he thought he lost nothing crucial by dropping out for as long as he did. On his watch, United Artists released such hits as ''Goldeneye,'' ''Leaving Las Vegas'' and ''The Birdcage.''

''All you have is your instinctive feel for material,'' he said. ''People are betting on your gut.''

Beyond the golden gut, though, lies a simple, central premise to Mr. Calley's strategy for Sony. ''You want to do franchise films if you can,'' he said, referring to such spinoff machines as the Warner Brothers ''Batman'' series.

''If you have 25 films a year to produce, it means finding a script every seven minutes,'' Mr. Calley said, only half kidding. ''If you don't have to reinvent the wheel every couple of years, it eliminates a monumental burden.''

For sequel potential, he is betting on ''Godzilla,'' a Sony project that had been stalled before he arrived. The film is now in production for a May 1998 release, and he hopes it will prove the validity of what he calls his concentric theory of film making:

''Of the 250 films that get made each year, about 35 are successful. There are certain films that are as close to sure things as you can get. Or you take a shot with the next-generation actress, and you're a little farther out. Farther from the center is 'The Crying Game' territory, and that is very difficult to forecast. Our basic job is to get as many in the middle as possible.''

Another film that Mr. Calley hopes will hit the bull's-eye is this summer's ''Men in Black,'' a science-fiction action comedy with Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones, which one Sony insider called '' 'Independence Day' meets 'Ghostbusters.' ''

But the real challenge is finding the centerpiece films not only for 1997 and 1998, but for the years thereafter while not getting sucked into what Mr. Calley derides as Hollywood's ''Friday night culture.''

''Agents like to send out manuscripts on Friday evening so that executives race home to read them and feel they have to compete to buy them,'' Mr. Calley said. ''Buying them is how these executives manage their worth. They want to say: 'I paid $800,000 for a script, and we have a $3 million development deal.' But a lot of the projects just drift away, and the movies never get made. And you think, 'There goes another wacko development deal.' ''

But many in the industry wonder how committed Mr. Calley will be to the long haul. They know it takes three years or so to get a new slate of films into production. And they realize that Mr. Calley dropped out once and is already wealthy in his own right, thanks in part to some savvy commodities trading during those years in the wilderness.

One popular theory in Hollywood is that Sony is preparing to sell its entertainment businesses -- or at least a piece of them -- once they are in better shape. It may not be a case of putting rouge on a corpse, this reasoning goes, but maybe a face lift for a second-rate performer.

Yet one industry executive said he doubted that Sony's movie business would be sold, at least soon, if only because Mr. Idei has so publicly supported Mr. Calley.

Mr. Calley insists that he will see Sony through many a sequel.

''It has been a terrific experience,'' he said, sounding like a man who had never left Hollywood. ''I'm crazy about my colleagues.''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 1, Page 31 of the National edition with the headline: A Strong Debut Helps, as a New Chief Tackles Sony's Movie Problems. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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