MONEY, POLITICS & HOLLYWOOD

By Sarah Sluis

Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy Affects Hollywood

Hollywood may be in the entertainment business, but the industry is far from isolated from the current political and financial climate.

With the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and news that Bank of America will buy Merrill Lynch, some have wondered what will happen to Hollywood.  United Artists, for example, has a $500 million credit line with Merrill Lynch.  As all of Merrill's assets are examined during its merger, UA, which failed to live up to its contractual obligation in terms of films per year, could lose its contract.  Hollywood Reporter's Risky Biz Blog has this to say about big-studio financing:

"UA has a $500 million production facility from Merrill Lynch; will Bank of America scrutinize that for a way out? MGM and The Weinstein Company are seeking money to finance slates -- and that's getting harder by the day. Summit and Marvel, who have debt facilities, may be in a slightly better position because acquiring companies tend to scrutinize loans less than they do equity investments...but don't expect the companies to go back and get money on the next go-round nearly as easily as they did the first time."

Frankly, though, the Tom Cruise/Paula Wagner mess at United Artists (see: Lions for Lambs, upcoming Valkyrie) is probably a better bet than one of those famed mystery meat packages of adjustable rate mortgages.

Hollywood Opens Checkbooks for Candidates and Content

On a political note, last night also brought news of a political fundraising effort in Beverly Hills for Barack Obama�two events that should raise him a staggering $9 million. 

Speaking through their films as well as their checkbooks, the studios are delivering a number of political films before and after November's election.  Upcoming Oliver Stone film W. will release just weeks before the election, taking some assertive swipes at an active presidency.  Other films, such as documentary Battle in Seattle, about the WTO riots in 1999, address political uprisings.  In fiction films, political CIA thriller Body of Lies, starring Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio, hits theatres October 10th.  The Lucky Ones, a road trip movie about a mixed group of soldiers heading home after sustaining injuries, will release on September 26th.  While the film looks to be ultimately heartwarming, the message of soldiers healing and learning to renew their lives is bittersweet.

After the election, Milk, a biopic of America's first openly gay elected official Harvey Milk, who was assassinated for his sexuality, opens on November 26th.  Ron Howard's Frost/Nixon, about talk show host David Frost's interview with Richard Nixon after his resignation, will come to the screen on December 5th.  The mix of biopics, dramatizations of actual events, fiction films, and documentaries shows that Hollywood is actively courting content relevant to the current political climate.  As for the other releases, film scholars will certainly make assertions about how their "latent content" speaks to our current political and financial climate�The New York Times has already done a feature tenuously contrasting depictions of wealth in teenage television shows in different eras, so it's only a matter of time.