What did Vestron do with its "Dirty Dancing" earnings? -- Part 7

Continued from Part 6

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Vestron was not involved in producing the 1988 movie Earth Girls Are Easy. After the movie was finished, Vestron took over the distribution because the previously planned distributor had backed out.

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The book A New Pot of Gold: Hollywood Under the Electronic Rainbow, 1980-1989, written mostly by Stephen Prince, includes some discussion of Vestron. In particular, the book includes an article, titled "Independents, Packaging and Inflationary Pressure in 1980s Hollywood", written by Justin Wyatt, which includes the following passages:

.... [Vestron] founder Austin O. Furst began purchasing home video rights to films in 1981, starting the Vestron library with the Time-Life feature film collection. This preemptive move helped Vestron establish a secure foothold in the video market. In addition to the Time-Life films, Vestron was able to purchase the home video rights to recent films before the studios realized the potential of starting their own video companies. Video sales for Vestron grew to the $200 million mark within a short four-year period.

A 1982 deal with Orion Pictures that assigned Vestron video rights to several Orion films for $10 million was crucial to the early success of Vestron. As the majors began to form their own video arms, Vestron’s activities broadened to production and distribution, aided by a stock offering in October 1985. At that time, financial analysis warned that Vestron Pictures was working within an incredibly fragile market niche, vulnerable due to the studios’ formation of their own video companies and an overvaluation of the Vestron team’s talent ....

Soon after the stock offering, Vestron’s reputation as scrappy independent influenced one of its potentially most profitable deals, the video release of the Academy Award winner for best picture, Platoon (1986). With the rights pre-sold to Vestron in 1985 for the modest sum of $2.6 million, producer Hemdale Films, feeling that the deal undervalued the hit film, failed to deliver the negative to Vestron, prompting Vestron to withhold all payment. In the interim, Herndale negotiated a $11 million deal for the video release with HBO Video. Analysts estimated that the confusion further dampened Vestron’s stock, which dropped from the initial price of $13 to $4.5 [a share] by August 1987. Within the press, journalists cited as reasons for the disagreement both the disadvantageous terms for Hemdale and Vestron’s reputation for peddling exploitation fare.

Furst’s response to the falling stock price was audacious: he vowed to expand into film production to ensure a steady flow of product for the video arm of the company With another pubic stock offering to fund the diversification, Furst hired William Quigley, vice president of Walter Reade Theatres, to run Vestron Pictures. .... With the budgets kept low and the number of releases high Vestron followed a route ... [if] mixing exploitation fare with art house product. ...

Despite a large number of commercial failures, Vestron managed to achieve one breakthrough hit with Dirty Dancing in 1987. Grossing over $60 million in a six-month span ...

Within a two-year period, though, Vestron shut down its production arm after an overly ambitious slate of movies failed to yield an even middling success. Cash flow problems at the end of 1988 led Security Pacific National Back to cancel a $100 million loan for the company. After the bank withdrew the loan, Vestron Pictures was dismantled.

In a move that illustrates the convoluted world of the Independents, in 1990, Live Entertainment ... purchased Vestron, primarily for the Vestron library of twelve hundred films and the remains of Vestron’s video infrastructure. Several Vestron films waiting for theatrical release, such as the thriller Paint It Black (1989), debuted on home video ... owing to the company’s demise.

I summarize Wyatt's article as saying that it was very expensive and risky to try to make and market feature movies that could compete against the major studios' movies. Attempting to do so was practical only for a few years in the late 1980s.

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Here are five more movies that Vestron co-produced. (The date after a movie's title indicates the movie's release date.)

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Cat Chaser -- December 9, 1989

A Miami hotel owner finds danger when he becomes romantically involved with the wife of a deposed general from the Dominican Republic where he fought many years back.

The movie cost about $6 million to make. The movie did not play in theaters; it went straight to video.

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Paint It Black -- 1989

A serial killer covers his victims in modeling clay, and a local sculptor is accused of the crimes.

I did not find any cost or earnings information. The movie went straight to video.

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Catchfire (later renamed Backtrack) -- April 3, 1990

A witness to a mob assassination flees for her life from town to town, switching identities, but cannot seem to elude Milo, the chief killer out to get her.

The movie cost $10 million to make and earned $5 million at the box office.

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Fear -- July 15, 1990

Psychic Cayce Bridges helps police solve murders by mentally linking with the murderer. Then she discovers a murderer with the same talent - who wants to share the fear of his victims with her.

I did not find cost or earnings information. The movie went straight to video.

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Love Hurts -- November 9, 1990

A womanizer who goes home to Pennsylvania for a wedding and finds his past catching up with him.

I did not find cost or earnings information. The movie went straight to video.

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Continued in Part 8