How To Run a Movie Studio

Will Eastwood help Columbia Pictures recover from its Schwarzenegger trauma?

There are guides to the nuts and bolts of making movies, but until now there has been no instructional text for top people in Hollywood -- that is, those dozen or so executives whose job it is to hand out several billion dollars of other people's money (especially Japanese people's money) to extremely good- looking, talented and/or lucky Southern Californians.

1. Don't believe in sure things -- not even Arnold Schwarzenegger. When you hire Arnold for a movie, as Columbia Pictures did for Last Action Hero, the industry's working assumption has been that "you couldn't miss $75 or $80 million at...

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