Transamerica Content With Hot Feet

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:07pm

From the Times:

"When “Hot Feet” closes Sunday night after 109 performances, it will become a typical Broadway production. Like most shows, it lost money.

Less typical is that the lead producer, Transamerica, which put up about half of the show’s $8 million cost, still considers “Hot Feet” a good investment.

“Obviously, you always hope that the actual business side of the production could have done better, but stepping back, we accomplished a lot of things that we set out to do,” said Lon Olejniczak, the chief distribution officer for Transamerica Capital Inc. and the company’s force behind the musical. He spoke yesterday, after the closing was announced. The entire $8 million, including the company’s investment, will be lost.

Early in the show’s run, Mr. Olejniczak explained how he saw Transamerica’s Broadway presence. “A Broadway play is a branding opportunity,” he said.

The money comes out of the company’s marketing budget, and the payoff does not come in the form of ticket sales. It comes in the crowds on 42nd Street that pass a sign that reads “Transamerica Presents Hot Feet” and in the few thousand theatergoers who see the name Transamerica in their Playbills each week. Transamerica also gets to bring clients to a Broadway show. Their Broadway show.

F. Tayton Dencer, the chief executive of Polymer Global Holdings, a rubber recycling company and one of Transamerica’s junior partners in the show, put it this way: “You may not get a lot of bang for your buck. The profile goes beyond that. It’s the same reason people have stores on Rodeo Drive that don’t have many sales. Longevity there gives an institution branding that you can’t see anywhere else.”

Mr. Olejniczak explained: “From an accounting perspective, we have booked it as an expense.” If the money had started coming in, he said, “that’s gravy.”


For more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/19/theater/19tran.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[nycdncr]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:11pm

sounds to me like they were just looking to play around with 8 million dollars. this, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you have too much money on your hands.

sure....i see transamerica on their sign and in the playbills, but do i know what exactly transamerica does? nope. do i care? nope.

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:19pm

That's pretty much it.

I'd be surprised if one person went home and googled Transamerica because they saw it on the sign.

[Smaxie]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:20pm

It's an insurance company. Have you never seen this building?

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:28pm

Thank you, Smaxie, I was beginning to think I was losing my mind!

No one has heard of Transamerica???

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:31pm

But has the average tourist who cares enough to look at a HOT FEET sign?

[nycdncr]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:32pm

i've heard of transamerica...it was that great movie with felicity huffman.

oh yeah, and they are frivolous broadway 'producers' too.

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:33pm

Has a tourist ever looked at the HOT FEET sign?

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:36pm

"i've heard of transamerica...it was that great movie with felicity huffman."

I was about to say... I was pronouncing the word "content" wrong, putting the stress on the "con" and thought that Margo was going to discuss the similarities betweent the transgender and the Hines Special.

"Has a tourist ever looked at the HOT FEET sign?"

That's what makes it all moot.

[WickedGeek28]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:41pm

"i've heard of transamerica...it was that great movie with felicity huffman."

That's exactly what I thought.

[jimnysf]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:43pm

United Artists film company was once "A Transamerica Company" (Paramount was "A Gulf and Western Company" and Columbia was a "Unit of the Coca Cola Company").

https://www.nndb.com/company/674/000053515/

Transamerica
COMPANY


Founded 1928 in San Francisco as Bank of America's parent corporation. Acquired in July 1999 by Aegon NV, Netherlands. Owner of United Artists from 1963-81, which it sold to MGM.




https://www.allmovie.com/cg/avg.dll?p=avg&sql=23:52
"In 1967 United Artists became a subsidiary of TransAmerica Corporation, a diversified organization known mostly as an insurance company. Yet quality films continued to appear in the '70s. Wilder made the Mirisch productions The Private Life Of Sherlock Holmes (1970), which was badly cut by the studio, and the comedy Avanti! (1972). Director Hal Ashby debuted with the Mirisch comedy The Landlord (1970); later in the decade he helmed the Woody Guthrie biopic Bound For Glory (1976), the Vietnam-veterans drama Coming Home (197, and the Jerzy Kozinski adaptation Being There (1979). Woody Allen made his comedies Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask (1972) and Annie Hall (1977), as well as his first dramatic film, Interiors (197, and his bittersweet comedy Manhattan (1979). Director Sam Peckinpah made the actioners Bring Me The Head Of Alfredo Garcia (1974) and The Killer Elite (1975), and the trucker comedy Convoy (197. Bob Fosse directed Dustin Hoffman in the Lenny Bruce biopic Lenny (1974); Robert Altman helmed the satire Buffalo Bill And The Indians (1976), and Brian DePalma directed the Stephen King adaptation Carrie (1976). Sidney Lumet directed two of his best films for UA: the television satire Network (1976) and the psychological drama Equus (1977). Roger Moore replaced Connery as 007 in Live And Let Die (1973) and kept playing Bond for the next 12 years. The studio also did well continuing its "Pink Panther" franchise with Blake Edwards and Peter Sellers. Other UA box-office hits in the '70s include the Mirisch production Fiddler On The Roof (1971), directed by Norman Jewison; the Ken Kesey adaptation One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975), directed by Milos Forman; the World War Two epic Midway (1976); and Sylvester Stallone's sequel-maker Rocky (1976). The studio also scored releasing Francis Coppola's war film Apocalypse Now (1979) and Bernardo Bertolucci's erotic drama Last Tango In Paris (1972), both with Marlon Brando. Other important UA releases included the bisexual drama Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971), directed by John Schlesinger; Billy Wilder's macabre tale of fame, Fedora (1979); and the drag-queen comedy La Cage Aux Folles (1979).


In 1978, UA lost five of its top executives after squabbles with TransAmerica; they then formed Orion. The studio was further damaged by the box-office flop of Michael Cimino's big-budget Western Heaven's Gate (1980). The following year, TransAmerica sold UA to MGM, who changed its name to MGM/UA Entertainment in 1983.".

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:43pm

Is this where we give the lecture about there being a world outside of TV, movies, and theater?

No? Okay.

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:44pm

There is? Updated On: 7/18/06 at 10:44 PM

[Rathnait62]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:46pm

I wasn't referring to him, as I posted at the same time he did.

[jimnysf]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 10:53pm

OMG. Look who's on the Transamerica Board of Directors! No wonder they have money to burn (government contracts?)

Condoleezza Rice

http://www.nndb.com/company/674/000053515/

[Wanna Be A Foster]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 11:02pm

i've heard of transamerica...it was that great movie with felicity huffman.

Amen, sista.

Updated On: 7/18/06 at 11:02 PM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 11:08pm

Now if we could just get Transamerica to toss a few tens of millions at a couple of GOOD shows.....

[nycdncr]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 11:17pm

yeah...imagine if they'd toss money into brand new, fresh, interesting shows instead of rehashed shows based on a movie, book, or song list of recording artists like what's on broadway now. it's a pipe dream, but it's nice to think about.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 11:29pm

Yeah, throw 15 Million at Stephen Sondheim and say
"Do what you want Stevie!"
Though i am sure he wouldn't want to be beholding to them,
Mr. Hines got away with a lot of crap obviously.

[BSoBW2]

Posted: 7/18/06 at 11:32pm

Crap being the operative word?

[RentBoy86]

Posted: 7/19/06 at 12:21am

"yeah...imagine if they'd toss money into brand new, fresh, interesting shows instead of rehashed shows based on a movie, book, or song list of recording artists like what's on broadway now. it's a pipe dream, but it's nice to think about."

---> But where are they? All the new shows opening are exactly what you stated.

Posted: 7/19/06 at 12:41am

The thing about companies with money to burn like TransAmerica and Warner Brothers Theatre Ventures is that they take their flops as learning experiences. They'll be back. With more money to burn. Until they crack the code of Broadway and figure out how Disney and Clear Channel did it.

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 7/19/06 at 1:13am

Well Disney did it first time out,
Good story
Great Score
Broadway Designers
= BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
and the money, name and brains to market it.

[nycdncr]

Posted: 7/19/06 at 5:47am

mr. hines should be put in broadway jail for putting that show onstage. his sentence should be not being allowed to direct or choreograph anything remotely aimed at broadway for a minimum of 5 years, after that another 5 years of probation.

[bwayondabrain]

Posted: 7/19/06 at 8:54am

the only Transamerica i've heard of is the movie...