The convocation of moguls had gathered at the Beverly Hills Hotel, that pink palace on Sunset Boulevard, to divvy up Saving Private Ryan, a World War II drama starring Tom Hanks, in the works for the summer of 1998. Paramount had the script; DreamWorks had the dream director, Steven Spielberg. That the two studios would agree to share the picture is not that unusual. But which one would get to distribute it in the U.S., and which would get the rest of the world? Both sides wanted the domestic release, which means getting the glory if the picture is a hit.
So how did the heavy hitters settle this weighty issue? They flipped a coin. Not without some maneuvering, of course. Team DreamWorks, which consists of Jeffrey Katzenberg, David Geffen and Spielberg, was determined that Spielberg should follow a premonition and call tails. "I believe in Steven's premonitions," Katzenberg explains. But Sumner Redstone, chairman of Viacom, Paramount's parent company, and a man who would negotiate a sunrise, insisted that Spielberg toss his own quarter while he, Redstone, made the call. The DreamWorkers gave in. Redstone, to their relief, called heads. Tails won.
DreamWorks, which has yet to release its first film, wants to get Spielberg-directed projects on track. (He did Lost World, this summer's Jurassic Park sequel, for Universal. Amistad, his first for DreamWorks, will open at Christmas.) Katzenberg says there are no losers, since Paramount gets control over domestic distribution of the comet movie Deep Impact, another joint venture to be produced--but not directed--by Spielberg. Meanwhile, the DreamWorkers should work on developing Spielberg's psychic abilities. Maybe they could have skipped all that trouble over the sitcom Ink and held off the splashy announcement about their dream studio at Playa Vista, where ground has yet to be broken.