New Line Cinema has long been a subsidiary of Time Warner and closely allied to Warner Bros, but today it has been announced that the formerly indie studio is being folded into its larger partner, where the name will remain as a genre arm, making comedies, horrors and what the Americans persist in calling "urban" films. In short, it's goodbye New Line as we know it.
Many of the company's 600 staff face losing their jobs, and while New Line will still have some development and marketing operations, these are due to be cut dramatically. After this weekend's release of Semi-Pro, New Line films will be released under the Warners label. Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, who founded the company, will not be among those kept on, although Production President Toby Emmerich is currently staying in place.
Here comes the technical bit. The reasons behind the move appear to be part of a plan to cut costs at Warners and increase the stock price, and one measure specifically mentioned is that New Line films will no longer be distributed by other companies overseas (a strategy that cost the studio on The Golden Compass, which did badly in the US but rather better elsewhere around the world). This could mean some slight changes here in the UK, but probably means, in practical terms, that at most we see a different logo before the start of the film.
For those of you who are worried, The Hobbit is said to be unaffected by the move. There's still no script and no director, although Guillermo Del Toro is in talks, and a release date in 2010, for the first film, and 2011, for the second, is still the aim.
While it's a shame to see the studio that brought us A Nightmare On Elm Street, Austin Powers and **The Lord of the Rings **go, it shouldn't actually make much difference to the films that we see - although it might change who distributes them to us. And given the problems that New Line has run into with The Hobbit, this could even speed up the process of bringing that to the screen. Maybe.