Videoage International November 2021

20 V I D E O A G E November 2021 he was appointed president of Worldwide TV Distribution. Laing recalled: “Charlie had so much power at Warner Bros. He reported directly to Steve Ross, the studio’s CEO, because he generated lots of cash from TV licensing.” McGregor left Warner Bros. in 1989, when the studio acquired Lorimar-Telepictures, and Solomon became president of International TV Sales, and Dick Robertson became president of Domestic TV Distribution. That same year, Laing left Warner Bros. to join Orion. McGregor died in 2011 at age 84. While based in Burbank, Laing returned to crisscrossing the globe, his calling in life. Earlier we left him traveling with his mother, but skipped a good chunk of his travelogue. Laing was born in Belgium, but moved to New York City when he was two years old. At age four he moved to Helsinki with his mother, and then to Nassau, in the Bahamas. Four years later he was sent to the Harrow boarding school in the U.K., and it was then, at age eight, that he learned how to travel on his own, flying to Bermuda-Nassau and back to London for school. After high school, before starting at Yale in 1975, he first attended the University of Vienna for one summer, and then traveled to Geelong, a city southwest of Melbourne, Australia, where he formed a rock band and served as its lead singer. According to Laing, the band “was good during rehearsals, but not as much on stage!” When Orion entered Laing’s life in 1989, the studio, founded in 1978 as a joint venture between Warner Bros. and four former exe- cutives at United Artists, was having great success. In 1982 it had severed its distribution ties with Warner and acquired Filmways, a studio based in New York City (where The Godfather’ s filming was done). A year later Orion started a television production division that churned out shows such as Cagney & Lacey . In 1987 the studio produced the first moneymaking RoboCop movie. The following year, Metromedia’s John W. Kluge took full control of Orion (with a 67 percent stock ownership) after a battle with National Amusement’s Sumner Redstone, who had secured a 26 percent stake in it before taking over Viacom. Meanwhile, Laing was having great success with international TV sales aided by some luck when he found his former associates from Bertelsmann in Chicago now in Germany at Bertelsmann’s RTL. Bertelsmann started as a shareholder of RTL, a free-to-air TV station based in Luxembourg, when it began in 1984 as RTL-Plus. In 1988 the TV station moved to Cologne, Germany, and in 1997 Bertelsmann merged its UFA, a film company acquired in 1964, with CLT, the corporate owner of RTL, to form CLT-UFA. By 1990 RTL was already viewed as a major competitor by other German media companies, and Laing’s relationship with Bertelsmann was problematic, especially for the Kirch Group, which, through its U.S. rep, the very influential KlausHallig (1938-2013), went as far as supporting Laing when he founded Rigel, so that he didn’t need to return to work at any other U.S. studio important to the Kirch Group. The ceiling came crashing down in 1991 when Orion filed Chapter 11 (reorganization bankruptcy) due to a slew of theatrical failures and no new network shows. Here’s how Laing recalls it: “I was in Tokyo and had just negotiated a $30 million all-cash deal with Mitsubishi, but had to pay my own hotel bill as my corporate Amex card was denied.” The same year Laing’s contract expired in 1992, he accepted the position of chairman of Orion Pictures International, while the studio was negotiating new financing, first with Allen & Co., and later, with Goldman Sachs. Following corporate changes at Orion, Laing passed on a job at MGM to become CEO at Italy’s RCS Video, reporting to Paolo Glisenti, and he moved to Rome, renting an apartment that was just a 15-minute drive from the company’s offices. However, Glisenti refused to sign the final employment contract, and Laing took RCS Video to court in Milan and won a $200,000 settlement. That experience was recorded in a February 1993 article in VideoAge : “RCS Video: An Enigma Inside a Puzzle.” Coincidentally, the founder of the Italian law firm that represented Laing, Studio Cerulli-Irelli, was from Teramo-Giulianova, the same Italian town that this reporter hails from. Three years earlier, Glisenti’s RCS Video (later RCS Film & TV), which Italy’s Linkiesta Magazine labeled as “antipatico” (unpleasant) in 2018, financed the launch of what became a perennial money-losing trade publication Moving Pictures . But it was not strategic for a company, such as RCS Video, which was already losing a $78 million investment into Carolco Pictures. After some other costly Hollywood mishaps, Glisenti left RCS Film & TV in 1994, and a year later it folded with losses of $150 million. With the Italian job (no pun intended) gone, Laing leveraged his “true love,” RoboCop , to launch Rigel in 1993. And here is another Laing- esque story. RoboCop: The Series was initially produced in 1994 when Canada’s SkyVision Entertainment paid $500,000 for the rights. Ultimately, 23 episodes (a two-hour pilot and 21 one-hour episodes)weremade. Laingorchestrated that deal by persuading senior executives at Metromedia (Orion’s corporate owner), who controlled the property, to let him buy the TV series rights to RoboCop , which they did. Coming to Laing’s aide was Silvia Kessel, the much feared Metromedia CFO, who trusted Laing’s advice since he’d earlier delivered on a past due and much needed $28 million balance expected from Italy’s Cecchi-Gori Group for a $35 million movie licensing deal. Using his dry British humor, Laing was even allowed at meetings to salute Kessel with “What are you stirring in your cauldron, today?” It usually elicited a cackle from her, being in an era when having a sense of humor was not a crime. In turn Laing partnered with SkyVision, which arranged for the funding to produce the TV series. SkyVision then partnered with Rysher Entertainment, which put up $575,000 against domestic (U.S.) distribution rights for a 12-year period. Laing retained international rights through Rigel, a company he formed in 1993. Rigel held international rights only as a SkyVision agent. However, if ownership of SkyVision changed, Rigel had first rights to acquire the RoboCop series. In 1996, SkyVision was sold to Jay Firestone’s Fireworks Entertainment. In 1997 Canwest Global purchased Fireworks. In 2005, Content Film acquired Canwest Global. In 2017, Kew Media bought Content Film. And, ultimately in 2020, Kew Media’s library was sold to Quiver Entertainment, which allowed Rigel to acquire the worldwide rights to the RoboCop TV series for mid six figures. In 2020, Laing’s new company, Rallie, re- mastered all 23 episodes in a 16 x 9 HD format. On a side note, Canada’s Jay Firestone, whose company, Fireworks, bought SkyVision’s assets, helped Laing in 1996 to finance the distribution rights of Pacific Blue , Rigel’s first big TV series, which was produced by North Hall Productions. Interestingly, MGM, which acquired Orion in 1997, only retained RoboCop ’s trademark and its IP, but not the series, the three theatrical films, or the four TV movies, which are now controlled by Quiver Entertainment. Int’l TV Distribution Hall of Fame Rigel’s first MIPCOM in 1995. From l. to. r.: Rigel’s Mary Fabricant, SkyVision’s Kevin Gillis, Rigel’s John Laing, SkyVision CEO Brian Ross, and Claire Raskind, Rigel’s head of PR and Marketing John Laing promoting Rallie’s remastered TV episodes of RoboCop John Laing (at right) during this interview with VideoAge ’s Dom Serafini (Continued from Page 18)