“Do query letters work?”

They other day I was asked “Do query letters work?” Yes they do.

But let’s define what a query letter really is. A query letter is just the first request by a writer to have some else read her script. That’s all it is. It may be verbal, a letter, an email whatever. Agents and mangers do read some new material.

And what does “Work” really mean. If it’s land an agent or manager, the query can’t do that. Only the script can. But, if “work” means get your script read…sure.

So then, the real question is “Will MY query letters work?” Are MY query letters worth the effort?”…….. Maybe. Some do them well and some just throw crap at the wall to see if it sticks. And agents and managers hate those people.

Query letters to people you don’t know are the least effective method. But they are a starting point so send out a ton; it’s a numbers game. However, don’t use queries to hide. Most people hate networking, but it’s by far the most effective way to get you and your material out there. So sure send out queries, but also network, network, network. Queries should just be part of your overall strategy.

Rules for query letters

1)Make sure your material is good enough to compete at the highest levels. Those are the only people we’re signing. Unfortunately far too many people who can type and have seen a few movies all of a sudden think they can write a screenplay. I can swing a baseball bat; it doesn’t mean I should be playing for the Dodgers. Plus you never get a second chance to make a first impression. If your script is less than 8/10, we’ll never read you again.

2)Find out how each company you’re submitting to takes submissions. Example: Above the Line does not accept queries via the mail or email, only via our website. And yet we get them in the mail everyday and they go strait into the round file.

3)Write a really good and concise letter. Check your spelling and grammar. If you can’t write a page, why should I think you could write 110 pages? Then stick it in a drawer for 10 days- don’t peak- then pull it out and re-write it.
4)Make all your communications personal- Never Dear Sir.

5)If you’re sending to prod companies, target those that make your kind of movie. Don’t send Joel Silver some tender coming of age drama.

6)After they pass, see if you can get some feedback. Ask them to be brutally honest, or send you the coverage if possible. If similar negative comments are coming back, stop immediately as your going to need to re-write your script or write something else that can sell.

7) If they honestly like your stuff, but it’s really not for them, call their bluff and ask them to refer you to someone who may like it. If they wont, they really didn’t like it and are just giving the Hollywood kiss off.

The Death of the Slush Pile

Even in the Web era, getting in the door is tougher than ever
By KATHERINE ROSMAN of the Wall St. Journal

In 1991, a book editor at Random House pulled from the heaps of unsolicited manuscripts a novel about a murder that roils a Baltimore suburb. Written by a first-time author and mother named Mary Cahill, "Carpool" was published to fanfare. Ms. Cahill was interviewed on the "Today" show. "Carpool" was a best seller.

That was the last time Random House, the largest publisher in the U.S., remembers publishing anything found in a slush pile. Today, Random House and most of its major counterparts refuse to accept unsolicited material.

Getting plucked from the slush pile was always a long shot—in large part, editors and Hollywood development executives say, because most unsolicited material has gone unsolicited for good reason. But it did happen for some: Philip Roth, Anne Frank, Judith Guest. And so to legions of would-be novelists, journalists and screenwriters—not to mention "D-girls" and "manuscripts girls" from Hollywood to New York who held the hope that finding a gem might catapult them from entry level to expense account—the slush pile represented The Dream.

Now, slush is dead, or close to extinction. Film and television producers won't read anything not certified by an agent because producers are afraid of being accused of stealing ideas and material. Most book publishers have stopped accepting book proposals that are not submitted by agents. Magazines say they can scarcely afford the manpower to cull through the piles looking for the Next Big Thing.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. The Web was supposed to be a great democratizer of media. Anyone with a Flip and Final Cut Pro could be a filmmaker; anyone with a blog a memoirist. But rather than empowering unknown artists, the Web is often considered by talent-seeking executives to be an unnavigable morass.

It used to be that you could bang out a screenplay on your typewriter, then mail it in to a studio with a self-addressed stamped envelope and a prayer. Studios already were reluctant to read because of plagiarism concerns, but they became even more skittish in 1990 when humorist Art Buchwald sued Paramount, alleging that the studio stole an idea from him and turned it into the Eddie Murphy vehicle, "Coming to America." (Mr. Buchwald received an undisclosed settlement from Paramount.)

Today, you can't even send an e-mail to a studio. When visitors to the Universal Pictures Web site select the "contact us" option, they must agree to a waiver that frees Universal and its affiliates from liability related to accusations of plagiarism. "While we are always happy to hear from you," the Web notice says, "it is Universal's policy not to accept or consider creative materials, ideas, or suggestions other than those we specifically request. This is to avoid any misunderstandings if your ideas are similar to those we have developed independently."

"It does create an incredibly difficult Catch-22 on both sides, particularly for new writers wanting to get their work seen," says Hannah Minghella, president of production for Sony Pictures Animation.

Fending off plagiarism lawsuits has become an increasing headache for publishers and studios. "It's become the cultural version of malpractice," says Kurt Andersen, the novelist and host of public radio's "Studio 360."

Some producers make it easy: They just refuse to deal with new writers at all. Mike Clements, president of Good Humor, the production company founded by Tom Werner ("The Cosby Show"), has a personal policy against reading any sample or script that is not sent to him by an agent. "I make the occasional exception for a friend, or for my aunt," he says. "I just make them sign a release first."

As writers try to find an agent—a feat harder than ever to accomplish in the wake of agency consolidations and layoffs—the slush pile has been transferred from the floor of the editor's office to the attaché cases of representatives who can broker introductions to publishing, TV and film executives. The result is a shift in taste-making power onto such agents, managers and attorneys. Theirs are now often the first eyes to make a call on what material will land on bookshelves, television sets and movie screen.

Still, discoveries do happen at agencies, including the biggest publishing franchise since "Harry Potter"—even though it basically took a mistake to come together. In 2003, an unknown writer named Stephenie Meyer sent a letter to the Writers House agency asking if someone might be interested in reading a 130,000-word manuscript about teenage vampires. The letter should have been thrown out: an assistant whose job, in part, was to weed through the more than 100 such letters each month, didn't realize that agents mostly expected young adult fiction to weigh in at 40,000 to 60,000 words. She contacted Ms. Meyer and ultimately asked that she send her manuscript.

The manuscript was passed on to an agent, Jodi Reamer. She liked what she read, a novel called "Twilight." She signed Ms. Meyer, and sold the book to Little, Brown. The most recent sequel in the series, "Breaking Dawn," sold 1.3 million copies the day it went on sale in August 2008. The latest film grossed more than $288 million in the U.S.

At William Morris Endeavor Entertainment, Adriana Alberghetti only reads scripts sent to her by producers, managers and lawyers whose taste she knows and trusts. The agent says she receives 30 unsolicited e-mails a day from writers and people she doesn't know who are pushing unknown writers, and she hits "delete" without opening. These days, she is taking on few "baby writers," she says, adding that risks she would have taken five years ago she won't today. "I'll take very few shots on a new voice. It's tough out there right now," she says.

Book publishers say it is now too expensive to pay employees to read slush that rarely is worthy of publication. At Simon & Schuster, an automated telephone greeting instructs aspiring writers: "Simon & Schuster requires submissions to come to us via a literary agent due to the large volume of submissions we receive each day. Agents are listed in 'Literary Marketplace,' a reference work published by R.R. Bowker that can be found in most libraries." Company spokesman Adam Rothberg says the death of the publisher's slush pile accelerated after the terror attacks of 9/11 by fear of anthrax in the mail room.

A primary aim of the slush pile used to be to discover unpublished voices. But today, writing talent isn't necessarily enough. It helps to have a big-media affiliation, or be effective on TV. "We are being more selective in taking on clients because the publishers are demanding much more from the authors than ever before," says Laurence J. Kirshbaum, former CEO of Time Warner Book Group and now an agent. "From a publisher's standpoint, the marketing considerations, especially on non-fiction, now often outweigh the editorial ones."

Getting an opportunity in Hollywood as a writer once required little more than affiliation with elite institutions like the Harvard Lampoon, the humor magazine which spawned writers for "The Simpsons" and a host of others. The Web was supposed to dismantle such barriers. And to be sure, the Web has provided a path for some writers who use it well.

Scott Belsky, a 29-year-old Web entrepreneur whose sites include "The 99 Percent," wanted to write a book on how to succeed in the creative industries. To secure representation, he approached agents with data on his Web traffic, samples of reader comments posted on the site, and the number of times various posts had been blogged about, tweeted and retweeted on social-networking site Twitter. This data convinced Jim Levine at Levine Greenberg Literary Agency to take on Mr. Belsky as a client. Mr. Levine used the information to land him a book deal. "Making Ideas Happen" will be published in April by Portfolio, a division of Penguin Group.

"These days, you need to deliver not just the manuscript but the audience," says Mr. Levine. "More and more, the mantra in publishing is 'Ask not what your publisher can do for you, ask what you can do for your publisher.'"

But relationships still trump everything. Consider the path of one television series, "Sons of Tucson," set to debut on Fox in March. The show, a sitcom about kids who hire a ne'er-do-well to stand in as their father after their real dad is sent to prison, was created and co-written by neophytes—a rare event.

Tommy Dewey and Greg Bratman worked hard to get their big break, but because Mr. Dewey had done some acting, he was able to sign with a manager. The manager introduced them to a producer, Harvey Myman, who helped them develop a pilot script and got them a meeting with Fox, which ordered a pilot, then the series.

"Sons of Tucson" shows that unknowns can still make it—if they make some connections. "You really do rely on other people to be the arbiters of what may and may not work," says Marcus Wiley, a Fox TV executive. "If I was an agent submitting to an executive, I'm going to be calling that executive next week for something else. So the chances of me claiming plagiarism are slim," he adds. "This keeps both sides honest."

Despite the refrain that most everything sent to the slush pile is garbage, publishing executives confess to a nagging insecurity of missing something big. "Harry Potter" was submitted to 12 publishers (by an agent), all of whom rejected it. A year later, Bloomsbury published it in the U.K.

In 2008. HarperCollins launched Authonomy.com, a Web slush pile. Writers can upload their manuscripts, readers vote for their favorites, and HarperCollins editors read the five highest-rated manuscripts each month. About 10,000 manuscripts have been loaded so far and HarperCollins has bought four.

The first, "The Reaper," came out in July and sold moderately well. Last November, the publisher released another Authonomy offering, a young adult book called "Fairytale of New York," which has sold over 100,000 copies and is a best seller in Britain. HarperCollins also launched a similar platform for teen writers called "InkPop."

One slush stalwart—the Paris Review— has college interns and graduate students in the magazine's Tribeca loft-office read the 1,000 unsolicited works submitted each month. Each short story is read by at least two people. If one likes it and the other doesn't, it is read by a third. Any submission that receives two "Ps" for "pass" as opposed to "R" for "reject" is read by an editor.

"We take the democratic ideal represented by the slush pile seriously," says managing editor Caitlin Roper.

The literary journal publishes one piece from the slush pile each year. That leaves each unsolicited submission a .008% chance of rising to the top of the pile.

Write to Katherine Rosman at katherine.rosman@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications
Mary Cahill was a mother of two at the time her novel "Carpool" was published. In a previous version of this story, she was incorrectly referred to as a "mother to be."

Staying Out of the Slush Pile: Do's and Don'ts
• Find an agent who's hungry—a nd "monetize." "Anyone who wants to break in should read Variety and Hollywood Reporter and see which assistants have just been promoted to agents…anyone can teach a three-act structure. What I want students to get in the mind set of is 'How do we write something with the purpose of monetizing it?'" —Ryan Saul, literary agent, APA, and screenwriting instructor
• Don't be a barista waiting for someone to stumble upon your genius. "Our editors travel, they get around. They look at writer's conferences, at MFA programs. They look at magazine articles and at blogs. That's what editors do, they sniff things out from so many different sources." —Carol Schneider, Random House Publishing Group
• Find another way in Slush pile finds "are the rare exception that give people hope. If we found one writer a year that sent things in randomly, that would be a lot…agents are necessary gatekeepers but it's nice if there is an alternative entry…there are subversive ways to get your stuff read—you just have to be dedicated. A writer I know wasn't able to get treatments read so he started rendering them as comic books." —David Granger, editor in chief, Esquire
• Contests! "I'm always wary to recommend to writers that they go to competitions too much because there are fees and they can end up spending a lot of money. But the ones that do get industry attention are really fantastic opportunities to network and to make important relationships." —Hannah Minghella, president of production, Sony Animation Studios, formerly in development at Miramax
• And buck up. In 1957, Tom Wolfe interviewed James Michener, a former slush pile reader and the author of "Tales of the South Pacific." Mr. Wolfe asked him if he had worried, upon submitting the Pulitzer Prize-winning tome to publishers, about competition lurking in the slush piles. "If you've ever read a slush pile," said Mr. Michener, "you'd know I had nothing to worry about," Mr. Wolfe says. "He knew how much garbage there was out there."

CONSULTING SERVICES

It's become clear that a number of screenwriters who are working at improving their craft are unfortunately paying for "consulting" services they shouldn't be.

Times are tougher in Hollywood these days and everyone is trying better compete and generate more revenue. This is true of writers and writers "consultants." A friend of mine who is a really good psychologist once told me that the better a psychologist is, the less they earn. I said, "That makes no sense. Shouldn't it be the other way around?" He laughed, "No because one we fix them, they don't pay us anymore!"

The same is true of writing consultants. You could bring them a script that you personally love and truly believe in, but that has almost ZERO chance of selling or driving your career forward because at its core it's just not what the market is interested in. Yet the consultant will take your money to "improve its chances." I'm sorry, but improving a screenplay from having a .001% chance of selling to a .002% chance of selling only helps the consultant's wallet, not the writer.

And we all know we can develop material almost forever, creating an endless revenue stream for the unscrupulous consultant.

Like a doctor's Hippocratic oath, "first do no harm", the first thing a consultant should do is review the viability of the screenplay in the market place either as something that can legitimately sell, or be one hell of a great writing sample. If it can't do either, there is no need to consult on it further, move on to another project that can fulfill these mandates. This gets the writer that much faster to their goal of a sale, or starting a new career.

This is where my "will that dog hunt" consulting services come in play. I'll save you countless months of development of screenplays that waste your time and energy. My services are not cheap, but neither is my 16 years of experience.

Important Note: When I'm acting as a Consultant, I'm not acting as an agent. I don't where both hats at the same time.

Package A: For $200 I'll review your treatment, attachments, skill level and concept and let you know if you should be investing your time or moving on to the next project along with feedback to improve a worthwhile project.

Package B: For $500 I'll review your treatment and script, attachments, skill level and concept. I'll provide coverage from 2 different highly skilled script analysts and let you know if you should be investing your time or moving on to the next project along with written notes to improve a worthwhile project.

You can reach me via my website brucerbartlett.com

Top Box Office = Downsizing

450 Staff, 6.5% Of Workforce, 100 Open Positions Closed

From: Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal
Sent: Monday, February 01, 2010 2:58 PM
Subject: Transforming the Studio



Dear Colleagues,
In our article in The SPE Reel in December, we spoke about the shifting landscape of entertainment and its impact on the economic model at the heart of this industry. Despite the records our studio set at the box office, we’re not immune from these forces, and we said then that costs needed to be controlled as part of a sustained and strategic effort to remake Sony Pictures for the future.
Since that time, in all-hands meetings and small groups, our division heads and executive team have been in touch with many of you to talk in more detail about the transformation of the studio and the kinds of changes being considered.
Last week, the first steps towards the creation of a new operating model for our studio were taken in our home entertainment division and the IT department.
Today, we want to let you know, in a timely manner, what will be involved in the crucial – and difficult -- next phase of this process.
In several stages, we will have a workforce reduction, with most of the notifications taking place by the first week in March. It will affect each of the studio’s divisions, with the majority occurring in home entertainment and IT, and in the United States.
We do not have final numbers or specific dates for all reductions now, because decisions regarding proposals for certain international offices are pending. Local laws will be governing a consultation process with employees in those locations.
The decision to take this step was difficult. But it’s being done in the context of a strategy designed to help us safeguard our competitiveness and chart our own course through these troubled waters.
The need is clear: from the growth of online piracy, to the social media effect on the performance of films, to the way people have changed how they watch television and acquire DVDs. The business is going through a rough period of trial and transition, and we have an obligation to take the steps necessary to get through it.
As we said in December, we are grateful to everyone at Sony Pictures for helping us meet the challenges of this time in our history from a position of strength. And we are confident that the changes we’re making, as difficult as they are, will keep us on a path toward greater success in the future.
Michael and Amy”

Zac Efron Picks Two Projects

These are Above the Line clients



By NIKKI FINKE Wednesday January 27, 2010 @ 7:10pm
DEADLINE HOLLYWOOD

The list of young actors who transition to adult leading men isn’t that long... Tom Cruise, Sean Penn, Christian Bale, etc. Zac Efron is hoping to make that transition so he’s linked himself to a pair of projects he hopes will give him the chance to broaden his range. One of them would be his first action turn, in a Ludlum-esque spy thriller. Efron has a just made a deal at Universal for Fire, an adaptation of a graphic novel by Brian Michael Bendis that was published by Image Comics.
The plan is for Efron to play a college student who is recruited by the CIA, only to find that he has been trained for a program that creates expendable agents. Bendis, the fanboy favorite whose comic book creations include "Ultimate Spider-Man", will write the script. While little material moves during Sundance, Efron and Bendis got the deal after they schlepped around to three studios, pitching the project on a rainy day last Friday. The project has the steady hand of Neal Moritz, who’ll produce with Circle of Confusion’s David Engel. Efron and Alchemy Entertainment’s Jason Barrett will be exec producers.

Efron has made a separate deal at Warner Bros to star in a Back To The Future-like film that melds two projects. One’s a pitch from writers Tim Calpin and Kevin Jakubowski, and the other is a WB project called Algorithm that the studio was already developing as a directing vehicle for Nick Stoller, the Forgetting Sarah Marshall director who just wrapped Get Him To The Greek. Mark Gordon and Bryan Zuriff are producing and Alan Riche is exec producer along with Efron and Barrett.
Efron’s quest to be taken seriously, and to shed the teen heartthrob label thrust upon him after a trio of hit High School Musical films, really began when he bailed on a Footloose remake to instead re-team with his 17 Again director Burr Steers in The Death And Life Of Charlie St. Cloud, playing a young man who carries the guilt over the death of his younger brother. It isn't easy, as one of the films he made recently, Me and Orson Welles, was barely seen. But he wasn't looking for box office as much as the chance to be part of a strong cast in an art film. Good for him.

In Hollywood, Grappling With Studios’ Lost Clout

So what does this mean to the screenwriter. It simply emphasizes what's been discussed in this blog previously, the more economically viable your screenplay is the better chance it has of selling. With the studios under heavy pressure from their much larger parents to reverse the trend of declining revenue, they are looking for films that have the highest probability of generating strong box office revenue in as many markets (foreign and ancillary) as possible while attempting to reduce or at least maintain the current cost structure; comic books, theme park rides, best selling books, TV shows, sequels, prequels and remakes. Easier said than done, especially in a town where many view their status by the size of their budgets. This is taking place all over the industry and is most evident by the personnel changes taking place at Disney.








January 18, 2010 NY TIMES
In Hollywood, Grappling With Studios’ Lost Clout

By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNES
LOS ANGELES — A proposed sale of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the most powerful and lucrative studio during the golden age of film, drew only meager offers last week, and now Hollywood must confront a troubling question: Are movie studios becoming a financial footnote?

Loaded with debt and virtually at a standstill, MGM — now owned by a consortium that includes Sony, Comcast and the investment firms Providence Equity Partners and TPG — put its skeletal remains on the block in a complicated process that allowed potential bidders to review detailed financial information after showing their bona fides and indicating a price range based on a partial look at the books.

Time Warner, Lionsgate Entertainment and smaller private companies showed interest, but signaled offers of less than $2 billion — and perhaps as low as half that — for a company that was bought in 2004 for about $5 billion.

In a report published by Barclays Capital this month, Anthony J. DiClemente and George L. Hawkey estimated that even studios much healthier than MGM, bitten by falling DVD revenue and a 30 percent decline in operating income from 2007 to 2009, had experienced a sharp reduction in their relative importance to the media companies that own them.

“While we enjoy thinking about the film business, the reality is that film doesn’t matter nearly as much to the stocks of media conglomerates as it previously had,” Mr. DiClemente and Mr. Hawkey wrote.

Looking at Warner Brothers (a unit of Time Warner), Paramount (Viacom), Disney Studios (the Walt Disney Company) and 20th Century Fox (the News Corporation), the Barclays report reckoned that such studios, on average, accounted for only about 10 percent of the “enterprise value” of their parents.

In a separate report published last month by Global Media Intelligence, Roger Smith, an analyst and former film executive, wrote that Universal Studios, with just $170 million in operating income on revenue of $3.8 billion in 2009, was not a significant factor in Comcast’s proposed deal to acquire control of the studio’s parent, NBC Universal.

Susan Arons, a spokeswoman for MGM, declined to comment on the bidding for the studio. In a statement on Friday, the studio said it had finished receiving “indications of interest” from potential bidders and was reviewing them before proceeding.

MGM pays about $300 million a year in interest on a $3.7 billion loan and faces $1 billion in payments in June 2011. The rest of the loan is due the next year. MGM also has a $250 million line of credit that matures in April.

If MGM’s 140 creditors feel bids are too low, Stephen F. Cooper, a turnaround expert hired as chief executive in August, may need to look for another way to salvage the company.

There are backup options. For instance, Qualia Capital, a private equity fund run by the Hollywood veteran Amir Malin, has floated the idea of converting some of the debt to equity, infusing MGM with about $500 million in cash and keeping it going in a stripped-down form until the market improves.

Two people involved with the bidding, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of restrictions on the discussion of the process, said they believed virtually all of the final bids would require a bankruptcy filing that would allow any new owner to proceed without the old obligations.

Hollywood has been rife with speculation about potential bidders. The News Corporation may wade into the auction, with reports that a bid might involve Peter Chernin, the company’s former president. But Mr. Chernin has “little to no interest” in MGM, according to a spokeswoman.

Meanwhile, some who monitor the film business have been struck by the way

MGM’s collapse in value has defied a long-standing bit of conventional wisdom: that studios, like sports teams, may lose money, but their owners ultimately do not.

“I don’t believe, fundamentally, that the value of a movie studio is necessarily going to drop going forward,” said Stephen Prough, a founder of Salem Partners, an investment banking firm in Los Angeles.

Mr. Prough said, however, that tight capital had put a damper on corporate acquisitions, those of movie companies included. And

film libraries — a major component in studio value — have decreased in worth over the last three years because of falling home video revenue, even though distributors have had stronger results at the box office.

Mr. Prough declined to comment specifically on the MGM transaction to avoid possible conflicts should his company become involved.

As recently as September, Disney paid $4 billion, a 29 percent premium over market price, to acquire Marvel Entertainment, proving that a film company built around superheroes and fantasy sequels could still command big bucks.

Yet the market capitalization of Lionsgate Entertainment, an independent studio, has tumbled to about $650 million, roughly half what it was three years ago, despite steady additions to its asset base from the filmmaker Tyler Perry, from the “Saw” horror franchise and from the television series “Mad Men.”

Pegging the market value of any particular studio is treacherously difficult because so much depends on the willingness and ability of buyers to pay a premium for access to a glamorous world in which face time with movie stars and tickets to the Oscars remain very much a part of the package.

In the case of MGM, the glamour factor is low. It has all but receded from film production and had only one release last year — a dismally performing remake of “Fame.” MGM controls the James Bond and Pink Panther franchises, and retains potentially lucrative film rights to “The Hobbit.” But without the leverage of new hits, the studio’s 4,000-film library has become less valuable.

In years past, when growing home video revenue helped lift the film business, studios could take considerable abuse and still hold their value. Thus, Kirk Kerkorian, when he owned MGM in its various incarnations, managed to sell the studio profitably at least four times. Before selling to the current owners for $2.85 billion and about $2 billion in assumed debt in 2004, Mr. Kerkorian had bought it from Credit Lyonnais, the French bank, in 1996 for $1.3 billion.

The Coca-Cola Company did similarly well with Columbia Pictures in the 1980s. After buying the studio for about $750 million in 1982, it restructured the operations, and in 1989, sold what by then was a 49 percent interest in Columbia Pictures Entertainment to the Sony Corporation for roughly $5 billion in cash and assumed debt.

Marvin H. Davis, the oil entrepreneur, paid about $480 million to buy 20th Century Fox in a pair of transactions in the early 1980s. He then sold to the News Corporation, controlled by Rupert Murdoch, in stages for about $575 million, having drawn some millions from the studio in cash flow in the interim. The News Corporation still owns Fox, which, Mr. Murdoch pointed out on a recent investors’ conference call, yields more than its purchase price in profit every year.

Following the ins and outs of Universal is more difficult, as the studio went through a series of complicated sales, in which its ownership moved from MCA Inc. to Matsushita to Seagram to Vivendi to General Electric, and now to its proposed owner, a co-venture between G.E. and Comcast.

The bundle of operations within which the studio was sold changed over the years, making it virtually impossible to isolate its exact value. But the buyers appear roughly to have matched what Matsushita paid for the studio when it bought MCA’s various assets, which then included a music company, for $6.6 billion in 1990.

Even Universal, a well-tended studio despite its recent troubles at the box office, may now be worth less,

however — at least until some new technology once again raises the value of its library.

“If Comcast wanted to sell Universal as is, I don’t think getting close to $6 billion would be possible,” said Mr. Smith, the analyst.

Hollywood busts the plan

Show business rarely adheres to rules
By PETER BART
"Paranormal" crashed through the $150 million barrier recently, promptly inspiring its distributor, Paramount, to announce a new program of micro-budget pictures. The dubious conceit: That Hollywood can replicate the "Paranormal" phenomenon (its budget was $15,000).

Meanwhile, the exuberant reception accorded "Avatar" prompted its auteur, Jim Cameron, to reveal that he is prepping a program of films designed to exploit "Avatar's" breakthrough technology. Cameron did not specify whether the follow-up movies would aspire to "Avatar's" budgetary heights (Cameron's production cost totalled somewhere between $300 million and $400 million, depending on which accounting rules you follow).

If Avatar achieves something close to "Titanic"-like success, it will further reinforce the unique role that technology has played in Hollywood filmmaking. In most industries, technology has brought extraordinary cost savings, while in Hollywood it has created giant cost overruns.

One reason is that filmmakers have been incapable of curbing their appetites for effects that are "bigger" and "better." Another is that studio managements have proven extraordinarily inept about managing effects budgets or the outside contractors who violate them. Testifies the producer of one of the year's hit effects movies: "Dumb strategies by studio management added $35 million to my final costs."

Whether or not "Avatar" and "Paranormal" ever appear on a double bill, the two films dramatize the polarization of the Hollywood agenda. Studios are trying to nurture either very pricey franchise films or very inexpensive projects, often to the neglect of the "tweeners" that have racked up surprising numbers this past year. Executives find comfort in the fact that a conventional disaster movie like "2012" can gross almost $700 million around the world (two thirds of it from foreign markets). Its success reinforces basic corporate business strategies.

On the other hand, how do you account for a $460 million blockbuster like "The Hangover," a movie without star-casting or special effects or even an entirely coherent plot? Surely, "The Hangover" will go unrewarded with an Oscar, since comedy has traditionally been ignored by the Academy. But its success cannot be ignored by the studios for this key reason: It's a vivid reminder to the conglomerates that Hollywood has always defied efforts to come up with a business plan. Hits happen at any budget. And the double bill from hell will happen, too.