One of the first complaints Brad Grey heard when he took over Paramount Pictures in March was about DVD prices.
Workers were charged more to buy the discs on the studio lot than at a Best Buy or Target store. From now on, Grey decreed, prices would be wholesale.
"I didn't think it was necessary to make a profit on our employees," Grey said.
Grey's fingerprints are everywhere on Paramount's Melrose Avenue lot, even in the company store. Since assuming the job, he has been immersed in trying to boost morale, end dysfunctional staff relations and cure a creative malaise that has hung over the venerable studio.
Some moves came easy. Grey immediately spent millions of dollars junking antiquated office computers for new ones and buying his top executives BlackBerry devices. He organized employee barbecues and breakfasts. This summer, workers can take Friday afternoons off.
Other actions were unsettling: Grey cleaned out top management, sometimes making moves with no warning. President Donald De Line was on a business trip to London when he got word indirectly that he had been axed in favor of Fox TV's Gail Berman, who now oversees day-to-day creative matters.
"Change is tricky and difficult, and people are entitled to be nervous about it," Grey said in his first extensive interview since taking the job.
Grey also is shaking up a stodgy culture at the Viacom Inc.-owned studio, in part by spicing up the movie slate with edgy, offbeat films, including one opening Friday about a pimp who aspires to hip-hop stardom.
Under the former regime of studio chief Sherry Lansing and her boss, Viacom Entertainment Group Chairman Jonathan Dolgen, Paramount enjoyed considerable success for years, releasing such films as "Forrest Gump," "Braveheart" and "Titanic." Eventually, the studio hit a lengthy dry spell, and the two executives earned reputations as being overly cautious.
Paramount lagged behind competitors at the box office, in video stores and in international distribution. Executive turnover plagued the studio. Hardball negotiating didn't endear it to agents and filmmakers.
Enter Grey. Viacom co-President Tom Freston had vowed to reverse Paramount's often last-place box-office ranking and to turn the studio into an easier place to work.
Freston tapped the 47-year-old talent manager who for two decades had sat atop Brillstein-Grey Entertainment, which represents such stars as Brad Pitt and Adam Sandler.
