For Movie Producers, a Golden Age Fades: As Hollywood slashes spending, nobody has felt the brunt as much as movie producers

The Wall Street Journal reports:

They still sit on the northern edge of the Universal Pictures lot—symbols of an era when producers were the kings of Hollywood.

The Tuscan-style villa covered in ivy, with balconies and a fountain in an interior courtyard, was built to fit the tastes of Robert Zemeckis, the writer and producer of "Back to the Future" and "Forrest Gump." A huge, white modernist structure housed Ivan Reitman, who made "Ghostbusters" and "Dave." A blue Cape Cod house with Adirondack chairs in the front yard provided a cozy office for Michael Lobell, the producer of "Striptease" and "Honeymoon in Vegas."

All three buildings were constructed in the 1990s, a time when the film business was flush with cash, to entice their first occupants into production deals. Studios regularly gave producers millions of dollars a year as part of so-called "on the lot" agreements. In exchange, they got the right of first refusal on any project the producer generated.

Life is different for producers in the new, tightfisted Hollywood. The number of on-the-lot deals has fallen 52% since 2000, according to an annual survey by Hollywood trade paper Variety. Average spending on each producer deal has also dropped sharply, say studio executives. And houses aren't being built for anyone.

Funding in Hollywood's flush days came in large part from booming DVD sales, which peaked in 2004.

An article about today's Hollywood.