Last November, I wrote how the movie “Flatliners” took an unknown word and made it common parlance for everyone from sportswriters to politicians and the like. In that story, I detailed the history of the film and how it became, at the time, the most profitable film in a long time at the then-beleaguered Columbia Pictures.
Just to recap, it was written by a little-known writer named Peter Filardi and became subject of a bidding war between the company I worked for, Michael Douglas’ Stonebridge Entertainment, and producer Scott Rudin. Columbia won -- for what was at the time the enormous price of $450,000 -- Michael and his partner Rick Bieber produced; Joel Schumacher directed; Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland (who looks the same today in “24” as he did then!) and Julia Roberts starred.
The picture went on to open number 1 in August 1990, going on to gross a total of over $150 million at the box office alone. (That was before people even began counting things like DVD and cable sales into the gross!)
The key, though, was “profitable” -- a lost word in today’s world of $100 million average budgets for studio films. As I noted, our budget was only $15.9 million, making it what they call on Wall Street a “10 bagger” -- or an investment that returns 10 times its cost. Heck, even the independents have forgotten -- one of the last remaining independent studios, Lionsgate, just pissed away a reported $60 million on “Killers” .. which is why feared investor Carl Ichan is making a run at the place.
Icahn knows the difference between profits and gaudy premieres that execs can take their wives to! (Truth in advertising -- I’ve had a couple of deals with Lionsgate over the last several years, both with this management and the previous.)
So how were we able to make a successful picture for so little?
Part of it is, of course, is inflation -- everything costs more today. But not that much more! Rather, it really has to do with producer discipline. Sure, in those days, everyone wanted Academy Award-winner Sidney Pollack (“Tootsie,” “Out of Africa”) to direct their movie and Tom Cruise to star in it which meant, just based on the law of supply and demand, their prices skyrocketed.
Instead, with “Flatliners,” we decided we would stick to the old “high concept” idea -- that’s why we were willing to pay top dollar for the script. We felt (I was the vp in charge of production) that the “concept” of young medical students willing to descend into death to return and tell us about it was so strong that Manny, Moe and Jack could star in it.
Granted, Kiefer, Kevin and Julia were hardly Manny, Moe and Jack -- but they were all still at the beginning stages of their career or had fallen out of favor. Following “Footloose,” for example, Bacon, a former soap star, had made two losers in a row for Columbia-based producers, “Quicksilver” (about bike messengers in San Francisco) and the “inside Hollywood” bomb “The Big Picture.”
