Carl Icahn Takes 9% Stake In Lionsgate

COMMENTS (13)

• Perhaps not all people think those horror films are “revolting.” Speaking of, I think i’m going to go pop in my Saw II Blu-ray.

  Comment by JonB — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 3:27pm PDT  Reply to this post

• he’s got quite a record of destruction or maybe he’s just going after companies that are doomed. WCI, MOT, YHOO, etc

  Comment by longridge — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 3:44pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Why do they keep making the SAW movies? Well, duh– people keep going to see them! The idea that Feltheimer is going to bad-mouth the very franchise that’s kept his studio flush is insanity personified. I’m not a fan of the SAW films, but love horror (including the dumped MIDNIGHT MEAT TRAIN) and resent Hollywood’s disdain for the obviously profitable genre. QUARANTINE got decent reviews and made more than BODY OF LIES, but everyone still looks down on it. Warner Brothers has the fun (and inexpensively made) TRICK R’ TREAT moldering on its schedule and haven’t done anything with it in two years for reasons the director can’t even fathom. It’s October– people want to be scared, to be grossed out. Joe Drake can pump out any number of Dane Cook flops he wants, but when it comes down to it (for better or worse), Lionsgate lives or dies by the SAW.

  Comment by Jack Burton — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 4:01pm PDT  Reply to this post

• The first SAW film is great. Truly innovative horror. The sequels are terrible. I can’t believe they’re already at #5.

  Comment by xenu_xenu_blergh — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 4:15pm PDT  Reply to this post

• It wasn’t Feltheimer who had the good taste to be in business with Matt Weiner, it was Kevin Beggs on Lionsgate’s TV side. David Chase helped, too.

  Comment by Tom — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 4:38pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Horror can be a great way to inexpensively develop new talent. It’s cheap to make, usually profitable, and the people making them have to take creative risks to get noticed.

  Torture porn, which I don’t care for, was a reaction to the immunity audiences developed toward the old horror standby of gore thanks to CSI. Filmmakers felt they had to “step it up a notch,” and some folks liked what seemed like the originality of the first films, but it turned into unaware self parody pretty quickly. I guess you could say that the Saw, got dull.

  I, personally, would like Lionsgate to move away from the torture flicks, but to not give up on the horror genre entirely. Fright films still have a lot of potential for creativity, profit, and the development of new talent.

  Comment by Furious D — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 5:33pm PDT  Reply to this post

• I love your reporting, Nikki, but please leave the anti-horror sermonizing for elsewhere. Lumping any movie of the last few years as “torture porn” to be reviled is lazy demagoguery, at best.

  The overriding themes for horror pictures over the past eight years have been both the xenophobic fear of “the non-American Other” (i.e., HOSTEL, THE RUINS, TOURISTAS), and the fear or being helplessly imprisoned by an unknowable captor who cannot be reasoned with (the SAW series, CAPTIVITIY, P2, TCM remakes, etc).

  Horror films are manifestations of the fears of the society from which they spring. What you call “torture porn” is a symptom of a post-9/11 America, one in which our own government has okayed imprisonment without merit, torture, and pushed fear of anybody outside of our own borders.

  These films are a symptom of our time, and the fact that their appeal seems to be dwindling is a good thing; we are moving on from the turmoil we’ve been subjected to since 2001. But to discard them as titillation for the disturbed with the “torture porn” label is to miss the point of the genre completely, in my opinion.

  Comment by RidleyGriff — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 5:57pm PDT  Reply to this post

• The largest shareholder of Lions gate is Steinberg Asset management with 14.7%. Steinberg is a Icahn prodigy and his former right hand. So between the 2 of them they have about 25% of the Company. Draw your own conclusions

  Comment by Billy primo — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 6:44pm PDT  Reply to this post

• Lionsgate is a low-rent studio that is highly risk averse. The only reason you make Dane Cook movies is because you are to cheap to pay a real actor.

  Worse off, the library is becoming more worthless by the year. Hasn’t everyone here used Bit-Torrent?

  Comment by Darrin James — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 8:05pm PDT  Reply to this post

• They have not made good movies in years…. They also brought that horrible Joe Drake in. He already has gotten rid of the very people(Peter Block and demoted Michael Paseronek) that made Lionsgate successful. Jon and Michael don’t see the very guy they hired is already measuring their offices for new furniture.

  Comment by Anonymous — Monday October 20, 2008 @ 11:49pm PDT  Reply to this post

• While I’m not a fan of Lionsgate’s output I would feel for them if they were swallowed and then absorbed by one of the majors.

  I feel that while their mix of Dane Cook, Tyler Perry and extreme horror is…..to be honest,largely rubbish the last thing we need at thsi time is another outfit closing.

  The old and edgy New Line of old could yet be replaced by either Lionsgate or Summit.

  Comment by Warner Borg — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 2:28am PDT  Reply to this post

• Nikki, if you came down from your ivory tower every now and then, you might realise it’s those “revolting” horror movies that are Lions Gate’s bread and butter. Just because you don’t like a certain genre doesn’t mean it’s “revolting”. Why Lions Gate seems intent on ditching the bread and butter that keep the lights on at that place (and burying those they’ve already produced) is beyond me because they’ll only go into the toilet like New Line. Remember them?

  Comment by Crystal Diane Stevens — Tuesday October 21, 2008 @ 1:36pm PDT  Reply to this post

• SAW is ‘innovative horror’? Kids, read some books, learn some history before you say silly things like this.

  Comment by repo man — Wednesday October 22, 2008 @ 10:51am PDT  Reply to this post