Top Stories: How Low Can Media Stocks Go? Russell Crowe vs Warner Bros William Morris Starts Layoffs LA Times Fires Top Showbiz Features Editor Al Franken Ahead In U.S. Senate Race Marvel Studios Keeps Movies Local Weekend Box Office’s Top Dog Tina Fey Replays VP Debate DreamWorks/Paramount Finalize Divorce WGA Pickets Tyler Perry’s New Studio TV Showrunners Diss Tyler Perry This Time An Actors Strike? Bollywood Settles Strike MGM’s ‘Valkyrie’ Memo Harvey Weinstein’s $1M Offer Bad Boy Ben Silverman            Top Stories: How Low Can Media Stocks Go? Russell Crowe vs Warner Bros William Morris Starts Layoffs LA Times Fires Top Showbiz Features Editor Al Franken Ahead In U.S. Senate Race Marvel Studios Keeps Movies Local Weekend Box Office’s Top Dog Tina Fey Replays VP Debate DreamWorks/Paramount Finalize Divorce WGA Pickets Tyler Perry’s New Studio TV Showrunners Diss Tyler Perry This Time An Actors Strike? Bollywood Settles Strike MGM’s ‘Valkyrie’ Memo Harvey Weinstein’s $1M Offer Bad Boy Ben Silverman            Top Stories: How Low Can Media Stocks Go? Russell Crowe vs Warner Bros William Morris Starts Layoffs LA Times Fires Top Showbiz Features Editor Al Franken Ahead In U.S. Senate Race Marvel Studios Keeps Movies Local Weekend Box Office’s Top Dog Tina Fey Replays VP Debate DreamWorks/Paramount Finalize Divorce WGA Pickets Tyler Perry’s New Studio TV Showrunners Diss Tyler Perry This Time An Actors Strike? Bollywood Settles Strike MGM’s ‘Valkyrie’ Memo Harvey Weinstein’s $1M Offer Bad Boy Ben Silverman            Top Stories: How Low Can Media Stocks Go? Russell Crowe vs Warner Bros William Morris Starts Layoffs LA Times Fires Top Showbiz Features Editor Al Franken Ahead In U.S. Senate Race Marvel Studios Keeps Movies Local Weekend Box Office’s Top Dog Tina Fey Replays VP Debate DreamWorks/Paramount Finalize Divorce WGA Pickets Tyler Perry’s New Studio TV Showrunners Diss Tyler Perry This Time An Actors Strike? Bollywood Settles Strike MGM’s ‘Valkyrie’ Memo Harvey Weinstein’s $1M Offer Bad Boy Ben Silverman            Top Stories: How Low Can Media Stocks Go? Russell Crowe vs Warner Bros William Morris Starts Layoffs LA Times Fires Top Showbiz Features Editor Al Franken Ahead In U.S. Senate Race Marvel Studios Keeps Movies Local Weekend Box Office’s Top Dog Tina Fey Replays VP Debate DreamWorks/Paramount Finalize Divorce WGA Pickets Tyler Perry’s New Studio TV Showrunners Diss Tyler Perry This Time An Actors Strike? Bollywood Settles Strike MGM’s ‘Valkyrie’ Memo Harvey Weinstein’s $1M Offer Bad Boy Ben Silverman            Top Stories: How Low Can Media Stocks Go? Russell Crowe vs Warner Bros William Morris Starts Layoffs LA Times Fires Top Showbiz Features Editor Al Franken Ahead In U.S. Senate Race Marvel Studios Keeps Movies Local Weekend Box Office’s Top Dog Tina Fey Replays VP Debate DreamWorks/Paramount Finalize Divorce WGA Pickets Tyler Perry’s New Studio TV Showrunners Diss Tyler Perry This Time An Actors Strike? Bollywood Settles Strike MGM’s ‘Valkyrie’ Memo Harvey Weinstein’s $1M Offer Bad Boy Ben Silverman           

Sidney Kimmel Indie Restructures Again: Is This Billionaire Tired Of The Movie Biz?

Sidney Kimmel Entertainment announced another restructuring today. Bill Horberg, president of production since August 2005, exits and becomes a producer with a first-look deal at the billionaire's indie effective immediately. (It was under Horberg’s supervision that SKE financed, produced or co-produced The Kite Runner, United 93, Breach, Lars And The Real Girl and the upcoming Synecdoche, New York.) Additionally, SKE said it has expanded the role and responsibilities of senior marketing and distribution executive Bingham Ray who, effective immediately, assumes the newly created position of president of creative affairs to take a more active role in the production of SKE films. (Before joining SKE, Ray served as president of United Artists, and in 1991 co-founded the indie October Films.) SKE also announced that Jodi Hildebrand has been promoted to vp of production and Dan Cohen upped to creative executive. Last March, SKE announced it would discontinue marketing its own productions and finance and produce fewer motion pictures per year. UPDATE: Word from my film financing circles is that Kimmel, the chairman and largest shareholder of the $5 billion Jones Apparel Group whose film company is 3 1/2 years old, is sick and tired of the movie biz. As a reliable source tells me, "Interestingly, nobody is really replacing Bill Horberg. Ray is just given the cosmetics of taking over Horberg's duties for a company that doesn't really plan to do much (he has absolutely no production experience). This is all cost saving and eventually everybody will be nuked."

Will There Be One Less Hollywood Sucker?

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5 Comments »

  1. That’s too bad. Horberg is a great producer with very good taste (look at what he made there), and is a nice guy to boot. Very rare. How’s that for a non-snarky DHD comment!

    Comment by The Lord God — August 5, 2008 @ 2:02 pm

  2. I think this might turn out to be a sign of things to come. The people running movie business have made it almost impossible to do any actual business, relying on the industry’s inherent glamour to attract fresh investors.

    Except now, the glamour’s getting tarnished, because no one with the kind of serious money needed to get into the movie biz, is going to let themselves get treated the way Kimmel’s been treated.

    It’s regrettable, but I fear inevitable.

    Comment by Furious D — August 5, 2008 @ 2:03 pm

  3. horberg made bets on movies that made no money. one pans out and its a different story. easy as that. make good bets, keep your gig.

    Comment by oi — August 5, 2008 @ 4:12 pm

  4. Horberg is a nice guy, but how do you make Lars & the Real Girl for an 18 million budget? It’s absurd. Good taste, but no business sense whatsoever. That movie should have been made for 6 million tops. He and the idiots at paramount vantage have destroyed the indie business model by making low budget films at medium budgets, and then crying how there is no audience. There’s absolutely an audience - just not a large enough one to make marginal films at budgets >15 million

    Comment by oh please — August 5, 2008 @ 6:59 pm

  5. Isn’t this basically what is happening at Walden?

    Comment by Anon — August 6, 2008 @ 3:41 am

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