You are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

kestrel9 ago

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/04/11/business/new-thriller-will-ovitz-go-to-mca.html

1995

HOLLYWOOD, April 10— Michael Ovitz, who helped to create the Creative Artists Agency more than a decade ago and has overseen its remarkable growth into a behemoth that represents superstars like Tom Cruise, Michael Jackson and Sylvester Stallone, is the source of considerable speculation as the choice of the Seagram Company to run the entertainment giant MCA Inc., which Seagram bought on Sunday.

Mr. Ovitz, who is 49 and has moved into advertising, corporate finance and the convergence of entertainment, information and communications, is a close friend of Edgar Bronfman Jr., the chief executive of Seagram, the Canadian liquor giant, and was one of the brokers in the MCA sale.

Not only would the departure of Mr. Ovitz from Creative Artists ripple across the movie, television and music business, but it could also in many ways have a seismic impact on the talent agency business, which Creative Artists has dominated for at least a decade.

Mr. Bronfman, who made his foray into the entertainment business on Sunday with the purchase of 80 percent of MCA from the Matsushita Electric Industrial Company for $5.7 billion in cash, could not be reached for comment today.

Mr. Ovitz, a formidable deal maker in Hollywood, has publicly denied any interest in running MCA, the entertainment conglomerate that controls Universal Pictures; Putnam, the book publisher; MCA and Geffen Records; Universal Studios and theme parks.

People close to Mr. Bronfman said he had offered an honorary chairmanship to Lew Wasserman, who as the chairman of MCA has run the company for decades along with Sidney J. Sheinberg, its president.

Because Mr. Bronfman wants to maintain warm relationships with Mr. Sheinberg and Mr. Wasserman, MCA's new owner also planned to offer Mr. Sheinberg an unspecified position at the studio. "Edgar has no interest in antagonizing Sheinberg, but it's clear he will get someone else to run the place," one person close to Mr. Bronfman said today.

There are several reasons that Mr. Ovitz might want to leave Creative Artists...

Mr. Ovitz, though wealthy, hungers to be in the same financial league as his friends like Michael D. Eisner, chairman of the Walt Disney Company, and Barry Diller, former chairman of Fox Inc.

If Mr. Ovitz left Creative Artists, he would be compelled to sell his majority share in the agency to his fellow agents to avoid conflicts of interest. That would open the way for a potential struggle for control of Creative Artists, Hollywood's most powerful agency. Mr. Ovitz's share could be as high as $200 million, according to some estimates.

Ron Meyer, president of Creative Artists and co-founder of the agency with Mr. Ovitz, runs the day-to-day operations and is widely trusted not only by movie stars but also by executives like David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, as well as others, who have chilly relations with Mr. Ovitz. But Mr. Meyer could face restlessness and a potential insurgency by ferociously ambitious younger agents who are anxious to reach the upper tier at Creative Artists.

Any crack in the fortress-like solidarity of Creative Artists would be exploited immediately by International Creative Management, the William Morris Agency and United Talent, the three largest agencies after Creative Artists.

At stake are some of the biggest personalities in town: actors like Robert Redford, Demi Moore, Kevin Costner, Paul Newman, Bette Midler, Robert DeNiro, Al Pacino, Barbra Streisand and Dustin Hoffman and directors like Barry Levinson, Ivan Reitman, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone and Mike Nichols.

As speculation centered on Mr. Ovitz, Mr. Bronfman and his father, Edgar M. Bronfman, had lunch today with Mr. Wasserman, who is 82, and Mr. Sheinberg, who is 60. Mr. Wasserman and Mr. Sheinberg have made it clear that they are angry at the way Matsushita treated them and essentially kept them in the dark about the negotiations to sell MCA.

In 1990 Mr. Wasserman and Mr. Sheinberg sold MCA to the Japanese company, pocketing hundreds of millions of dollars in the process but complaining in later years that Matsushita was treating them poorly and, in essence, like employees.