Jerry Bruckheimer

Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of action films and television shows such as "Top Gun," "Black Hawk Down" and "C.S.I," now thinks video games are where the action is. Bruckheimer is the latest Hollywood kingpin to dive into the $50-billion-and-growing global game industry.

In the 1980s, Jerry Bruckheimer and his partner, Don Simpson, were the kings of commercial cinema. The two producers, whose relationship was so intertwined that Simpson once likened them to two people with one brain, made a string of blockbusters such as "Flash-dance" (1983), "Beverly Hills Cop" (1984) and "Top Gun" (1986). It was said that Simpson, a charismatic Alaskan who believed that he himself had the makings of a movie star, was the idea man.

"Con Air" is a big, loud, noisy movie made with almost scientific precision for people who like big, loud, noisy movies. Numbing but not boring, it's finally more dispiriting than exhilarating, like a wild night of debauchery that leaves only a fearsome hangover for a souvenir. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer, having made "Top Gun," "Bad Boys," "The Rock" and similar fare with his late partner Don Simpson, knows the drill for this kind of picture.

Disney Studios has extended its exclusive deal with action film producer Jerry Bruckheimer for five more years. The movie hits that he and his late partner, Don Simpson, produced, including "The Rock," "Crimson Tide," "Bad Boys," "Dangerous Minds," "Top Gun," "Flashdance," "Days of Thunder" and the "Beverly Hills Cop" series, have generated worldwide box-office receipts, home video revenue and record sales of more than $3 billion.

Viacom Inc.'s MTV and award-winning television and film producer Jerry Bruckheimer will launch a video game studio, marrying Hollywood and technology in what has been historically an uneasy alliance. Bruckheimer is the producer of Walt Disney Co.'s wildly successful "Pirates of the Caribbean" film franchise and TV hits such as "CSI."

Last week, Walt Disney Co. stole one of Hollywood's biggest producers, Scott Rudin, from Paramount Pictures. Now, Disney is working to make sure its own biggest marquee producer, Jerry Bruckheimer, stays in the fold. Much is at stake for Disney in keeping Bruckheimer happy. For more than a decade, the producer has delivered the kind of large-scale, adrenaline-laced films the studio needs to anchor its yearly movie slate.

Jerry Bruckheimer grew rich churning out fast-paced, thumping action films aimed squarely at the teenage boys who rule the multiplex: "Top Gun," "The Rock," "Con Air." But the 59-year-old super-producer has spent much of the past five years wooing a much different crowd -- the older and far more female-skewing audience that stays home. And now the results are shaking up prime-time TV.

"Close to Home," which premieres tonight on CBS, begins with slow-motion footage of paperboys riding through a perfect, color-saturated upper-middle-class suburb, footage that in another sort of picture would signal the imminent explosion of an atomic bomb.

As a Hollywood movie producer, everything about Jerry Bruckheimer is big. There are his splashy effects -- an airliner careening down the Las Vegas Strip in "Con Air," an asteroid plunging toward Earth in "Armageddon." Eye-popping budgets, as in $200 million to make and market "Pearl Harbor." Tom Cruise piloting to megastar status in "Top Gun." But now Bruckheimer is thinking small -- as in small screen.

Film and TV producer Jerry Bruckheimer is renewing his deal to develop and produce for Warner Bros. Television. Bruckheimer developed "Without a Trace" for Warner this last season and currently is producing three drama pilots: "The Unsolved" for CBS, "Fearless" for the WB and "Skin" for Fox. Bruckheimer is best known for such blockbuster feature films as "Armageddon," "Pearl Harbor" and "The Rock," as well as the hit "C.S.I." TV dramas on CBS. The new deal is for four years through June 2007.