Ordinarily, there'd be no reason for anyone outside the industry to care that Warner Bros. has essentially dissolved New Line Cinema, folding the erstwhile indie studio into its own corporate tent and firing many of its employees, including New Line founder Robert Shaye.
But New Line had something unusual for a studio these days: a personality. Shaye founded it back in the sixties, when he resurrected the old thirties scare picture Reefer Madness and played it to audiences of stoners. He was an enthusiastic early supporter of John Waters, and kept such cult items as Night Of The Living Dead and Texas Chain Saw Massacre in distribution through the seventies and early eighties.
Shaye loved exploitation filmmakers, and he made a name for his studio with Wes Craven's Nightmare On Elm Street and its infinite sequels. The serious money made by this series gave New Line entry into the big time, and the massive success of the Austin Powers and Lord Of The Rings series.
Shaye made many mistakes along the way, and New Line hadn't had much artistic or commercial success for a few years, but as a production or distribution entity, they gave us Pink Flamingos, Desperate Living, Wise Blood, Gregory's Girl, The Hidden, Menace II Society, My Own Private Idaho, Short Cuts, In The Mouth Of Madness, Boogie Nights and Magnolia. All these movies have a very specific, off-beat point of view, and are serious and fun in equal measure. If made now, none would see the light of day in the corporate world of today's Hollywood. With Shaye's ouster, the future of the movies seems even less interesting.
