A new breed of Hollywood players—so rich they don't need studio money—are financing and releasing slates of small-budget films on their own. Producers like Sam Nazarian, a 31-year-old scion of a wealthy Persian family, and self-made billionaire Sidney Kimmel, 78, are shouldering the costs of a full lineup of films, including the printing, advertising, and marketing that indies usually turn to the studios for. These mini-moguls keep control of their films, and all the profit.
Tom Rosenberg, chairman of indie Lakeshore Entertainment, is unimpressed by those he thinks are more businessmen than movie makers: "The money has rushed into Hollywood in the last year and a half. In a year and a half, it'll go someplace else. It's the fad now." (More Hollywood stories.)