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For a long time, Fox Atomic stayed open only because it was Peter Rice’s baby. The handwriting was on the wall about its fate as long ago as January of last year when Fox Filmed Entertainment absorbed its marketing and publicity departments and let go of John Hegeman, the co-founder with Rice of Atomic who ended up at New Regency. The fact that the movies weren’t performing, and Peter Rice was moved into television, was its death knell, not the economic crisis. So I’ve just confirmed that Fox Atomic this week will shutter as an independent production division. Approximately 6 staffers will be let go. Fox Atomic Digital, which also has 6 staffers, will move under the Fox Filmed Entertainment umbrella. It’s likely that Debbie Liebling, Atomic’s President of Production, will return to Twentieth Century Fox as a senior exec reporting to co-Presidents of Production, Emma Watts and Alex Young. Fox Atomic’s 2 upcoming pics, I Love You Beth Cooper and Jennifer’s Body, will be released by Twentieth Century Fox, while a 3rd, Post Grad, will be released by Fox Searchlight. One of my sources notes: “The new Beth Cooper trailer is entirely focused on the mothership — no Atomic branding at all.” And, sadly, so it goes.
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Yeah because I just reviewed Jennifer’s Body on my site and people were asking me why Fox Atomic hadn’t forced me to take it down (as they had done previously when someone else had reviewed the script). I made some calls and realized it was because Fox Atomic was dead. Good timing, lol.
i dont get it. if screen gems can be successful, the “youth” division of fox should be able to find some success, too. change some heads and rebrand the company. keep trying. why quit?
I think what ultimately hurt Fox Atomic as an independent production division was the fact that it was Fox Atomic.
While the concept of lower budget flicks aimed at a “youth” audience is sound in theory, the reality is that it is a minefield.
Calling it Fox Atomic was their first mistake. The marketing guys thought it branded the company as explosive, when in reality, it branded it as small. Plus, by declaring it as the “youth” brand, they pretty much made sure that their target audience would avoid it. Because if there is one thing teenagers do not like, is when they are being obviously targeted. It’s the corporate equivalent of a middle aged man putting on his red leather jacket with all the zippers, a new Flock of Seagulls haircut, and neon blue Miami Vice T-Shirt, thinking it makes him “one with the young folk.”
Nikki, what’s the future on Stiller’s recent Atomic project, The Big Year with Steve Carell & Jack Black?
liebling is the one who drove that company into the ground. there are smart execs over there but she’s not one of them. ridiculous that her crud rises like cream.
For what it’s worth I never thought FA was worth anything. They sat on projects, acted like they were big Fox and were incredibly slow in developing anything…they are gone because unlike Screen Gems they were NEVER a well-oiled machine.
Creamy Crud Liebling
Unnecessary division…Fox Theatrical and Searchlight can more than handle the youth gems that were coming out of Atomic, or just send them to Rice to be released direct-to-FOX TV
Rice definitely rises like cream
To be fair, it is much easier to be a Screen Gems genre/horror/thriller mini-studio than it is to be a low-budget comedy one. Screen Gems’ movies don’t need stars; comedies generally do. Look what happened when Screen Gems finally made a comedy — Fired Up. End of story.
The real problem with FA was you had a lot of smart execs trying to cynically guess at what their audience wanted. The comedies were too stupid by half and the horror too gruesome.
Peter Rice is the reason it failed. He controlled the money for the division but never could figure out what to do with it. He flip flopped on movies and didn’t have the instincts to choose what would work for that audience (see MISS MARCH as an example). Debbie always complained that Peter wanted the ultimate authority for green-lighting stuff but couldn’t ever decide on whether to make a movie or not, just kept people wondering from day to day if their movie would be made. He’s great at Searchlight, don’t get me wrong, but he FAILED miserably with this experiment.
Look, the only people who go to the movies in reliable numbers are kids. A division solely devoted to People Who Go to the Movies is a great idea. Sort of like Sam Arkoff’s AIP back in the day, or Shaye’s New Line more recently. Teens don’t read the trades, so it seems unlikely they would realize “they were being obviously targeted” by Fox Atomic.
Nikki touched on this audience when she dissed “17 Again” for having an “overworked plot device.” The device is only overworked if you’re old enough to remember the glut of body-swapping pictures like “Big.” But to the Zac Effron audience, “Big” is a very old movie.
It’s also a mistake when agents try to “graduate” their young stars into so-called adult roles. What’s the rush? Why age your actor prematurely, especially when the target audience is so young? Actresses get hurt by this move most often, with recent grotesque examples like Dakota Fanning in “Hounddog,” or Anne Hathaway in “Havoc.”
Once again we learn that a major film company cannot house an indie division. You can’t feed a brontosaurus on finger food.
When I went there the folks were nice. Everyone seemed competent and the exec I met with was a smart guy with a great film geek background and a thorough knowledge of genre material, past and present.
I can’t say what the issues were for Fox Atomic, but I can say that some of their people DEFINITELY understood youth culture.
There were some talented people at Fox Atomic, but it seemed they moved too slow and were trying to figure things out too much instead of simply making pictures. I think Rice had little understanding of this realm – and supposing FTV is now a ‘mature’ entity (vs. it’s old counterprogramming strategies of yore) he’s suited for that.
I’m sad by the closing of Atomic. Loved their website especially that first Halloween when they shook the shit out of it and had some pretty cool interactive stuff.
28 Weeks Later was a mess of a film. The opening that Danny Boyle directed…was great but the rest handled by Juan was horrible.
Turistas was an interesting premise but failed as a script. Editors are not writers.
Aja’s ‘Hills’ was great but the sequel? CRAP written by little Craven. Nepotism is a bitch in this town. Not everyone can write like their daddy.
Fox had something golden there. An arm to rival Culpepper’s Screen Gems. They just had bad material. RIP Atomic.
“the exec I met with was a smart guy with a great film geek background and a thorough knowledge of genre material, past and present.”
This is the problem. Hollywood starting hiring execs who “talked geek” thinking they’d be tastemakers who could find all the right projects and guide them forward, only those guys had no friggin’ clue what it takes to actually make a movie or, moreso, a movie for more than five other geeks.
The upcoming Beth Cooper movie has me mystified, and I think that project is symbolic of where Atomic went wrong. Here we have Chris Columbus and Larry Doyle, both well in their 50s, supposed to make the next great high school movie? The trailer looks hooorible.
Maybe Atomic should’ve gotten some funny up-and-coming writing and directing talent to make that movie instead… When Fast Times came out in 82, writer Cameron Crowe was 25 and director Amy Heckerling was 28. It was the first feature for both of them. That movie wouldn’t get made today.
“Debbie is the premier comedy executive in our business,” Fox said in a statement. “So we are thrilled to welcome her back and look forward to her immense contributions to the company.”
That’s hilarious. Liebling has been able to coast on dumb luck forever. She passed on “Dodgeball” over and over again until Stiller agreed to cameo and “Borat” was just dropped in her lap. She can’t distance herself from all the failures at Fox Atomic and somehow has. This “premiere comedy” executive’s last project before moving over was “Welcome To Mooseport.” She’s the Chauncey Gardner of cinema.
All you have to do is look at the butchering of a film marketing plan in the last month. “12 Rounds” could have made some money, but promotion of the flick was non-existent in the weeks leading up to its release.
This is too bad. There are lots of great people and projects at Atomic.
Gee, wonder if the ‘the people I met there were great’ is a plant or not? I know that most of the execs there are considered a joke in this town. That place never made a good movie that they developed themselves.
You gotta remember, they were always getting lower- quality material. You want to go to someone on the lot with that kinda stuff, you go to big Fox or Regency first. Atomic was the last place. They got projects you couldn’t market no matter how hard you tried. Zhivago’s got it right — plus, no one in that target Atomic demo is gonna see Jennifer’s Body. They bought a relationship with the writer, not quality material.
The most disappointing news is that Liebling will go to Big Fox and the other execs are released into the wild. The problem with Atomic was the lack of competent management. Rice was just a figurehead at the company…taking his sweet time when it came to reading any of the projects the prod. Execs were excited about, too afraid to jeopardize his position at Fox. Liebling garnered so much respect from one film (Borat) that she was given the Preident title! She never should have been allowed to run the division…she’s great with comedy but has no clue what to do with a thriller. Further proof that Hollywood is not a meritocracy. They are keeping all the wrong people.