Producer Spotlight: Neil Moritz

Another in a series of posts about Hollywood movie producers. Why? They are key players in script acquisition and development process, so screenwriters need to know how they think.

Patrick Goldstein (LAT) with a recent feature on producer Neil Moritz. Some excerpts:

Critics rarely love his movies — “Battle: Los Angeles” earned a lowly 33 at Rotten Tomatoes — but rank-and-file moviegoers regularly embrace them. He’s had 15 films open at №1, including the recent “Green Hornet” as well as “I Am Legend,” “S.W.A.T,” “Click,” “XXX,” and three of the four installments of the “Fast and the Furious” franchise, which Moritz produced for Universal Pictures. “Fast Five,” the latest in the series, is due out next month.

Moritz’s longevity at Sony is rare in today’s movie business. Apart from a dwindling number of in-house producers, like Jerry Bruckheimer at Disney and Joel Silver at Warner Bros., most producers have become vagabonds, taking work where they find it. But Moritz is a good fit at Sony, with his fondness for popcorn movies providing a nice balance for studio chief Amy Pascal’s more upscale tastes.

Though Moritz has worked with A-listers like Will Smith, Adam Sandler and Reese Witherspoon, most of his films, like “Battle: Los Angeles,” are ensemble affairs, crammed with a host of familiar faces who may not have high-wattage star power but appeal strongly to specific demographic and ethnic groups. In an era when there are no minorities in any of the top jobs at Hollywood studios, talent agencies and management firms, it is striking how many of Moritz’s films are heavily populated with African American, Latino and Asian talent.

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Moritz’s popcorn mentality is in his bloodlines. His grandfather was a Los Angeles movie theater owner. His father, Milt Moritz, spent years as a marketing executive at American International Pictures, the fabled B-movie assembly line. When Neal was a kid, he’d run the projector every weekend in the family screening room. His father’s work at AIP left its mark. The “Fast and the Furious” franchise was a reboot of an old Roger Corman-directed AIP film from the 1950s.

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“When it comes to making movies, I only go with my gut,” Moritz said. “Every time I’ve gone against my gut, I’ve made the wrong decision.”

For more, go here.