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February 04, 2005
Yari of living dangerously
Newly-minted mogul Bob Yari gets the Anne Thompson survey: shooting his twentieth film, his ventures include "foreign sales operation Syndicate Films International; Bob Yari Productions, a discretionary fund; El Camino, a partnership with William Morris Independents, which has assembled such films as Lions Gate's A Love Song for Bobby Long...; Stratus, in which he is partnered with Mark Gordon to produce higher-budgeted films like Miramax Films' $60 million Hostage, starring Bruce Willis; and Bull's Eye Entertainment, with partners Mark Curcio and Cathy Schulman, which produces indie films (such as Crash and Thumbsucker) to be sold at film festivals. "He put his money where his mouth is," says entertainment attorney Linda Lichter. "He's taken all the risk, he's done a lot of movies with no distribution." ... Yari isn't thrilled by how his films have performed so far. Most distributors, he finds, use the domestic release as a test run that determines how much to spend on the video... As Yari realizes, if he creates his own distribution outfit, then he will get to keep the pot of gold that goes to the distributor when a movie hits big. He is currently finalizing a new [studio-sheltered] video label... and then, says Yari, "the next step for us is domestic theatrical, having the ability to release a film on 400-500 screens... Distribution works well with a volume of pictures. The pitfall is when producers get into distribution who don't have enough films."
Posted by Ray Pride at February 4, 2005 09:39 AM
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