From the Miami Herald:
THE MIAMI HERALD
COMPANY HOPES TO BE A HIT
MAKING FILMS WITH LOCAL TALENT
Thursday, November 12, 1998
Section: Business
Page: BZ
SOURCE/CREDIT LINE: DRAEGER MARTINEZ Herald Staff Writer
Memo: ROYAL PICTURES INC.
Many films have been made in South Florida in recent years, but mostly they use crews from California, ignoring the production talent available here.
Royal Pictures, founded by local surgeon David Olinsky in 1995, wants to take advantage of that gap. It hopes to build itself into a major independent movie producer by employing local crews and saving on costs.
''We have several key people ready to go on our first production,'' said Olinsky, president and CEO of Royal. ''We'll have lighting techs, cameramen, designers, makeup and costume people, editing people -- all the key personnel you need to make a movie.''
Olinsky and other Royal officials are optimis
tic about the company's prospects. They say they have secured funding for four movies to film next year. Calle Ocho and Neon Dreams are slated to begin shooting in January, with Men's Lives and Stray Kids scheduled for later in the year.
While Olinsky and Prince, who are partners in the studio with Connecticut financier Henry Steeneck, would not divulge specifics, they did say the three collectively have invested more than $1 million in Royal.
The studio has six employees now, but the payroll should grow to 30 once production begins, and as high as 100 by the end of 1999, said Robert Brent, an executive producer. Royal has more than 15 scripts and properties in various stages of development, he said.
With a new office in New York and another opening in Beverly Hills before year's end, Royal is seeking to make a big entry into the world of independent film makers.
''The idea is to pull from South Florida the talent, the cultural diversity and locations, which are just stunning,'' said Arlyne Rothberg, a creative consultant for Royal based in Beverly Hills. ''Film people always want to hear about new operations being done with people with some level of experience. We have loose boundaries, so we stay open to new things.''
One of the first productions, Neon Dreams, is centered on the South Florida music group No Mercy, and is loosely based on the Latin pop group's rise to fame, Brent said. Calle Ocho is a musical romance about a Cuban musician.
'' Calle Ocho is a little different, as it will be filmed scene-by-scene in English, then in Spanish,'' Brent said. ''We'll make an all-English and an all-Spanish version of the film, with no dubbing or subtitles. We think the market for Latin-based films should be enormous.''
Men's Lives is based on Peter Matthiessen's novel of the same title. Stray Kids is described as the story of an older Southern couple trying to reconcile after a long estrangement.
''We will be striving to use all Florida crews, equipment and so on, as much as possible,'' Brent said. ''And there's all union people, but they're not hard, New York-style unions -- they're flexible and they really want to do business.''
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