Carolco Pictures

Peter M. Hoffman, who's just written a memoir called Karmic Winds: Reflections from the Smartest Guy in Hollywood, in inverted quotes, and it tells the story of Hoffman's life and career.

Uh, uh, CEO of Carolco during the Terminator 2, Basic Instinct, Total Recall era.

Headed up Seven Arts Entertainment as well.

Involved in films such as Stander, Asylum, Johnny Mnemonic, Rules of Engagement, Rat Race, and, uh, very early on in his career with Alexander Salkind as he tried to solve the problem of financing Superman II, uh, after Superman, uh, was just...

And from that, I became widely involved in the film and music industries for 10 years when I was practicing law.

Yeah.

And then I joined Carolco Pictures, um, and we then went on, um, a, quite a spree, and I was there for seven years.

Uh, and of course known for Terminator 2, Basic Instinct, the Rambo pictures, and in my modest opinion, the most successful independent company ever in the 75 years of our film business.

This one, as of now, I don't believe ports over to movies anywhere, but I'm hoping maybe it will at some point.

This was part of a really neat series they did at the Vista in June where they did When Carol Co.

Was King.

So the company Carolco that produced some of their biggest hits were like T2 and Total Recall, but also The Doors and Angel Heart and Jacob's Ladder and a lot of stuff that Lionsgate controls ultimately on home video.

I have a really dumb question for you, because I've never known the answer to this, and you're probably the one person I can trust.

Is it Carolco or Carolco?

You know, the boys never really came up with that name.

It was just a name they picked off the shelf in Panama.

So who knows? Whoever was the one who set up the name was the one who decided how it was pronounced.

I can tell you, we almost always called it the Carolco, but there are other people would say the other way.

And honestly, Anni and Mario could care less.

They only cared if the money-- if the pictures were doing some business.

It was just like, 'How could you guys do this?' But then my attorney tells me, 'David, let it go.' What he said to me was, 'In the next 24 hours, you're gonna have every studio in town bidding on this property.' And sure enough, all sorts of studios in town started making offers because the first one had done so well." Kirschner was absolutely right.

In the 89 editions of the trades I was able to access, it was reported that Paramount, Warner Brothers, Columbia, 20th Century Fox, Carolco, New Line, Disney, and Universal had all expressed interest in making the next Child's Play film.

Did I say Disney? Yes, I did.

[laughs]

Yeah.

Produced by Carolco Pictures.

Mm-hmm.

You see those names, it's just, it's just like putting on a warm sweatshirt.

[laughs]

But he sprints to producers Martin Kassar and Andy Vajna at Carolco Pictures.

They were the studio behind the Rambo movies and Schwarzenegger's Red Heat.

He convinces them to buy Total Recall, and within hours, the deal is done.

Carolco Pictures acquired Total Recall for $3 million.

Oh, shit.

Arnold calls Shusett and tells him to pack his bags because they have a movie to make.

And the first 15, 16 years was in the film and video distribution business with companies like MGMUA.

I went and worked with a company called Carolco and Live Entertainment, and then ultimately ended up at Turner Broadcasting for what they wanted to achieve.

And after that run, I went back to my roots of live entertainment and I joined Feld Entertainment.

So not many people know that company, but they know the brands that we produced and managed, which was Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey, Disney on Ice.

pop up

on the screen is the logo for a film company, Carolco.

It's the giant labyrinthine sea, isn't it?

It is, yes.

him.

Bless his little heart.

So Arnold Schwarzenegger, he persuaded... carol co who he'd worked with to buy the rights off hemdale and also buy the rights off gail and heard which ended up costing about 17 million dollars so by whenever it was 1990 carol co owned i think almost all of the rights to make the sequel and so it was sort of a done deal Now, in light of that, because it costs so much money to get to the sort of starting blocks, Carolco, whose boss was called Mario Kassar, told James Cameron that in order to recoup his investment, we were just going to make the sequel.

And it would go ahead with or without James Cameron.