New Line is Luring Hollywood's Top Female Stars

For 27 years, New Line Cinema kept a low profile in Hollywood, getting maximum bang for minimal bucks from both art-house movies like Robert Altman’s The Player and youth franchises like The Nightmare on Elm Street and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles films. But when Turner Broadcasting bought New Line for $550 million last year, it was as if the resilient little studio had got its own transforming dose of plutonium. Since then, New Line has stepped into the spotlight as a no-holds-barred major player, stirring the industry with its big-money deal-making and something more: its willingness to wager on women.

”It’s not on purpose,” claims New Line chairman Robert Shaye when asked why so many actresses figure prominently in the studio’s new lineup. In the male- dominated medium of the movies, giving weight to women can get you labeled reckless, but Shaye insists he’s still following the same conservative business plan he pecked out on his Remington typewriter when he founded the company. Women’s films ”happen to be a niche we believe in,” he says. ”Consider that the Elm Street series always had a female protagonist.”

It’s true that New Line didn’t simply throw Turner’s money at A-list < actresses. The stars were lured by substantial paydays for enviable roles and substantial control of projects close to their hearts.

*Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan signed in April to jointly develop and star in a remake of The Women. Roberts will reportedly get $12 million and Ryan $8 million.

*Geena Davis and her husband, director Renny Harlin (Cliffhanger), moved their production company to New Line last May. Soon after, the studio bought an action thriller, The Long Kiss Goodnight, for them to produce; Davis will star, and Harlin will direct. Projected budget: $40 million.

*Demi Moore brought Gaslight Addition to New Line in July. She’ll produce and make an appearance in this low-budget 1970s story of four girls bonding on a summer vacation.

*Michelle Pfeiffer agreed last July to take the lead in and produce Privacy. She will get $4 million to play a tabloid reporter who befriends a celebrity.

But talk of niche marketing can sound coy now that New Line’s competing with (pardon the expression) the big boys. The studio is adding three or four higher-budget, higher-profile films each year to its existing slate of 7 to 11 cheapies (and artier films from its Fine Line franchise), so not every actress-driven project falls into the category now occupied by its Corrina, Corrina—a quiet Oscar bid for its certified star, Whoopi Goldberg.

Company executives claim that most of their larger efforts will cost about as much as their most expensive pre-Turner movie, The Mask, a $23 million production that has returned $100.3 million at the box office so far. Yet it’s already clear that when stakes are high, the new New Line doesn’t like to fold.

In April the studio signed Jim Carrey to a holiday vehicle, Dumb and Dumber, for $7 million, and to a Mask sequel for a reported $5 million to $10 million. And in July, after a bidding war with Warner Bros. and Columbia Pictures, it bought Shane Black’s ultragory script of The Long Kiss Goodnight for the highest price a screenplay has ever fetched: $4 million. The difference between New Line’s current big-spending ways and its past is ”night and day,” says Nightmare on Elm Street director Wes Craven, who has often clashed with the studio. ”The company has become legitimately run. Now you get quarterly reports.” And bigger budgets: The $10 million for Craven’s New Nightmare is a far cry from the $1.3 million New Line spent on the original.

The Goodnight purchase is considered daring because Davis, and not a + hardened action hero such as Arnold or Wesley or Sly, will play the lead-an assassin who has lost all memory of her deadly trade and must rely on instinct to rescue her kidnapped daughter. Still, Shaye considers it a bargain. ”If we pay $4 million for a script, it doesn’t mean we are going to pay $4 million for every script,” he says. ”While we may be shopping in the really good stores now, we’re still good shoppers. We’re not overpaying for position.”

Certainly Davis, at $5 million per movie, is a bargain compared with Schwarzenegger ($15 million). And the industry’s lack of faith in women’s movies helps keep prices from going higher. ”When we were shopping Gaslight,” recalls Demi Moore’s producing partner, Suzanne Todd, ”one studio said to me, ‘Oh, we made one women’s movie last year and it didn’t work. I think we’ll pass.’ ”One of the reasons New Line has been so successful over the years,” says Todd, ”is because they are willing to pursue the alternative. It’s not just about finding good roles for female talent. It’s about being given the chance to develop material.”

The larger question is whether New Line’s women’s movies are geared for success. ”We know there’s a market there,” says Karen Hermelin, New Line’s vice president for corporate research. ”It keeps being proved that women drive a lot of moviemaking decisions. They’ll go if you give them something that’s relevant to their lives.” ICM agent Elaine Goldsmith, who represents Julia Roberts, agrees. She believes that New Line is among a number of ”writers and studios responding to the desire the audience has to see actresses driving the action as opposed to being (an) accessory.”

But no one is turning blue waiting for another Hollywood declaration that at long last this is the real Year of the Woman.

”When (Susan Sarandon and I) did Thelma & Louise, everyone thought that was the forefront of a trend,” Davis recalls, then adds, laughing, ”I have to say that I’ve been in this town for a while and all I’ve seen is a lack of trend.”

”Every year around Oscar time, people are scratching their heads to come up with more than three or four women for Best Actress,” says Goldsmith. ”There’s never that many great roles. I’m looking forward to the year when we have an abundance of women and (people) are saying, ‘Gosh, who are we going to get for Best Actor?”’