Anschutz steps into magical portal

Narnia film a gamble for Denver billionaire

Joyzelle Davis, Rocky Mountain News

Saturday, December 3, 2005

Phil Anschutz didn't have an auspicious Hollywood debut.

His first release, a 2002 movie called Joshua, cost more than $8 million to make and grossed less than $1.5 million at the box office.

But the Denver billionaire and former oil wildcatter is used to drilling dry wells before hitting a gusher.

After a run of movies that ranged from hits such as Ray to bombs such as Around the World in 80 Days, Anschutz's film company is about to take its biggest gamble yet: the $150 million Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Anschutz is betting that the millions who have read the books will flock to theaters to see what it is like to go through the walk-in wardrobe to Narnia. At the same time, he's hoping they won't get distracted by the latest Harry Potter film and the remake of King Kong opening about the same time.

"Narnia is going to be one of the biggest movies of the year, without question," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, which tracks and analyzes box office sales. "It's going to get a huge cross section of audience, even those who aren't overtly religious."

The movie, directed by Andrew Adamson, will open at theaters Friday. Adamson also directed both Shrek films and helped write the Narnia script.

If the adaptation of C.S. Lewis' 1950 legendary fable is successful, it could create a franchise on the scale of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter that not only would pack multiplexes for years to come with six sequels but create a decades-long revenue stream from DVDs, games, soundtracks, TV rights and other tie-ins.

Anschutz's Walden Media has teamed with promotional powerhouse Disney, which is sharing half the profits and costs of the film, to embark on an ambitious marketing campaign that will have Narnia characters turning up everywhere from McDonald's Happy Meals to Oral-B toothbrushes and the Cherry Creek Shopping Center.

Disney also spearheaded the strategy of hiring the same Christian marketing firm that helped propel Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ into a $611 million worldwide success. The Narnia series is seen by some as an allegory for Christ's Passion, with the lion who sacrifices his life and is then resurrected.

"This is by far Anschutz's biggest, splashiest movie so far in terms of marketing," said Dade Hayes, author of Open Wide: How Hollywood Box Office Became a National Obsession and an editor at Entertainment Weekly.

Anschutz, whom Forbes magazine this year ranked as the nation's 28th richest person with a net worth of $7.2 billion, is perhaps best-known in Denver for founding Qwest Communications after amassing a fortune in oil, real estate and railroads.

In the past few years, Anschutz has stitched together a nationwide entertainment empire of newspapers, radio programming, sports teams, live-entertainment venues and AEG Live, the nation's second-largest concert and touring promoter after Clear Channel. He also owns a controlling stake in Regal Entertainment, the largest chain of movie theaters in the U.S.

Anschutz, who hasn't given an interview to the media in 30 years, declined to comment through a spokesman.

Fewer billions to work with

Anschutz's net worth peaked at $18 billion in 2000, according to Forbes, when Qwest shares soared during the telecom boom. His net worth has since dropped to $7.2 billion, and his legendary golden touch hasn't been uniformly evident on the film front.

Anschutz Film Group's three years of movies have yielded one of last year's most acclaimed films, Ray, and one of its most conspicuous box office failures, Around the World in 80 Days. Ray earned the best actor Oscar and Golden Globe awards for Jamie Foxx, who thanked Anschutz from the stage for financing the film. None of Anschutz's movies has had a publicity buildup like Narnia.

Anschutz's venture into Hollywood is a return of sorts. When starting out in the family's oil business in the late 1960s, he hit a vein with an oil field in Gillette, Wyo. But soon after, the field accidentally caught fire, and, facing financial ruin, then 27-year-old Anschutz devised an ingenious way to salvage his investment.

He persuaded Universal Studios, which was filming the John Wayne movie Hellfighters, about famous oil field fighter Red Adair, to pay him $100,000 for footage of Adair putting out the Wyoming fire.

Anschutz, 66, follows a long line of billionaires going back to Howard Hughes and the late Denver oilman Marvin Davis who have tried their hand at Hollywood after earning their fortunes in the industrial world.

Anschutz Film Group, the parent company of family-friendly production companies Walden Media and Bristol Bay, doesn't make movies with anything harsher than a PG-13 rating. Bristol Bay, whose recent releases include Ray and the Matthew -McConaughey film Sahara, describes its films as "uplifting stories appropriate for audiences of all ages."

Narnia producer Walden is the child-centric arm, choosing projects from young adult books to create outreach programs through schools and libraries. The production company was founded nearly five years ago by former Dimension Films executive Cary Granat, whose previous credits include Scream and Scary Movie - both a far cry from G-rated movies - and Micheal Flaherty, a former Massachusetts state Senate aide and creator of educational software.

Scouring schools for ideas

The two former Tufts University roommates wanted to form a company that would focus on education-oriented media. After less than a year in business, they met Anschutz in 2001 through "a mutual acquaintance," and his financial backing helped expand their ambitions to the big screen, Granat said.

While most movie production companies snatch up the rights to the latest best-selling book, Walden Media scours school curriculums for ideas for its projects. Walden often engages the writer - in the case of Narnia, Lewis' stepson (and movie co-producer) Douglas Gresham - to help promote its movies as faithful to the source material.

"It's a noteworthy new approach," Hayes said.

Anschutz talks with the Walden Media executives "a couple of times a month," but he "lets the management run the show," particularly when it comes to creative decisions, Granat said.

Before Narnia, Anschutz's biggest release was Around the World in 80 Days - a more than $100 million movie starring Jackie Chan and British comedian Steve Coogan. The film made less than $25 million at the U.S. box office, making it one of last year's biggest wipeouts. Sahara, a $130 million action adventure based on Clive Cussler's 1992 novel, also wasn't the hit the company was hoping for, taking in around $120 million worldwide.

The rest of Anschutz's major releases have been modest to outright hits, ranging from the $32.7 million take of Because of Winn-Dixie to $67 million for Holes, which cost an estimated $20 million to make.

Aside from Around the World, Anschutz's "track record is pretty good," said Exhibitor Relations' Dergarabedian. "For Hollywood, it's actually amazing."

The box office alone isn't representative of the sales for most family films, which tend to have long and healthy lives in the DVD sales and rental market, analysts said.

Walden's Granat isn't concerned that Narnia will turn out to be a redux of Around the World's box office performance, saying there isn't any comparison in terms of the loyalty inspired by the books.

"The risk isn't whether the audience will show up; it's whether we can make a movie that fulfills the readers' expectations," Granat said. "And there, I 100 percent believe that we have."

Next up: 'Charlotte's Web'

Walden is tackling another book with intensely loyal readership, E.B. White's Charlotte's Web, which is scheduled for release next holiday season. Also on tap for next year are an adaptation of the book How to Eat Fried Worms and the mystery Hoot.

Narnia is coming out at the end of a Hollywood slump, with cumulative box office take lagging last year's by about 6 percent, or $475 million, as of last weekend, according to Exhibitor. That's been bad news for Regal, a 6,600-screen chain Anschutz created by purchasing United Artists, Regal Cinemas and Edwards Theatres out of bankruptcy in the late 1990s. Last month, Knoxville, Tenn.- based Regal reported net income fell 38 percent to $17 million.

Narnia's release is sandwiched between two of the other most-anticipated releases this holiday season - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which grossed more than $200 million during its first two weeks in release, and Peter Jackson's King Kong, which comes out four days later.

There's probably enough demand for all three movies, and the triumvirate of big-screen event films may even rescue the year for the studios, analysts said.

"The mantra in Hollywood right now is Potter, Narnia, Kong," Dergarabedian said.

Not everyone thinks Narnia is a guaranteed blockbuster. The film runs the risk of being seen as an also-ran after Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, and the landscape is littered with fantasy failures ranging from the recently released Zathura to the 1980s films Legend and The Dark Crystal, said Brandon Gray, president of BoxOfficeMojo.com.

"Prior to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, fantasy really was a tough sell," he said. "It'll be interesting to see if Narnia can strike a chord with audiences."

Results for Narnia won't be known until next week's box office till is counted. But early signs are promising: Online ticket seller Fandango says Narnia sales comprise 24 percent of its advance ticket sales as of Friday morning, which is "significant because it's still far in advance of when the film opens," spokeswoman Rachel Dardinski said.

"Narnia is really going to be the real first theatrical litmus test" for Anschutz, said Richard Horgan, film commentator for Fandango. "The chatter on the Internet has been there for months and months about Narnia."

Walden, for its part, is optimistic. The company already is moving ahead with plans for the next book, Prince Caspian, which will start filming next fall, and hopes eventually to film the entire series, Granat said.

"This franchise fits perfectly with the mission of Walden," he said. "It has great characters, drama, a terrific message - it's rare that something just hits the bull's eye."

Company registers outright hits - and flops

Box office results for Anschutz Film Group, including Walden Media and Bristol Bay:

Title Domestic gross (in millions) Estimated production budget (in millions) Year opened

• Ray $75.33 $40 2004

• Sahara $68.67 $130 2005

• Holes $67.33 $20 2003

• Because of Winn-Dixie $32.65 $14 2005

• Around the World in 80 Days $24 $110 2004

• Ghosts of the Abyss (IMAX) $17 N/A 2003

• Pulse: A STOMP Odyssey (IMAX) $9.79 Less than $3 2002

• Aliens of the Deep $7.5 N/A 2005

• Joshua $1.46 Less than $10 2002

• I Am David $0.288 N/A 2004

• Danny Deckchair $0.160 N/A 2004

• Children on Their Birthdays ** N/A 2002**Under $50,000, Limited Release Before Going To Video Source: Boxofficemojo.Com

Eggs in many baskets

Phil Anschutz's holdings include energy, transportation, communications, professional sports, agriculture, media, entertainment and real estate. Here are some of the largest:

• Qwest Communications

• Forest Oil

• Union Pacific

• Newspapers

San Francisco Examiner

Washington Examiner

• Sports

Los Angeles Lakers

Los Angeles Kings

Major League Soccer: Los Angeles Galaxy, Chicago Fire, New York/New Jersey Metro Stars and D.C. United

• Venues

Staples Center in Los Angeles

Manchester Evening News Arena, U.K.

Colosseum at Caesars Palace. Las Vegas

NokiaTheatre Times Square, N.Y.

• Movie theaters

Regal Entertainment Group

• Production companies

Bristol Bay

Walden Media

• Anschutz Entertainment Group

AEG Live/Goldenvoice

Celine Dion "A new day..." in Las Vegas

What they're saying

Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, at left, with stars Anna Popplewell, William Moseley and Georgie Henley, is garnering Hollywood buzz:

• Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, which tracks and analyzes box office sales: "Narnia is going to be one of the biggest movies of the year without question. It's going to get a huge cross section of audience, even those who aren't overtly religious."

• Brandon Gray, president of Box- OfficeMojo.com: "Prior to Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, fantasy really was a tough sell. It'll be interesting to see if Narnia can strike a chord with audiences."

davisj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-2514