Elie Samaha

Making multi million dollar deals is a serious business, and when the deals involve big Hollywood players and big pay-offs, they can be seriously fun too. For the Lebanese Elie Samaha producing movies has become a challenge he thrives on. Finding opportunities that others overlook has been the story of his life; a life that has turned him into the ultimate success story.

In true Lebanese fashion, Samaha is charismatic, charming and very sharp. He is always smiling and confidant, and tries to make those around him feel at ease. With a look that is somewhere between Al Pacino and Sylvester Stallone, one could easily mistake him for an actor in Hollywood. Yet Samaha does not have the ego or insecurities of an actor, instead he is incredibly driven, hard working and generous; three traits which have guaranteed his success.

Samaha is too busy to sleep. He gets by on four hours of sleep a night, thanks to morning workouts and nightly meditation. Instead he lives for his work, and uses all his assets and contacts to help fuel his success. As Chairman/CEO of Franchise Pictures, he is running one of the most prolific production and co-financing companies in the entertainment industry. Under his leadership, Franchise Pictures finances and distributes around a dozen films per year. For Samaha, the frenetic pace of Hollywood is a perfect match for his fast paced personality. Since launching Franchise with partners Andrew Stevens, a former actor, and Gerard Guez, a Los Angeles garment industry executive, the company has produced numerous films, including mainstream movies starring big box-office stars like Michael Douglas, Bruce Willis, Matthew Perry, Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Jennifer Lopez, Kevin Costner, Danny DeVito, John Travolta, Sylvester Stallone, Sean Penn, Cameron Diaz, Wesley Snipes, Gene Hackman and Kevin Spacey.

Franchise Pictures also has a domestic distribution arrangement with Warner Bros. Pictures, which began in 2000 with the popular comedy The Whole Nine Yards, starring Bruce Willis and Matthew Perry. Other films released through Warner Bros. include Art of War, starring Wesley Snipes; The Pledge, starring Jack Nicholson and directed by Sean Penn; Heist, starring Gene Hackman and Danny DeVito; Angel Eyes with Jennifer Lopez and Jim Caviezel; Driven starring Sylvester Stallone; City by the Sea, starring Robert De Niro and Frances McDormand; Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever, starring Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu; and The In-Laws, starring Michael Douglas and Albert Brooks. Franchise also has several movies slated for release in 2004 including A Sound of Thunder, starring Edward Burns and Sir Ben Kinglsey; The Whole Ten Yards, starring Matthew Perry and Bruce Willis; Spartan starring Val Kilmer; Out of Reach starring Steven Seagal; Laws of Attraction, starring Julianne Moore and Pierce Brosnan; Tristan & Isolde, starring James Franco, Sophia Myles and produced by Ridley Scott; The Wendell Baker Story, starring Luke and Owen Wilson, Will Ferrell and Eva Mendes; Hairy Tale, starring Mathew Modine; Dead Fish starring Gary Oldman, Robert Carlyle and Billy Zane; Into the Sun starring Steven Seagal.

Franchise also operates a classics division, which has recently produced and distributed films including Things You Can Tell Just by Looking at Her, featuring Glenn Close, Holly Hunter and Cameron Diaz; and The Big Kahuna, starring Danny DeVito and Kevin Spacey. Franchise also retains foreign rights to all its films and operates as a full-service international sales company encompassing distribution, marketing and delivery, with output deals covering territories worldwide. Andrew Stevens, the president and part owner of Franchise Pictures, believes Samaha’s personality is ideally suited for what he does. As Stevens explains, “Elie is fiercely competitive and accustomed to being an underdog. I think he’s probably had certain goals in mind for years prior to his realising them. And with every milestone, he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams and sets new goals.”

Yet success has been inbred in Samaha from his youth, as he has always had a knack for making money. The fact that Samaha lost his father at age four, made him grow up very fast. As Samaha remembers, “From a very young age I had an interest in business, which my family encouraged because it was a difficult time in Lebanon. I used to sell apples, persimmons and cherries, which was a lot of fun actually. I learned a lot from my mother because she was a businesswoman. She raised me, my brother and my sister while working at the same time.” To this day, Samaha maintains his close family bonds and his deep love and respect for his mother is obvious.

Yet Samaha was never a model child, “I used to skip school a lot because I wanted to work and earn money instead,” Samaha recalls. I started a business when I was very young, organising concerts and bringing in new unknown bands from London.” Even at age twelve, Elie had a knack for spin and making money. He used to take footage from the Rolling Stones or Beatles concerts and edit it with footage of the unknown bands that he brought in, to make it seem as if these new bands were hugely popular abroad. The edited footage would then help him sell the concerts in Lebanon as he made a deal to have his ads aired in movie theatres. In addition to this tactic, Samaha also employed about 100 pretty Lebanese girls to help him sell tickets for a 15% commission. In turn all these efforts made Samaha’s concerts very popular and profitable; popularity which he later used to organise ‘after parties’ at his home, then eventually at hotels, drawing huge crowds.

Samaha also continued helping his mother export fruits to Europe, and together they designed a special type of packaging to keep the fruits fresh. To capitalise on their idea, the family hired an American company in California to master their packaging and make it of the highest standard available in Lebanon. This helped the family business boom and ensured that that the entire family was now secure.

Yet Samaha’s young high life ended abruptly when the civil war started in the mid 70s and ordinary life became extremely difficult and dangerous in Lebanon. Samaha was sixteen at the time and eager to leave the country and immigrate to the US or Europe. As Samaha remembers, “At the time young men were being returned to their mothers in body bags, it was very depressing and very ugly. What I saw left a very bad stain in my memory to this day.” As his uncle was the Lebanese Ambassador to the United Nations, immigrating to the United States became the easiest solution. Yet Samaha’s first stop was Europe, where he travelled with his two best friends across the continent on Harley Davidsons. There the trio enjoyed the carefree life that had been robed from them in Beirut.

After his trip, Samaha started working at the nightclub Brown’s in London to earn money and travelled regularly to Thailand to compete in lucrative kick boxing competitions (as he was trained in marshal arts). Although the competitions took a toll on his body, they enabled him to win a lot of money and help finance himself. When Samaha’s uncle was able to provide him with a US Green Card, Samaha travelled to New York with his girlfriend. After three weeks, Samaha missed his life in Europe and returned to Paris. Yet opportunities were scarce for Samaha, as he did not speak French at the time, so Paris was proving to be a difficult option. At the insistence of his uncle Samaha returned to New York and this time he decided to stay.

Once again, Samaha worked at nightclubs in New York and also decided to capitalise on the exotic beauty of his girlfriend. Realising her potential, Samaha encouraged his girlfriend to model and began acting as her agent as well. One day he met nightclub owner Steve Rupel who mentioned that he was opening a new club that was going to be ‘the mother of all clubs’, and he wanted Samaha to run the security for the club. The club was indeed a huge success and in fact became the iconic legend of the seventies known as Studio 54. At Studio 54 Samaha had access to the richest, most powerful people in and visiting New York, in addition to celebrities, artists and models; all of who would benefit him in the future.

After his invaluable experience at Studio 54, Samaha decided he was ready to open his own nightclub in New York with some key value added partnerships; a business model, which Samaha applies to this day. As he explains, “I’ve always invested very little myself and brought in partners who I knew would help the business succeed. Whether they were artists, like Julian Schnabel in New York, gallery owners like Tony Chefrazie, rich tycoons, like Donald Trump or movie executives, like Michael Asner of Warner Brothers, the key was to always have partners from the entertainment, art, legal and film industries.” After all these were the key money making industries in New York which brought in the glamorous crowd to ensure a nightclub’s success.

Realising the appeal of owning part of a restaurant or nightclub in a cosmopolitan city, Samaha knew he could always bring in several partners with a small amount of shares each. As Samaha explains, “Everybody likes to be able to say they own part of a hot nightclub, no matter which industry they specialise in. Personally I don’t need to be the sole owner, as I don’t have an ego about such things. In every nightclub I have started I’ve brought in about 30 to 50 partners and I’ve always managed to get along with them and keep everybody happy. As a result, I’m probably the only restaurant/nightclub owner in the US that is paid on every single investment, which is an impeccable record in this industry.”

After opening a club named Area, Samaha went on to open several other restaurant/clubs in New York. Yet Samaha eventually became tired of the club business and the toll it was taking on his life and personal relationships. As Samaha explains, “there are certain negative aspects in this business which can become too much after a while. You have to stay up until 5am every night, sleep during the day then get up and start all over again; which can get very boring after a while.”

Thus after seven years in New York Samaha decided to sell his clubs and move to Los Angeles to expand his horizons. Initially he organised exclusive events there and opened nightclubs as well, but he was eager for a new challenge. “I knew I needed to try something new as I never do any certain business for more than seven years. I always like to have new challenges and try new industries,” Samaha explains.

After reading in the Wall Street Journal that the dry cleaning business was one of the top five businesses in the US, Samaha decided to give it a try. He knew from his friends in the movie industry that there was demand for a dry cleaner that could provide good service efficiently (as there was no one doing so at the time in LA). Samaha filled this void by starting a dry cleaner service that was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week with instant tailoring and alternations. Again Samaha capitalised on his celebrity contacts by naming the dry cleaners ‘Celebrity Cleaners’ and getting all his friends to sign autographed pictures for the walls. Samaha laughs as he recalls that time, “it was gimmick as 90% of them never visited the dry cleaners, but it worked really well and brought in lots of clients”.

His hard work and hype definitely seemed to work and in the next three years Samaha managed to open 32 dry cleaners in the Los Angeles area. The dry cleaners thrived because Samaha was able to garner business from all of LA’s hotels and movie studios. At the same time Samaha was investing in real estate, buying properties, developing them as dry cleaners, shopping centres, restaurants or clubs, then reselling them for a profit. His family had also settled in California and real estate became the family business, in which his brother and sister also participated.

Eventually Samaha sold his dry cleaning businesses after receiving a lucrative offer from a businessman who wanted to consolidate them. Samaha made such a sizeable profit that he was able to take a year and a half off to travel the world. When Samaha returned he found the same businessman willing sell him the businesses back for next to nothing as he was unable to successfully consolidate them; another luckily coup for the Lebanese entrepreneur.

At the same time, Samaha’s nightclubs in LA were striving, attracting celebrities, directors and movie moguls alike. His prestige and contacts were growing, as was his access to Hollywood’s decision makers. His club the Roxbury became LA’s hottest club, and as Samaha recalls, “It was like the Studio 54 of the ‘90s, it was an instant success. I had people like Rod Stewart and Elton John as my partners and the club made huge profits.”

The Roxbury was also where Samaha met his now former wife, actress Tia Carerra. As Samaha explains, “technically I met her previously in Hawaii, but when she came to the Roxbury and I opened the door for her, I remember thinking to myself that she was incredibly beautiful.” The marriage didn’t last due to Samaha’s hectic schedule and the couple’s differing views on starting a family (Samaha was eager, Carerra was more interested in focusing on her career); yet Samaha’s success definitely did.

After the Roxbury’s success, Samaha opened several other venues, creating a veritable empire of clubs and restaurants in the Los Angeles area. Samaha’s celebrity contacts helped the venues succeed, as he would invite celebrities to different venues on different nights, creating a buzz wherever they went.

Yet although Samaha had a multitude of celebrity friends, he ventured into movie production almost by chance. It was only when his wife was involved in a small movie that didn’t have the necessary funding, that Samaha came up with the money as a show of support. After he made a surprising profit of a few million dollars on the movie, Samaha decided to invest in another movie starring his wife, where he made an even larger profit. From that point Samaha was hooked and decided to produce movies seriously.

When Samaha started producing movies, he decided to take his winning advantage, celebrity friends, and make it work for him once again. He found that every famous actor always had a pet project they were dying to make, that did not have necessary backing of the large Hollywood studios. For Samaha this was an opportunity he could seize on; so instead of searching for good scripts then finding good actors for the roles, Samaha reversed the process. As Samaha explains, “I would ask my famous actor friends which movies or screenplays they really wanted to star in and start from there.” Samaha would then keep the film budget down by persuading the stars to take a lesser fee in return for a potentially lucrative piece of the film’s gross. With his creative approach, Samaha who was a newcomer to the film industry, was able to get huge stars like Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta and Bruce Willis to star in his movies. Once a star is in place, Samaha can raise 75% of the film’s budget by using the actor’s marquee value to help him sell off the foreign rights, with the rest of the budget coming from bank loans. Samaha then saves even more money by making films in Canada to collect Canadian tax breaks (which saves up to 30% off the budget). This approach didn’t necessarily guarantee that all Samaha’s films became huge hits, but it did get Samaha noticed fast. And as Jim Wiatt, the president of William Morris states, “In a business where it’s hard to get movies made, Elie has stepped up to the plate. He works on gut instinct. Either he says yes or he says no, and if he says yes, the movie gets made.”

In fact it was his surprise hit The Whole Nine Yards, starring his friend Bruce Willis that gave Samaha recognition with Hollywood circles. Samaha produced the project when Warner Bros. was not interested. Like other studios, Warner Bros. commissions and develops hundreds of scripts a year and only a handful get made; The Whole Nine Yards had been cast aside with other unmade movies in what is known as “turn-around”. Samaha loves turnaround, as he can buy scripts stuck there for a relatively low cost, and often the scripts have been polished at someone else’s expense. And since The Whole Nine Yards was personally important to Bruce Wills (as it had been developed by his brother), the star was willing to act in the movie at a reduced cost. In the end, the movie made $60 million domestically and Warner Brothers was amazed and impressed. As Samaha explains, “In Hollywood, you only need success to have more success.”

The second huge movie that had all of Hollywood talking was John Travolta’s long time pet project Battlefield Earth; a futuristic novel by L. Ron Hubbard, late founder of controversial Church of Scientology, which counts Travolta as long-time member. Due to its controversial scientology link and its large budget requirements, none of the big studios wanted to touch it, yet for Samaha it represented yet another unseized opportunity. “Everybody asked me ‘why Battlefield Earth?’ but it was Travolta’s pet project for almost twenty years and I was one of the few people who wanted to finance it. It was budgeted as a $100 million movie, but few people knew I was going to do it for about half the price. I got Travolta to show up for much less than his usual $20 million fee, then convinced the directors and all other staff to take cuts.” Despite the fact that Battlefield Earth was not a hit at the box office and got negative reviews, Samaha does not regret producing the movie at all, “It made lots of money and that’s what I care about. It was the fasted repaid loan in my company’s history. I got a lot of slack for it but it made millions from its international and DVD sales”. And as Samaha knows, the international market for stars like Travolta, Wills and Stallone is consistent and huge. And advance sales with international distributors has increasingly become how expensive action movies are financed.

So as long as there was a big star involved, Samaha continued taking the risks no one else wanted to. He also continued to make smaller movies, many of them action, that are made purely for DVD sales; an avenue which Samaha explains is very profitable. “All of my movies, big or small, are star driven so they always have a market. The DVD market is also very good for sci fi and action movies, as they have a large audience.” Franchise has also announced the formation of UK distribution outfit, which will help it take advantage of British tax incentives; another advantage Franchise will have over its competitors.

For this reason Samaha seems to be confident about his success and his future in Hollywood despite the volatile nature of his business. As he explains, “Just like I was, there’s always going to be another younger, smarter producer that comes on to the scene and we’re going to have to compete with him. The reason people talk about successful newcomers a lot is because they usually want to see them fail. Take for example the other Lebanese producer Mario Kassar (Terminator 1, 2 and 3, Total Recall) who was my mentor. He was very instrumental to me and helped me get into the industry. He used to be one of the biggest producers yet today he is not doing very many movies. It’s not easy to get movies produced anymore and we all have to work very hard for it.”

Although his new collaborative strategy with WB (where WB distributes Franchise films, for a fee) has helped Samaha make his new mantra ‘quality, not quantity’, most of the risk still belongs to Franchise. In fact Samaha seems to work non-stop, as he lives and breathes work. Due to the fact that Samaha’s movies are financed in the US and abroad, Samaha spends a lot of time on his private jet, travelling to close deals in Europe, Asia and sometimes the Middle East.

It would seem that Samaha is the embodiment of the American dream, but being a foreigner and Arab did pose a problem for Samaha, especially in his youth. As he recalls, “Its very hard to be an Arab in the US, especially since most Americans have very little knowledge of the Middle East. When there were US forces in Lebanon and a truck bomb killed 500 marines, things were especially difficult. But the beautiful thing about America is that if you have a vision and you follow it, nobody will stand in your way; so I never let what anyone said affect me. Thankfully I was fortunate enough that my features allowed me to blend in easily. And the people who did business with me, respected me without question. In fact sometimes Americans gave me more opportunities than fellow Lebanese. And it was Warner Bros.’s President Alan Horn, who is Jewish, who respected me enough to give me the opportunity to get into the film industry.”

Yet it wasn’t just blending in that helped Samaha, as he keenly recognises his strengths and weakness and is never afraid to learn. “Whenever I would sit with interesting and successful people I would listen and learn, and throughout my life information has been power. After all the more information you have, the more you understand what people are thinking, the more power you have.” In addition to his powerful information Samaha has accurately been described as ‘a consummate salesman with the money to back up his pitch. On the phone day and night, the indefatigable producer makes everyone feel like they’re a close friend’ (Patrick Goldstein, L.A.Times). His unique old world style has made him larger than life to many, and garnered him a lot of friends and new found respect in Hollywood’s tough inner circles. Yet those who have known Samaha for years are not surprised at his success, as his long time friend Stallone puts it, “He’s a maverick. He’s the sort of a person who would have made Rocky 25 years ago. This industry should cultivate guys like this.”

Indeed it does seem like this is Samaha’s time, and he is anxious now to use his success positively in the Middle East. His dream is to do a big Hollywood production about a great Middle Eastern hero, shot in Middle East and portraying the Arab world in a positive light. Yet this is one movie that may be a long time coming as Samaha explains, “Unfortunately the movie will be difficult to finance. But I really want to send a message to the American people and make them see that not all Arabs are terrorists. There are so many Arabs who are so well educated, intelligent and successful that need to be recognised, especially by the US.”

Yet Samaha is now set to produce the less controversial tale of Ali Baba, which he plans to start filming this summer using a mix of American and Arabic stars. As he explains, “Ali Baba is a non-religious, non ethnic story that people from all over the world can relate to. If I’m successful with Ali Baba, I hope to create great publicity for the Middle East and introduce mainstream Arab culture in a positive manner. The Arab world has untapped potential for Hollywood movies and hopefully this production will get my investors more interested in the Middle East”.

In addition to producing movies in the Arab World for both US and Arab audiences, Samaha wants to find Arabic screenwriters and produce Arabic movies at a high quality. He sees massive potential in the Middle East and is interested in producing everything from TV shows to movies. Samaha is also eager to bring his restaurant/club expertise to Cairo and Beirut, and open a series of hot spots there as well. In fact Samaha has already begun work on his first hotel project in his native Lebanon. As he explains, “My dream is to bring something unique to Middle East for the restaurant and hotel industry; something that’s very different and modern that we as Arabs can be proud of. It would mean so much to me to have success in places such as Lebanon, Dubai and Egypt, which are still lacking in many areas.”

With his busy schedule and his endless work demands, it’s amazing how Samaha keeps expanding and running his business empire. His vision seems endless and as his record has shown, Samaha is one of the most determined businessmen around. Yet perhaps his new goals in the Middle East may be the most significant for him personally, as he explains, “I want to go back and explore my roots as it will give me a lot of pleasure to give back to my country and my region. With all the brilliant minds we have in the Middle East there is no reason we should be lacking when compared to the West. In the end I want to provide a good example for other Arabs do to great things for the region and the world.”

“From a very young age I had an interest in business, which my family encouraged because it was a difficult time in Lebanon. I learned a lot from my mother because she was a businesswoman. She raised me, my brother and my sister while working at the same time.” As Stevens explains, “Elie is fiercely competitive and accustomed to being an underdog. I think he’s probably had certain goals in mind for years prior to his realising them. And with every milestone, he succeeds beyond his wildest dreams and sets new goals.”
“At the time in Lebanon, young men were being returned to their mothers in body bags, it was very depressing and very ugly. What I saw left a very bad stain in my memory to this day.”
“I’ve always invested very little myself and brought in partners who I knew would help the business succeed. The key was to always have partners from the entertainment, art, legal and film industries.”
“I knew I needed to try something new as I never do any certain business for more than seven years. I always like to have new challenges and try new industries,”
“The Roxbury was like the Studio 54 of the ‘90s, it was an instant success. I had people like Rod Stewart and Elton John as my partners and the club made huge profits.”
Samaha would then keep the film budget down by persuading the stars to take a lesser fee in return for a potentially lucrative piece of the film’s gross. With his creative approach, Samaha who was a newcomer to the film industry, was able to get huge stars like Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta and Bruce Willis to star in his movies.
“The reason people talk about successful newcomers a lot is because they usually want to see them fail. It’s not easy to get movies produced anymore and we all have to work very hard for it.”
“Whenever I would sit with interesting and successful people I would listen and learn, and throughout my life information has been power. After all the more information you have, the more you understand what people are thinking, the more power you have.”
As his long time friend Stallone puts it, “He’s a maverick. He’s the sort of a person who would have made Rocky 25 years ago. This industry should cultivate guys like this.”
“I really want to send a message to the American people and make them see that not all Arabs are terrorists. There are so many Arabs who are so well educated, intelligent and successful that need to be recognised, especially by the US.”
“In the end I want to provide a good example for other Arabs do to great things for the region and the world.”