Hollywood's Best Blunders

Slate
September , 2005

Contributed By The Sources of Edward Jay Epstein


The Hollywood Economist

The numbers behind the industry

[In Order of Submission].

1.   Edgar Bronfman Jr.'s disastrous trade of Universal's television assets to Barry Diller's company.

2.  Blockbuster Entertainment's kamikaze rejection of the offer of  a DVD rental window.

3.   Paramount and Universal's euthanasia of UIP, the dominant international distributor that they jointly owned.

4. Lew Wasserman's 7 year litigation aimed at blocking the VCR (which then turned out to by Hollywood's cash cow)

via   Universal vs Sony.

5. MGM's failure to include international distribution rights--the crown jewel-- in its purchase of United Artists.

6. Warner's fire sale of MTV and Nickelodeon to Viacom to satisfy a dissident shareholder.

7. Fox giving half of Titanic, , the most successful movie in history, to Paramount in return for Paramount merely paying the budget overage ( $60 million.)

8. Paramount CEO Frank Mancuso gifting George Lucas the entire Paramount historical archives after the opening of Indiana Jones.

9.  Fox giving away Star War's toy licensing rights to manufacturers to publicize the original episode.

10.  Michael Eisner's 1995 short-lived recruitment of Michael Ovitz as President of the Walt Disney Company.

11.   Miramax's passing on the chance to make The Lord Of The Rings trilogy.

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