Robert Halmi, Jr.

November 2008

Robert Halmi, Jr. has worked in the family business, RHI Entertainment, for nearly three decades. Alongside the creative genius of his father, Robert Halmi, Sr., who has made some of the most famous and top-rated event mini-series and TV movies, Halmi, Jr. has provided the business expertise to find the financing and distribution outlets to showcase the company’s product worldwide. In 1994, the Halmis sold their company to Hallmark Cards. Halmi, Jr., along with other partners, later founded the Hallmark Channel, which provided a guaranteed outlet for the family product produced by the Halmis. In January 2006, father and son bought back the company they founded, which has allowed them to create a wider range of mini-series and movies. He talks about his vision for the company in today’s multiplatform TV landscape.

WS: After you took back the RHI library, what kind of freedom have you had to produce a broader slate of movies and mini-series?

HALMI: In the 2005-06 season, we had 22 percent of the U.S. made-for-television market and 100 percent of that product was made for the Hallmark Channel, so it was all family product. And in the ’07-08 season we had 30 percent of the television market and only 11 percent of the product we made was for Hallmark. So we produce a lot for SCI FI and Spike and for Lifetime, as well as some movies for ABC Family and some for Hallmark. We increased our market share by diversifying the type of product we make. It’s really healthy for a content company not to just be pigeonholed into one type of product. And frankly, the action-adventure movies we produce sell a little better than the family product, especially when you look at markets like Asia and Latin America. There is a market for family movies [in those territories] but there is a little more competition for the action-adventure genre.

WS: Besides linear channels, you’ve also moved into VOD.

HALMI: Twelve months ago we launched a VOD channel in the States. We started in 6 million homes. We premiere two movies a month in our VOD space—a 90-day pre-release, if you will—before they go to the network. We went from 6 million homes to 37 million homes in 12 months—that’s full VOD distribution in the States. We have agreements with every MSO in the U.S. for our VOD service. Our last film, Backwoods, did 100,000 views at $4.19 a view. To gross $400,000 in VOD may not be exciting for a feature film, but the budgets for our films tend to be $2.5 million, so it’s about 15 percent of the budget recouped in the first 30 days on VOD—that’s a pretty exciting thing. And VOD will grow—it’s in 37 million homes and only 15 percent of the people that have a VOD service know how to use it. It’s sort of like people who had a VCR and didn’t know how to use it and record or set the time, and the machine would always blink 12:00, 12:00, 12:00! But as that 15 percent grows, and it will in the next three years, north of 65 million, it will be a fairly exciting new-media market for us.

WS: And with the gloomy forecasts for the economy, having a VOD service certainly costs less than going out to see a movie.

HALMI: DVD sales, VOD and television in general should be pretty strong. Even if the economy turns around and the market turns around, I think people are a little gun-shy of spending too much money and there certainly is going to be a lot less going out and a lot more staying home.

WS: And how is RHI Entertainment positioned to weather any tough economic times ahead?

HALMI: We were lucky, we were one of the last companies to go public in the States in June and that repaid about $200 million of debt, so that we would have that money available for production finance. Content will be pretty valuable in the next couple of years. I think we’ve positioned the company well and our banks are fairly supportive of our business model.

WS: And your track record of hits certainly helps.

HALMI: Oh, we’ve been doing this for 30 years and we’ve never defaulted on a loan and we don’t take many risks in our business. We presell most of our product so it’s not a speculative business. The banks like that, and they like that we were able to get our public offering done—it showed that people believed in the company and put more equity into it, so I think we’ll be fine.

WS: Tell us about your movie weekend with ION Television in the U.S.

HALMI: We have been waiting for ION to re-brand the network, which they did a month ago, and we just started to put our best foot forward there as well and the ratings are starting to pick up. The ratings are improving each week, which is good, because there is a direct corollary between how much money we make and the ratings, since we get paid directly by advertisers. We have Friday, Saturday and Sunday from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m. and it gives us a really [reliable] distribution platform for our product. And we opened that platform up to our international clients as well, so if one of our important clients like Tele München, who just made Sea Wolf, needs a U.S. home and can’t find one, we make our ION slot available to them. So our important clients get access to a U.S. television slot they might not have access to in another way. We are user friendly for our own clients.

WS: And the DVD business is still good for you? It hasn’t been good for some sectors of the market.

HALMI: It’s great. The change to action adventure has really helped our DVD business. We had Tin Man, which we did for SCI FI in the U.S., and it was the highest-rated show in the history of the channel. The DVD was just released and it’s the highest-selling nontheatrical DVD out there in the marketplace, so that is pretty exciting.

WS: And you’ve made other deals with SCI FI.

HALMI: We announced another five-picture deal with SCI FI. It’s the third multi-picture deal we’ve made with them in 12 months. This is pretty exciting: we’re doing three back-door pilots for SCI FI. They are four-hour mini-series that are all pilots for ongoing series: Phantom, River World and Dragons of Black Roc. We are hoping that at least two out of three of them turn into 22-episode orders next year. And it’s an interesting way to do business. One-hour pilots don’t really tell the whole story and you don’t spend enough money to actually show the production values, so by doing a four-hour mini-series as a pilot, you get away from all the exposition and you can really see what the series will look like. And there is some precedent, the 1983 mini-series V turned into a series. Battlestar Galactica was a mini that turned into a series. So we are hopeful that our mini-series pilot concept will work. We really want to break into the series business and by next [year] have at least two or three series to sell internationally.

WS: Tell us about your next event mini-series, The Last Templar.

HALMI: That’s also a backdoor pilot for a series. It will air on NBC. It has a big budget. It’s really sort of a tongue-in-cheek adventure—a female Indiana Jones. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, but it’s really fun. It’s just lots of action non-stop. It’s going to be a great mini-series on NBC and we’re hopeful that if it works we can turn it into a series.

WS: The last time I spoke to your father, he really encouraged me to pick up the book, and I have.

HALMI: The book has a flawed ending and we changed it in the mini-series. Indiana Jones was looking for the Arc of the Covenant. In The Da Vinci Code they were looking for The Holy Grail. In The Last Templar they are looking for the Book of Christ, it’s sort of Christ’s diary, if you will. There were all the Apostle’s gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke and John—but no one has ever seen any writings from Christ and that is what they are searching for. And at the end of the book they actually find it and a bad guy gets a hold of it and he’s going off a cliff and the heroine saves about four pages of the book. And then she throws it in the ocean and kisses her boyfriend and says you’re much more important to me than the writings. And it made no sense at all. You’re talking about pieces of paper that Christ wrote—you probably wouldn’t throw them in the ocean, especially if that’s what you life’s ambition was. So we don’t do that in our movie! [Laughs].

WS: What has kept you in the family business for so long?

HALMI: This my 30th year, I love doing this. It’s all I’ve ever done. I love the television business and the international markets. I like being able to be a supplier of volume and not produce only one picture a year. It’s sort of immediate gratification for someone who likes films—you don’t work for five years on one project. You get to come up with great ideas, and there is a quick turnaround and you see them on television. And every now and then people like it and you get a nice review!