Personalized Analyses
Saturday Night Fever (1977) Dir. John Badham
June 30th, 2025
When a career-defining screenplay written by Norman Wexler slides across Studio President Michael Eisner's desk over at Paramount Pictures in 1976, Michael was told that a major record label, the Robert Stigwood Organisation (RSO), would be financing and producing the project; that a seventies rising star was going to be embodying the starring role, and that John G. Avildsen was lined up as the director. There were contributing factors that were certainly favourable to Michael. The first was that John G. Avildsen was going to be sitting in the director’s chair. The second was that Michael agreed to distribute Randy Kleisler's Grease (1978), with RSO financing and producing the picture; therefore, Michael already possessed a working relationship with Robert Stigwood. The third was that Paramount Pictures had also already established a working relationship with Norman Wexler, as the studio previously distributed Sidney Lumet's Serpico (1973), which Wexler wrote and received an Academy Award nomination for. In turn, Michael was aware of all of the moving pieces. All that he had to do was set the distribution in motion for Saturday Night Fever (1977) and present it to a worldwide audience.
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