Gary Marenzi brought luck to venerable Hollywood studio MGM.
It's for this reason that the studio's new owners--a group of
private investors and Sony Pictures--called him in to head its
international division. Actually, they called him back, since Marenzi
served as president of MGM's international TV division from 1992 to
1997, prior to heading to Paramount's international TV division.
To Marenzi, who divides his time between his Lucca, Tuscany,
residence and his home in Santa Monica, California, Italy is a
trampoline to Europe. When he was at Paramount, he successfully opened a
sales office in Rome and now, at MGM, he's planning to do the same.
For now, however, he's fully utilizing MGM's London and Munich
offices.
According to Marenzi, competition within the Italian TV market is
increasing, thanks to growing TV networks such as La7 and Murdoch's
Sky Italia. Plus, he added, "We found a way to sell TV shows to
smaller [Italian] TV stations."
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From his office on the 14th floor of the new MGM building in the
Century City part of Los Angeles, Marenzi went on to explain his
strategy: The studio will start offering 15 MGM TV movies a year--some
of which are "backdoor pilots," or MoWs that have the
potential to become TV series--and five theatrical films from UA (of
which Tom Cruise is a co-president), in addition to four more titles
from independent producers.
This is in addition to the titles that are currently available--new
episodes of Stargate for the Sci-Fi channel (and for the international
market) as well as a library of over 4,000 Hollywood classics.
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