Is Michael Mann killing Hollywood?

By Craig Kennedy - July 1st, 2009; 3:46 pm When Sony pulled the plug on Steven Soderbergh’s Moneyball, it was seen as one more sign that the studios are getting increasingly skittish about spending too much money on overly arty projects from established directors. In The Daily Beast yesterday, Kim Masters turned an eye toward Michael Mann as the next director who might have a tough time mounting his next project, especially if the $100 million (IMDb says $80, but both numbers are probably low) Public Enemies underperforms at the box office as she expects it will. Calling the critical response to the film mixed – an impression that seems to be calcifying into conventional wisdom despite the efforts of cherry picking early adopters to the contrary – Masters says that theater owners found the film “stylishly directed but slow,... [read full story]                    

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