New Life for a New Line Movie

Ed Harris was editing his new movie, Appaloosa, in February when he was interrupted by what sounded like very bad news: The studio producing the film, New Line Cinema, was being absorbed into Warner Bros. Worse, Harris's sponsors, longtime New Line bosses Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, had been given their walking papers.

In his first meeting with the Warner Bros. marketing executives after the merger, Harris recalled that the outlook for his sober Western was decidedly downbeat. "I was getting the feeling they were going to throw it the dogs, or straight to DVD," he said.

Then a series of events conspired to brighten the film's prospects -- and perhaps those of the other legacy films that began life at New Line and now worry about being lost in the weeds at Warners.

A New Line movie that had been seen as a potential stiff, Sex and the City, received some warm reviews and pulled in $153 million at the box office. It found an audience that the execs hadn't fully realized was there.

Then New Line's Journey to the Center of the Earth earned $92 million, despite not having the array of 3-D screens the studio had hoped would be in place for its release.

At the same time, Warner Bros. was enjoying the biggest summer in its history, led by the record-breaking performance of a Batman movie, The Dark Knight.

Also, Harris knew, Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn is a serious fan of Westerns, and a heavy contributor to the Autry National Center of the American West, a collection of museums devoted to the region's history.

The studio's success and its leader's personal interests provided Harris with an opening to save his movie, and he took it: He made a personal appeal to Horn for support. A small but warm flock of reviews at the Toronto Film Festival, where Appaloosa made its debut, added to the slowly growing optimism.

The appeal worked, and Appaloosa, which opens in limited release on September 19 and widely two weeks later, stands a chance of extending Warner Bros.' run of good fortune.

Appaloosa is a somewhat unlikely candidate for that role. Like many others that came before it, Harris's movie shows us a bad, bad man (Jeremy Irons, displaying his usual toothsome enjoyment in playing a corrupt but elegant villain) whom we devoutly wish to see brought down.

The job of bringing him down falls to Harris' character, Virgil Cole, a rough-hewn lawman for hire, and his sidekick, Everett Hitch, an articulate West Point graduate played by Viggo Mortensen.

In addition to starring, Harris directed the film, which he also wrote with Robert Knott, based on mystery writer Robert Parker's novel.

Executive producer Michael London, of Groundswell Productions, said the film's fate has been a pleasant surprise.

"We naturally had a lot of trepidation" after Warner Bros. absorbed New Line, London said. "But once the studio began really working on the movie, they started getting excited about their marketing materials. They got a great trailer out there.

"Now, after Toronto, Warners seems genuinely invested in the movie succeeding," London added.

None of this guarantees stunning box office or a long run. But Harris is grateful that New Line's hard times did not overwhelm his film.

"It's a survivor," he said simply.