Gary Marenzi

January 2008

Almost two years after being acquired by a consortium that included Sony Corporation of America, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios re-established its worldwide distribution efforts in house. Ramping up its sales activities in 2007, the studio appointed distribution veteran Gary Marenzi as its co-president of worldwide television. The move marked Marenzi’s return to MGM, where he spent five years in the 1990s before joining Paramount Pictures as president of international television, a role he held for seven years. Marenzi is tapping into his years of experience in the business to find new ways of exploiting MGM’s catalogue across a range of platforms.

WS: What does MGM want to offer its customers?

MARENZI: We want to offer the reliability of dealing with us on a personal level and we are going to deliver on what we promise.

When Harry [Sloan, MGM’s chairman and CEO] came in, we took back our distribution. [MGM had previously done] a lot of pickups of product, and some were good and some were not of the highest quality. Now every product we do has to have an element of quality to it and has to be a good business model. We’re going to be making movies that are in the $25-million to $85-million price range, for the most part. But [they will be] filmmakers’ pictures, quality pictures with a great cast or with a really good story.

On the TV side, we’re looking at refreshing our franchises and developing new ones. So it’s really a pragmatic way of approaching these markets and doing things that are within our appetite and without taking unwarranted risks.

WS: You have some great franchises you can tap into.

MARENZI: We’re doing a new Thomas Crown movie that Paul Verhoeven will be directing. The new Pink Panther movie is wrapped and we’ll be releasing that. And of course there is James Bond. Sylvester Stallone is coming back to do Death Wish, and that is a potential franchise, so there are lots of things that we can draw on.

I know some people say there are no more original ideas and everybody is just doing sequels. Well, we do have original ideas, but branding is so important and cutting through the clutter is so important. A lot of these franchises were successful for a reason the first or second time around, and they’ll be successful again the third and fourth time around. We have a great brand as a company and we have some great brands and franchises in the properties we own and distribute. It’s a smart business move to go with our strengths and take these franchises as far as they will go, giving them the proper rest and making sure they don’t become hackneyed. That is really important to us. The people at United Artists are serving as our development department for the non-franchise movies. They have an amazing amount of great ideas and projects that they have optioned and are developing that have nothing to do with any kind of existing franchise. There is a tremendous amount of creativity going on in this building.

WS: And what about the TV side?

MARENZI: A new season of Stargate Atlantis has been ordered and we do have another series concept that will extend the Stargate franchise. We’ve also done two Stargate SG-1 direct-to-video movies, which in some territories will be going to TV first and in other territories will be going direct to video. One is called Stargate: The Ark of Truth and the other is called Stargate: Continuum.

The next level of what we are doing in television includes American Gladiators with Reveille for NBC. We’re partnering with Reveille to license the tape, while they license the format overseas. We are also [aiming to release 12 or more] direct-to-video movies a year, and on a case-by-case basis, we decide whether we go direct to video or we go to television. For example, we have a TV movie based on WarGames, the feature film. We’re doing a couple of TV movies based on the feature film The Cutting Edge and we’ve taken up where the Legally Blonde features left off and extending that franchise.

WS: On a personal note, what does returning to MGM mean to you?

MARENZI: It really is great; it’s like riding a bike. It’s coming home. We have a great team ethic here in the TV group but also in the corporation. When we have management meetings in the boardroom, the board table is a round table. And when we sit around that round table, whether it’s Harry Sloan or any of the division heads, we really feel that we all have an equal say and we all are approaching this as a team. We share information beyond any other organization I’ve ever been involved in.

And the thing that is really [satisfying is] walking in every day knowing that if you do a good job it is going to positively affect the valuation of the company and make life better for everyone around you. With the other media conglomerates you run your own division and you have targets you’ve got to make, and whether you do a good job or a bad job, you don’t know whether it’s really going to move the meter of the company. Here, if you are doing a good job you know it’s going to move the meter.