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|  | MARCH 7, 2006
Ron Grover Lionsgate's King of the OscarsTom Ortenberg, the indie studio's president, took a risk on Crash and then deftly promoted it, achieving an Academy Award coup for Best PictureThe hottest marketing executive in Hollywood right now just may be Tom Ortenberg. And he's not your standard-issue, Gucci-wearing movie guy. A boyish-looking, 45-year-old who attended Penn State and worked his way up through the distribution and marketing departments of several studios, Ortenberg is president of tiny Lionsgate Entertainment's theatrical production unit. While he may not look or act the part of a big-league Hollywood player, that's what Ortenberg became -- in a very public way -- on Mar. 5 when Lionsgate's Crash was named the surprise winner of the Academy Award for Best Picture. Crash's producer, Cathy Schulman, put Ortenberg near the top of the list of those she profusely thanked for bringing the racially charged drama to the big screen. And well she should. Ortenberg is the guy who breathed life into Crash, making it the cultural and critical darling that it became on its way to Oscar night. Along with the head of the company's theatrical acquisitions unit, Peter Block, Ortenberg was among the Lionsgate (LGE ) team that found Crash when no one else in Hollywood seemed to want to take a chance with it (see BW Online, 3/2/06, "Is Little Lionsgate Set to Roar?"). NOT NICHE. The two first saw the movie in the faded Elgin Theater at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival. And while most of Hollywood thought the film too tough to market, Lionsgate huddled with agents from Creative Artists Agency, which was handling the film, to bid $3.3 million for its U.S. rights. "We were the only ones who even bid on it," he told me a month back, eating bagels and drinking Diet Coke at Izzy's, a bustling deli not far from his home in Santa Monica. It was the rest of Hollywood's loss. Crash turned out to be the steal of 2005. Made for $6.5 million, it grossed $55.4 million at the box office, sold more than four million DVDs, and is likely to generate more than $35 million in earnings for Lionsgate. The smallish studio is known mostly for its recent success with niche films like the horror franchise Saw and urban comedies from comedian Tyler Perry, including the just-released hit Medea's Family Reunion. Now, Lionsgate, run by one-time investment banker Michael Burns and long-time Sony (SNE ) TV honcho Jon Feltheimer, is on Oscar's fast track. The nomination alone probably meant another $5 million for the company, estimates Feltheimer, and that little gold statue could mean $10 million. BUZZMEISTERS PAR EXCELLENCE. Chalk this one up to Ortenberg, who heads Lionsgate's distribution and marketing efforts. Whether he's hyping the Oscar-worthy Crash or the blood-spattered Saw (whose poster featured a hand with mangled fingers, and the slogan, "Oh yes, there will be blood"), he applies the same marketing savvy. And to get an Oscar nomination, we all know by now, takes a marketing campaign that is almost as good as the film itself. Such a campaign always starts with buzz. Ortenberg, along with Lionsgate's top marketing executives Sarah Greenberg and Tim Palen, nurtured Crash carefully. First of all, they opted not to release it before the Christmas holidays, a customary time to release Oscar wannabes. Crash was released in early May to give it a chance to stand out in the summer against supposedly stronger flicks, such as Universal's boxing film Cinderella Man, which opened a month later, and Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith. "There was no sense going into the belly of the beast," he says of the release plan. The idea of the marketing campaign was to make an event film out of a tiny picture. That meant playing the movie for black, Hispanic, and Asian groups. The Reverand Al Sharpton took a DVD of it with him to visit Mexican President Vicente Fox and, with some prodding from Lionsgate PR folks, talk-show titan Oprah Winfrey aired a one-hour show on the flick. "We wanted to make this an important film with an important message," says Ortenberg. GUERRILLA PLAN. By August, the studio decided to go for the Oscar nomination, according to director Paul Haggis. "I remember saying, 'please don't embarrass me,'" Haggis told me via e-mail two weeks before the Oscar show. Even though Brokeback Mountain was the early favorite, Ortenberg and Greenberg launched a guerrilla campaign that would have made Miramax co-founder Harvey Weinstein, who all but invented Academy lobbying, proud. Lionsgate committed $4 million to promote the film -- a pittance by the standards of larger studios, which often spend up to $20 million -- but serious money by Lionsgate standards. The key move: sending out 130,000 DVDs of the movie, one to every member of the Screen Actors Guild, despite the fact that only about 1,500 of them are Academy members. When Crash won the SAG award for best cast -- the equivalent of a best film statue -- it became a serious contender to take on Brokeback Mountain. IN-DEMAND GUY. "They managed the campaign very well, getting the DVDs into the hands of the viewers, believing that the picture would sell itself," Haggis wrote. "I thought that we had absolutely no shot at the Oscar, though I hoped that some of the actors would be remembered." Crash now will be remembered as the upset Best Picture, and Ortenberg has a calling card that may mean a bigger, more impressive job elsewhere. A few months back, when buzz was building about Crash and other hits at Lionsgate, Ortenberg's name started getting tossed around for an opening at Paramount Pictures, where new Chairman Brad Grey was assembling a team. "You're someone that I am told I should meet," Ortenberg recalls Gray telling him on the phone. Now there are probably a lot of people itching to take a meeting with Ortenberg. A lot can happen when a film wins an Oscar. And a lot more can happen for a guy who managed to make it happen, especially given Hollywood's desperation to boost lackluster box office numbers. Mar. 5 will almost certainly not be the last time we hear this hitmaker's name.  Grover is Los Angeles bureau chief for BusinessWeek Edited by Patricia O'Connell Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
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