NEW YORK — The Harvey Entertainment Co. says it will film 12 live-action direct-to-video family movies over the next three years, and create three animated TV shows, one a year, during the same period.
That strategy emerged from a business plan drawn up by Global Media Management Group, a showbiz consultancy, at the behest of the board of Harvey, which owns most of the rights to such characters as Casper the Friendly Ghost, Richie Rich, Baby Huey, Little Audrey and the Ghostly Trio of Fatso, Stinkie and Stretch.
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Michael Hope, a principal in Global Media and interim chief financial officer of Harvey Entertainment, says he and his partner Anthony Scotti, who’s serving as interim CEO of Harvey, were approached by the Harvey board in March 1998 after the company fired its senior management, including Jeffrey Montgomery, the president, and Greg Yulish, the CFO. Scotti is former CEO of All American Communications and Hope is former CFO of MGM.
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In addition to advising Harvey on its programming blueprint, Hope and Scotti will work with the board on choosing the candidates who’ll make up the new management team of Harvey. Hope and Scotti have agreed to extend their management contract with Harvey until Dec. 23, 1998, when the permanent officers will most likely be in place.
Harvey commissioned Haim Saban, co-owner of Fox Family Channel with Rupert Murdoch, to produce the live-action, direct-to-video movies “Casper Meets Wendy” and “Richie Rich’s Christmas Wish.” Fox Video will distribute the “Casper” movie and Warner Bros. the “Richie Rich,” both of which will be in the stores as sell-throughs in the fall.
For the 12 planned video movies, Hope says Harvey “will develop, produce and finance them in-house, and then look for an outside distributor to market the pictures to the video stores.” He and Scotti are also assisting Harvey to get the money to bankroll these movies and TV series.
Two months ago, Harvey wrote off $1.6 million against its first-quarter earnings, resulting in an overall quarterly loss of $1.8 million.
