Jack Lechner, formerly a key development executive at Miramax Films, has joined the motion picture division of bicoastal/international @radical.media. Lechner, who left Miramax last year, was courted by several film studios and production companies, so his arrival is considered something of a coup for @radical, which has been branching out in film, television, and new media projects.
From April ’96 to June ’99, Lechner was an executive VP of production and development at Miramax, where he worked on the production and script development of some of the studio’s most prestigious and successful films, including Good Will Hunting, Little Voice and Guinevere.
Lechner, who will oversee @radical’s film development at the company’s New York office, joins London-based executive Ray Cooper and Los Angeles-based executive Jane Long in spearheading @radical’s move into television and film production.
"Jack is considered one of the top development people in the world," said Jon Kamen, @radical’s co-founder and executive producer. "[His hire] is an indication that we plan for our motion picture side to grow." @radical’s commercial production division represents numerous spot directors who are crossing over into feature film, including Tarsem, Anthony Hoffman and Frank Todaro.
Lechner, who has worked in the film business for 20 years, assumes his new post on Feb. 14. "This was an easy decision," said Lechner. "First of all, I liked the people and the directors they represent, and the projects they want to do. I think @radical is a very exciting company, and it’s perfectly poised to take advantage of what’s going on in film right now. It’s really a watershed time, because the independent film boom of the nineties is making an impact on mainstream film. We’re seeing great movies come from all different places."
A graduate of Yale University, Lechner’s first job out of college was working as an assistant and story editor at a small New York production company. He moved to Los Angeles to work in development at Columbia Pictures during British producer David Puttnam’s brief tenure there. "We had a tremendously fun time, while not realizing that we were all about to be fired," said Lechner, who later worked at HBO and in the development department of Britain’s Channel Four, where he worked on The Crying Game, Shallow Grave and Four Weddings and a Funeral. When he joined Miramax, the U.S. company was enjoying success as the distributor/co-producer of several Channel Four productions. Said Lechner, "I actually worked on the movie Brassed Off in the development stage in England at Channel Four, and in the distribution stage, after Miramax had picked it up."
Though he won’t be working for @radical’s commercial production side, Lechner is interested in it. "The one time I ever saw a commercial that made me want to track down the director, it turned out to be [@radical director] Tarsem," said Lechner, who saw the director’s "Swimmer," via Bartle Bogle Hegarty, London, when it ran in movie theaters in Great Britain in the early ’90s. (Tarsem was then represented by now-defunct Spot Films, London, but later signed with @radical.)"It was such a tour de force, I had to know who had done it." Soon afterward, Lechner met Tarsem and Kamen, and they stayed in touch. Tarsem is currently directing his first feature film, The Cell, for New Line Cinema.
Lechner’s last projects at Miramax—Mansfield Park, Snow Falling on Cedars, and Down To You—are now in theaters. He is also racing to complete a nonfiction book about television, tentatively titled Boob: One Man, Seven Days, Twelve Televisions, which will be published by Crown in October. "At the risk of my sanity," Lechner said, "I spent a week last September watching twelve televisions at once for fifteen hours a day." To his surprise, the result was a renewed appreciation of the medium. "This isn’t one of those books that’s calling for the elimination of TV."
Additionally, a strategic partnership between @radical and Wieden & Kennedy, Portland, Ore., was recently announced; the companies will produce a two-hour television movie for ABC called Hurricane Season, about the Amherst, Mass., girls’ basketball champion team. Kamen and Frank Scherma, co-proprietors of @radical, and Bill Davenport, managing director of Wieden & Kennedy, will serve as executive producers of the movie. Chuck Rosin, an executive producer of the series Dawson’s Creek and Beverly Hills 90210, is attached to write the teleplay, which is based on Madeleine Blais’ national nonfiction bestseller, In These Girls, Hope is a Muscle.
Hurricane Season is expected to be the first of several entertainment projects to grow out of this strategic partnership. "If the TV movie is successful, it could become a series," said Kamen.
Two more @radical television projects, both produced in the U.K. for British television, are also underway. "We’re looking to close a deal in the next couple of days," said Kamen. "Both are being produced in the U.K., but they are planned for export to the U.S."
