Bill Mechanic: Last News

Editors Note: Bill Mechanic is chairman and CEO of Pandemonium Films and a former top executive at Paramount, Disney and chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment. He is also a former producer of the Oscars and Oscar-nominated films like Hacksaw Ridge and Coraline. He previously advocated for interim agreements as a guest on Deadline’s Strike Talk podcast and his company has applied for them since.

Disney will soon find out the wisdom of its massive acquisition of Fox and ownership of the billion dollar investment in Avatar blockbusters that should give the studio a fresh supply of blockbusters over the next decade. Avatar: The Way of Water opens Friday, with only a modicum of budget drama, considering every movie he made since his breakthrough film The Terminator has been preceded by media pearl clutching that Cameron’s penchant for big budgets would finally ruin a studio. It never happened, not on Terminator 2: Judgment Day, The Abyss, Aliens, True Lies, Titanic (where a chastened Cameron surrendered his backend after doubling the budget of a film that won Best Picture and became Hollywood’s highest grosser; and again on Avatar, whose gross surpassed Titanic and is the largest worldwide grossing film ever. Not that it hasn’t been stressful; former Fox chief Bill Mechanic once told me he wouldn’t get a physical during one of these pictures, for fear his doctor would hospitalize him over blood pressure. But nobody to date has lost betting on Cameron.

Editors Note: Bill Mechanic is chairman and CEO of Pandemonium Films and a former top executive at Paramount, Disney and chairman and CEO of Fox Filmed Entertainment when that studio generated Titanic, X-Men, Independence Day and Braveheart. He is also a former producer of the Oscars and Oscar-nominated films like Hacksaw Ridge and Coraline, and was a member of the Academy’s Board of Governors before resigning in 2018. He weighs in on that body’s upcoming elections.