Meet the King of the World at Fox

Jim Gianopulos is a virtual unknown in Hollywood. And yet he just became one of the most powerful executives in the movie business.

With his recent appointment to become one of two chairmen of 20th Century Fox’s Filmed Entertainment group along with colleague Tom Rothman, Gianopulos joins an elite cadre of studio bosses empowered to decide which movies get made and when, with what talent and at what cost.

Pretty heady stuff for someone who has never put together a single movie or overseen its development and production.

“At 6 in the morning I’m up asking myself, ‘Is this really happening?’ ” says Gianopulos, 48, a humble though highly driven executive. Up until three weeks ago, he had been in charge of Fox’s international theatrical business--selling movies and videos outside the United States for the last six years. Before that, he headed the studio’s worldwide pay-TV operations.

His ascension to the top movie job--despite his lack of direct movie-production experience--underscores the growing significance of the overseas market to Hollywood studios, especially when their owner is as globally minded as Fox’s media-giant parent News Corp., run by Rupert Murdoch.

Gianopulos has spent most of his 20-year career working on the international side of the business for companies that also included Paramount Pictures, RCA/Columbia Pictures and Carolco Pictures.

As president of 20th Century Fox International, he helped rebuild the studio’s moribund global division into a distribution powerhouse that for the last three years has generated annual foreign box-office revenue in excess of $1 billion.

Bill Mechanic, who preceded Gianopulos and Rothman and was recently fired over strained relations with Murdoch, came from a similar discipline, having worked for years as head of Disney’s international business. Mechanic had worked closely with Gianopulos in resuscitating Fox’s once-demoralized, under-performing international movie division, which in the early 1990s suffered from a lack of product and financial support from the then-financially ailing News Corp.

Unlike Rothman, who’s well-known from his many years as a senior-level creative executive at Fox and other studios, Gianopulos is a stranger to many in Hollywood and unfamiliar with its politics and inner workings. But then, the very instant he was promoted, Gianopulos received as many congratulatory calls as Rothman from industry power brokers who had never before dialed his number.

“We’ll be seeing each other real soon,” assured the head of one top talent agency who already has set a lunch date with the new studio chief.

When asked whether he is daunted by the inevitable pressures of the new job (Mechanic got ousted after some big films lost money), Gianopulos says: “My experience is that everyone finds it daunting because it’s the least precise, most subjective aspect of the business. You can do calculations, read P&Ls; [profit and loss statements], but ultimately it’s about believing in the talent of a filmmaker, translating and executing the vision with that filmmaker and bearing the risk of that execution.”

As head of international, Gianopulos forged close relationships with such notable directors as Jim Cameron, Bobby and Peter Farrelly and Baz Luhrmann, but admittedly was just an “observer” of the filmmaking process rather than a participant. But Fox, like other studios today, recognizes the importance of international business to its overall revenue stream and thus would always consult Gianopulos about a project’s potential earning power overseas when deciding whether to green-light a particular movie.

“In today’s environment you can’t ignore what at times is two-thirds of the business on big films,” Gianopulos says. In many cases, the films in which Gianopulos oversaw the international marketing and distribution at Fox more than doubled their U.S. grosses, including such costly domestic flops as “The Beach,” “Fight Club” and “Speed 2.” Even more modestly budgeted hits such as “The Full Monty” and “William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet” did substantially more business overseas.

Hanging on Gianopulos’ office wall is a framed poster in Greek of “Titanic” signed by director Cameron: “Jim G, you rule the world! Jim C.” The Fox/Paramount co-production was the highest grossing film of all time, with a worldwide take of $1.8 billion, of which $1.23 billion was made overseas.

“Titanic” producer Jon Landau credits Gianopulos with “being able to get a much higher percentage of gross from international than any of the other studios.” He also credits Gianopulos with being the impetus behind the plan to hold the world premiere of “Titanic” at the Tokyo Film Festival, which was a controversial move at the time but helped create a huge frenzy prior to the film’s U.S. debut.

“He really understands the marketing and public demand of a movie and will take each movie and analyze it beyond what it did domestically,” Landau says.

Luhrmann, who directed the hip, modern-day version of the classic romance “Romeo & Juliet” and Fox’s upcoming holiday release “Moulin Rouge,” concurs that Gianopulos’ unwavering support of his offbeat movies and “groundbreaking visions about the growth of the international market” have been of great value to him as a filmmaker.

So, what’s the secret to all this success?

“There’s no real secret,” Gianopulos says. “It starts with the reality that there’s a very big world out there--huge audience potential that can be tapped,” referring to an overseas market of more than 5 billion people compared with about 300 million in the United States.

“You have all the benefit of the insight, strategy and quality of advertising materials that were done domestically and then the opportunity to see what went right and what went wrong and translate that internationally,” Gianopulos says.

Gianopulos believes Fox’s greatest strength was “building an organization of people who are undaunted by a more modest result or even a failure in the U.S. and taking great pride in the opportunity they have internationally to deliver.”

As recently as 10 years ago, the ratio of a film’s overall revenues was two-thirds U.S. versus one-third international. All that has changed. But that doesn’t mean someone as driven and as passionate about what he does as Gianopulos is necessarily satisfied.

“On the one hand, when we do 50% or 60% of the business, you can feel like a hero. You can also say that given that population overseas, I left a lot on the table,” he says, laughing.

Considered smart, methodical, energetic and someone who always aspires for perfection, Gianopulos can be a tough, demanding boss who at the same time is known to be very loyal to his troops and devoted to his work. Apparently, he can also have quite a temper.

“I’m not incapable of it,” admits Gianopulos, who prefers to think of himself in a slightly different light.

“There’s a character to being Greek which includes being passionate and excitable. You can argue passionately, but it’s never, ever personal, and when it’s over, it’s over,” says Gianopulos, a well-traveled, well-read man who has an obvious intellectual curiosity about the world and respect for the arts.

Engaged to be married for the second time and close to Mimi, his 11-year daughter from his first marriage, Gianopulos loves fast cars and is an antique hound whose Beverly Hills home is filled with treasures he’s collected from flea markets around the world, including a major collection of elephant figurines.

Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., Gianopulos says he derived his work ethic and drive from his late father, a first-generation Greek who came to America in the early 1950s and started a marine and industrial equipment manufacturing business that eventually became very successful.

It’s little wonder that Gianopulos, who spoke Greek as a child and grew up in a multicultural environment, eventually found himself working in the international business. After graduating from New York’s Fordham Law School in the mid 1970s and briefly practicing law, he landed his first industry job as director of business affairs for the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers (ASCAP), negotiating music rights deals for songwriters.

“I always loved music and played in bands in high school and college, but very early on I was smart enough to realize I was never going to make a living as a blues guitarist,” says Gianopulos, who was proud to report that he had recently jammed onstage at a friend’s 50th birthday party.

Just as the video business started to take off in the early ‘80s and the issue of how to compensate music rights became a big concern in Hollywood, Gianopulos was hired away from ASCAP by RCA/Columbia Pictures International Video. He was recruited by Paramount just as pay TV exploded internationally.

“I was always in these media businesses as they launched,” says Gianopulos, who in 1992 was hired by Fox to run international TV and worldwide pay TV and was involved in the early distribution platforms Murdoch was launching.

Gianopulos says he’s worked an entire career for the opportunity to head a movie studio--something he had always aspired to but didn’t necessarily expect would ever happen.

“I’ve been rehearsing for it for 20 years.”

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New Mogul in Town

Under the leadership of Jim Gianopulos, Fox International has achieved an overseas box-office gross in excess of $1 billion for three consecutive years (1997-99), and during the last five years has released three of the five best-performing international movies of all time: “Titanic,” “Independence Day” and “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace.” Here’s how much those and some other recent Fox films made domestically and overseas:

His Overseas Hits

Titanic (1997)

*Domestic: $600.8 million

*Overseas: $1.2 billion

The Full Monty (1997)

*Domestic: $45.9 million

*Overseas: $210.7 million

The Beach (2000)

*Domestic: $39.8 million

*Overseas: $102.5 million

Fight Club (1999)

*Domestic: $37.0 million

*Overseas: $67.3 million

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Year U.S. gross Overseas Film released (millions) gross (millions) Independence Day 1996 $306.2 $507.2 Star Wars: Episode I 1999 431.1 494.5 The Phantom Menace Speed 2 1997 48.6 113.9 William Shakespeare’s 1996 46.4 98.5 Romeo & Juliet Volcano 1997 49.3 80.7

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Source: 20th Century Fox