It Wont Be Long; Joe Roth, Footy Entrepreneur

Anybody writing a history of Hollywood in the Nineties would need to spend a fair amount of time discussing Joe Roth (pictured with Sony co-chairman Amy Pascal), who began the decade as head of production at Fox, moved on to Disney, and then set up the much-envied (and much-derided) deal whereby his Revolution Pictures fed the Sony pipeline to marginal profits--while making a great deal of money, with more to come, for the Revolution partners. As the Spider-Man franchise and other successes boosted Sony (and with it, Pascal and co-chairman Michael Lynton), much of the love for Roth and his slate evaporated, both inside the studio and from C.E.O. Howard Stringer. As Roth said to the New York Times around then, "Why do I want to keep walking up that hill?"

He turned 59 in June, after a half-decade that included a divorce and a hip replacement, and in this last year of the Revolution deal is effectively an indie producer. He had to be happy with last weekend's robust per-screen average for Across the Universe, which he ordered up from the indefatigably quirky Julie Taymor only to stage a public row with her. (Roth tried his nearly one hour shorter cut, which he dubbed an "experiment", to good audience results before letting her settle on a still-weedy 2-hour, 20-minute version). Whatever fate it meets when it goes wider this weekend may be balanced at year's end by the family-friendly The Water Horse, closing the books on the not-so-revolutionary experiment that was his dream studio (although he's got a good-sized slate of indie productions he's actively developing).

Longtime colleague and Revolution partner Tom Sherak will hang on to see the latter picture through and then turn out the lights, though he's got a marketing consultancy started up (at present with between-jobs, sometime Fox marketer Geoffrey Ammer. Revolution partners Rob Moore and Todd Garner headed off long ago to Paramount and independent production respectively; Moore will be honored Monday night at Sherak's annual MS charity event, Dinner of Champions).

Revolution was a nice little business--for the partners if not their co-investors. Roth's personal worth is estimated at some $750 million.

What he's been up to rather quietly (generally avoiding interviews since the Taymor kerfluffle) is preparing for a likely investment in the pro-soccer Seattle Sounders, who are managed by Seattle's frame-store king (and championship high-stakes poker player) Adrian Hanauer. With probable help from Roth (who aims to be majority owner, though other investors have also been circling the opportunity), Hanauer would install the Sounders as a new franchise, possibly in a new stadium, in the Major League Soccer circuit. Roth was spotted September 4th watching the team take on the Dallas squad in Seattle.

As the web site Goal Seattle pointed out recently, "Hanauer has been working on getting MLS to Seattle for pretty much 5 years now. His biggest hurdle was finding someone to invest the cash in the $30 million franchise fee. This is where Roth appears to have stepped in. I am pretty sure this will be Hanauer's ship to run. He'll be making the 'soccer' decisions."

Well, maybe. Roth, who underwent major surgery for a chronically sore hip not long ago, was a skilled collegiate player himself before coming west to the film business. As a sometime director, he's been noted for his strong relationships with bankable talent--including Julia Roberts and Bruce Willis. Despite thoroughly mainstream tastes, he was known to often operate on a hunch.

As was pointed out by Jeff Meisner of the Puget Sound Business Journal,

However, not all of Roth's film ventures have been successes. As head of Revolution Studios, Roth oversaw the production of several money-losing films, including the universally panned Jennifer Lopez-Ben Affleck vehicle, "Gigli," which cost $60 million to make and brought in only $5.6 million at the box office domestically.

As the losses mounted, Roth was forced to complete a $750 million recapitalization of Revolution in January so the studio's largest equity partners -- among them Sony, Twentieth Century Fox and Starz Encore -- could recoup their substantial investments.

Revolution will stop [releasing] movies at the end of 2007 and will end with a 47-film library that Roth plans to sell at some point.

That kind of scratch should more than stake him to the next Beckham, if one can be found. For now, he's got more than enough capital to join the "footy-mad" Hanauer and make the soccer fantasy come true. After all, $30 million is only half what Gigli cost.

(Joe Roth and Amy Pascal, March 2004. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)