(6).jpg) By Johnny Firecloud | New Line Cinema, the 40-year old studio behind film franchises The Lord of the Rings, Nightmare on Elm St., Austin Powers, Blade and Friday is being merged with Warner Bros. New Line Cinema employs roughly 600 people in New York and Hollywood, and hundreds of jobs will be lost in the merger. Bowing to corporate pressure, New Line studio heads also resigned. |
While New Line has scored some major successes over the years and has spawned several massively successful film franchises, the studio has also seen its share of failure. Many of New Line's recent films have been big-budget duds. The studio sank $180 million on last year's fantasy adventure The Golden Compass, and the film was a collossal failure, barely bringing in a third of the budget at the box office. New Line sold the overseas rights to cover the production budget, so when it went on to gross over $260 million in other markets, profits were lost. The studio does have some upcoming potential blockbusters in production, however, including The Hobbit and the Sex and the City movie.
The merger is the first major piece of restructuring by Time Warner president and CEO Jeff Bewkes, who took the reins at the start of the year. Consolidating New Line into Warner Bros will allow the company to make better use of Warners Bros' international distribution capabilities and lead to millions of dollars in savings. After the job cuts, New Line's remaining executives will have to clear all new projects with Warner Bros president Alan Horm. The studio's overall output will be cut to roughly half a dozen films a year.
One unfortunate result of the decision to merge the two businesses is the exit of New Line co-chairmen and chief executives Robert Shaye and long term colleague Michael Lynne. Shaye founded New Line in 1967."New Line has been our respective life's work as well as our second family," Shaye and Lynne said in a statement. "While we're sad to be leaving, we're enormously proud to have overseen its extraordinary growth."
Bow your heads, people. These are the men that brought you all four House Party movies. Respect.
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