LOTS OF BUNKER BUSTERS IN HOLLYWOOD THIS SUMMER

With the high profile Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl Killers already bombing at the box office, Hollywood may experience a record number of other high profile films that will also tank this summer. My early predictions are for Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice, Warner Bros. Jonah Hex, and FOX's double bomb with the Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight & Day and FOX's A Team, it is likely the Summer of 2010 will go down in Hollywood history as a summer to forget.

Also, 2 other high profile films, Shrek 4 and Sex and the City 2 also underperformed compared to their predecessors. This will inevitably lead to every national magazine that covers Hollywood to say, "The U.S. audience has grown tired of sequels." They will mention some sequels that grossed more money than their previous films and some that grossed less - all the in name of "objectivity," when it really just filling column inches. Look, it's very simple, the global audience does not care if there is a number after a film title, they just want to see a good movie.

The real problem with sequels was brought up to me by my friend Tom DeSanto. Tom is the second highest grossing producer in Hollywood with the X-Men & Transformers films under his belt. Tom had this built up fan bases for Transformers 2 that was totally squandered when the film was more loud that interesting. Tom tells me that it is his and Michael Bay's job to make Transformers 3 much better than 2 to get the fans from Transformers back into cinemas again. That's the only real risk with sequels, underdeliver for your audience and you have to make a better film to win them back. Better to make great sequels than uneven ones.

CEO POLITICIANS?

Last night's electoral primary battles in major states had 2 very important results: 1. It proved that my previous blog from September 30, 2009 was accurate in predicting that women will save the G.O.P. and 2. It set up the former CEO of Hewlett Packard, Carly Fiorina for a Senate seat run versus incumbent Barbara Boxer and the former CEO of EBay, Meg Whitman's to run the State of California as governor.

As the son of a Republican mother, I am proud to see 2 women running for major offices in a major state. While I disagree with most of their stances on issues, I disagree even more with CEO politicians.

Without a doubt, it takes incredible amount of intelligence and business acumen for both women to have obtained the CEO position of 2 of the world's leading technology companies. There accomplishments as business women are unparalleled. And both candidates are promising to bring a "business mentality" to the running California. But the skill sets required to successfully run a corporation and to govern a state are very different. Companies are run like dictatorships, while states are run by consensus.

As the CEO of a company, you hire a staff of trusted lieutenants who are experts in their respective divisions and as CEO you give them the task of making your "vision" for the company come to life. Yes, of course you have a Board of Directors that you report to, but as long as the Board is making money and the stock is going up, Boards don't directly mess with the specifics as to how a company is run. Look at BP CEO Tony Hayward. He's a huge liability for BP and should have been fired over a month ago. As of today BP has lost 50% of its value (a staggering $90 billion dollars), and the BP Board still hasn't woken up, fired Mr. Hayward and stopped the stock price from falling. Businesses, by necessity, are run like dictatorship. I'm the CEO and I say and you're the workers and you do.

However, a state is run by consensus. As Governor Schwarzenegger found out, once the movie star appeal wears off, you need to work WITH the California legislature to get laws passed in the state. As governor you simply cannot expound on your "vision" for the state and say to the Assembly, "Now go do it." The pushback can and is fierce by politicians who are under no pressure to comply with your vision while being told what to do. Oh, if only politics were that easy. As a politicians you have to execute the 3 "C's" of politics - Consensus, Compromise, and Convince.

What I am not hearing from either CEO candidate is that they look forward to working together with the California legislature to fix the states problems. Both Ms. Whitman and Ms. Fiorina are busy attacking their incumbent rivals, but not telling me as a voter how they would would work together with the legislature to run the state.

As someone who runs his own department, I know that if work was a democracy, then our work would suffer. If we had to "vote" on who gets what project and break ties and use procedural rules, I doubt very much would get done. Unlike my present work situation, where I ask for buy in, but ultimately, I'm the boss and here's what needs to get done.

I also don't understand why anyone with as much money as Ms. Fiorina and Ms. Whitman would ever want to do with the low paying, press cringing political game, but I welcome the debate they bring to the world's 8th largest economy.

GLEE THE MOVIE

This TV season Glee has become the #1 new hit show of this year's TV season. And it's a hit by any measure: ratings, music downloads, touring, press, star making and the list goes on. But is FOX leaving money on the table by not green lighting a Glee theatrical feature for Summer 2011? It should not be a continuation of or the season finale of the TV series. It should be its own stand alone feature. And don't do something contrived like send them all to the same summer music camp. I can't help but think that FOX isn't monetizing this asset and the difference in the business models between FOX and Disney.

As the Disney Channel has clearly demonstrated, a studio can make a lot of money taking a successful TV show and transferring it to the big screen. High School Musical started out as the highest rated TV movie on the cable. HSM had a more successful sequel and then the 3rd film made $252 million dollars in worldwide box office. That's not counting DVD's, music sales, consumer products....High School Musical is a textbook HBR Disney synergy case for why its the only entertainment blue chip stock and a member of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. High School Musical also helped elevate new Disney studio chief Rich Ross into his current job under the even more brilliant Bob Iger as the CEO of Disney. I didn't think it would be possible to outdo the business acumen and savvy of Michael Eisner, but Bob Iger has clearly become the teacher.

Wake up FOX, Glee is a global hit on TV. You can make a Glee movie for $25 million that will end up grossing $200 million worldwide. Now that's revenue to sing about.

A SERIAL KILLER IN SLOW MOTION?

Today, Joran van der Sloot was arrested in Chile for the killing of another young woman in Peru. I remember watching the shocking documentary on Dutch television where a skillful reporter worked for months on a story about getting van der Sloot to admit to the killing of Nathalee Holloway. And now, almost 5 years ago to the day, van der Sloot took another life.

While I am not sure he can be considered a serial killer with only 2 murders, it does draw strange parallels with the O.J. Simpson case. Both O.J. and van der Sloot literally got away with cold blooded murder. It must effect the psyche of the murderer to realize they have gotten away with their crime. O.J. wrote a "fictional" account of the murder of his wife, that was largely true and van der Sloot unknowingly confessed to murder on international television. If you can get away with it once, why not twice? O.J. is now in jail for breaking and entering a casino with a loaded weapon (a big No, No in Nevada), and van der Sloot took another life in Peru.

No justice system is perfect, but let's hope fewer and fewer people literally get way with murder: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/06/08/world/AP-LT-Peru-Van-der-Sloot.html?_r=1&hp

NEVER WASTE (ANOTHER) GOOD CRISIS

The Obama Administration needs to take a page from its own playbook and not waste the horrible ecological disaster that the Gulf Oil Spill has become. The Administration should quickly pass financial reform and take the rest of summer to push cap and trade legislation through Congress. Like the Great Recession before it, this crisis should not be wasted.

I dare any major energy company this summer to go before Congress and testify that they do not want a cleaner environment. I love the ocean so much and living on a beach was never ending set of happy experiences for me. I loved swimming in the ocean every day and every weekend that I could in Miami Beach. I love the ocean water, the waves, the tides, the sea life, the calm beauty and ferocity of the waves. To see that spoiled is painful. My parents house in Florida is a 5 minute walk from the Gulf of Mexico. And the oil is so ugly, that to see it on the beach would cause anyone physical revulsion.

With all the damage we have done to the ocean, we should look upon this opportunity to pay Mother Nature back for all that we have and make concrete legislative steps to help heal the Earth. We did it before with acid rain in the 1980's, and we can do it again now with cap & trade. Let's all make the right choice for our country, the environment and globally for our collective future.

WHAT ABOUT THE LIVES LOST AND THE RIG?

So where are all the Republicans now with their cheerful, "Drill Baby, Drill" slogan. Mr. McCain? Mrs. Palin? Anyone?

Never in my life have I witnessed an ecological disaster of this magnitude before. And there is the very real possibility that I will be personally effected by it since I own property on Miami Beach, which is wholly dependent on an international beach-going population for its revenue and livelihood.

But there are 3 major stories that I feel are being glossed over by the media. First, what about the 11 lives that were tragically lost with the rig catching on fire and sinking? We should all say a little prayer for those poor souls who perished that night. Where are the write ups on their lives? Second, what about the recovery operation on the rig? Hundreds of tons of burnt steel sitting on the ocean floor and that cannot be good for the already heavily damaged environment in the Gulf of Mexico.

The 3rd unnoticed but good story that no one is reporting on are the Gulf State residents whose lives are being ruined by this disaster standing up to BP and the government. After listening to all of the help "government" was going to "give" them after Hurricane Katrina, no one is signing waivers for the right to seek redress through the court system for this disaster. The Gulf States may be Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia, but good for the residents of those states. "Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, shame on you."