Universal, every mention

CAA (with Michael Ovitz) · Acquired Dec 21, 2021 · 25 mentions

• ▶ 14:37 Michael Ovitz Picked up, and Michael decided to write the script, subsequently brought in some help, and basically I went to Universal, which was where Stephen was housed, and I called the head of the company, Sid Scheinberg, and it was kind of a famous…
• ▶ 15:48 Michael Ovitz And I said, so Stephen doesn't control it, which means your first look with him disappears, but Stephen wants to make the movie at Universal.
• ▶ 16:06 Michael Ovitz I told him the deal, that we were going to be partners with Universal, dollar for dollar.
• ▶ 24:36 Ben Gilbert To Lou, when he's a studio head at Universal, that's gotta be kind of a wild, full turn of events to, to, you know, um, really get the better of that deal.
• ▶ 25:36 David Rosenthal But then he went to the dark side and he stopped being an agent and he, an MCA, his, his agency bought universal.
• ▶ 25:53 Michael Ovitz First, he bought the pre 1948 Paramount Library for Universal, and he made a decision basically that it was better economics on the other side of the deal.
• ▶ 26:15 Michael Ovitz Then he bought universal for a period, by the way, David, Lou was still an agent while he owned review television.
• ▶ 27:13 David Rosenthal How, how would you characterize Lou then and what he did with universal?
• ▶ 29:45 Ben Gilbert Meanwhile, MCA buys Universal, so you have one company there that's both an agency and a studio.
• ▶ 30:51 Michael Ovitz Was MCA to stay together as an agency and leverage him at Universal.
• ▶ 1:21:00 Ben Gilbert And then the second, I want to talk about, um, when you explore Universal and potentially becoming a studio head yourself.
• ▶ 1:21:31 Michael Ovitz Universal was under siege.
• ▶ 1:22:17 Michael Ovitz I couldn't afford for Universal or Columbia or MGM or Warners to shut down or to reduce the scope of their budgets.
• ▶ 1:30:41 Ben Gilbert And this is to buy Universal.
• ▶ 1:30:43 Ben Gilbert Or MCA Universal at the time, which they.
• ▶ 1:30:45 Michael Ovitz Which to buy MCA Universal.
• ▶ 1:31:09 Ben Gilbert And they ended up owning Universal for, gosh, was it 10 years before it sold to Vivendi, and then later to, or I'm sorry, it was Seagram's, right?
• ▶ 1:31:23 Michael Ovitz They had a very bad experience with Universal.
• ▶ 1:31:27 Michael Ovitz So when I brought the CEO of Matsushita to the universal lot after the deal was consummated, I had had lunch with Lou the day before, and I said to him, I said, Lou, you are the greatest executive in our business, but once you sell this…
• ▶ 1:32:43 Michael Ovitz And he and Sid ran universal like they didn't have owners, but they did.
• ▶ 1:35:56 David Rosenthal At Universal.
• ▶ 1:35:59 Michael Ovitz Tour guide at Universal Studios.
• ▶ 1:40:58 David Rosenthal If the Universal job had worked out, if you had gone to Universal, do you think things would have played out differently?
• ▶ 1:41:05 David Rosenthal I mean, Universal is a very different company than Disney, much more pure play focused on, on content at the time, uh, than, than Disney was.
• ▶ 1:41:58 Michael Ovitz I had a chance to buy from Universal, um, Penguin, Putnam, which is now the biggest publishing company in the world.