James G. Robinson, the producer and co-founder of Morgan Creek Productions who was behind such films as Major League, Dead Ringers, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, True Romance and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, died Feb. 15, his family announced. He was 90.
Robinson, who had made his fortune in the auto import industry, and producer Joe Roth launched Morgan Creek in 1988, with Robinson staking $80 million of his own money to get things started. (The company also secured a $126 million line of credit from Signet Bank-Maryland.)
In the wake of the demise of such independent studios as the Cannon Group, New World Entertainment and De Laurentiis Entertainment Group, the partners agreed they would not distribute their films. They would fully finance the movies they produced, cover advertising costs, presell foreign video and television rights and leave it to others to get their films into U.S. theaters.
Morgan Creek had a hit right out of the gate with Young Guns (1988), about the early days of Billy the Kid. Starring Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips and Dermot Mulroney and directed by Christopher Cain, the Fox-distributed film was made for about $11 million — it was classified as a nonunion shoot — and returned $45 million at the box office.
The son of a professional golfer, Robinson was born in Baltimore on Dec. 16, 1935. At age 5, he and his family moved to Dundalk, Maryland. He attended Dundalk High School and then the University of Maryland in College Park.
Following a stint in the U.S. Army in Germany, Robinson returned in 1963 to Baltimore, where fate pointed him toward an opportunity. He had bought a used car overseas, and when it arrived, it was coated with what only can be described as a protective grunge. After futilely trying to remove the substance, he found a local business that specialized in this type of car cleaning.
With a partner, he bought the company and opened shop at Dundalk Marine Terminal to offer cleaning services for imported automobiles. Business boomed when auto importers started requesting additional services such as undercoating and retrofits of sunroofs and moldings.
In the mid-1970s, Robinson purchased a Subaru distributorship that was going bankrupt and built it into Subaru Mid-America Inc., a Chicago-based outfit that ultimately supplied the Japanese brand’s cars and parts to 94 dealerships throughout the Midwest.
He came to Hollywood in the late ’70s by orchestrating bridge financing for independent films. “There were people out there who had deals with the studios but didn’t have any immediate financing, and I would finance [their films],” Robinson told The Hollywood Reporter in 2007. “I didn’t come walking into town and say, ‘I want to be in this business.’”
Eventually, he began looking for movies of his own to finance, and Roth, then an up-and-coming producer, approached him with The Stone Boy. Robinson signed on as an executive producer, and the family drama, directed by Cain, hit theaters in 1984 with a cast that included Robert Duvall, Glenn Close and Frederic Forrest.
“He’s a risk-taker, but an intelligent one who takes calculated risks, most of which have paid off,” Marvin Riesenbach, an auto industry colleague of Robinson’s, said in a 1991 Baltimore Sun profile.
Robinson continued to dabble in Hollywood, putting money into the 1985 comedies Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Grunt! The Wrestling Movie. He joined forces again with Roth for the 1986 adventure film Where the River Runs Black, also helmed by Cain.
The Morgan Creek moniker was inspired by the great Preston Sturges comedy The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek (1943). “We wanted an American name,” Robinson told the Sun in 1999. “Something that was very American and something that involved a well-known American director. ‘Morgan Creek’ is as American as you can get. … You never hear the word ‘creek’ anywhere else in the world.”
Roth departed in 1989 to become chairman of 20th Century Fox, but Robinson kept the momentum going with the quintessential baseball comedy Major League (1989), starring Sheen; David Cronenberg’s intricate thriller Dead Ringers (1988), starring Jeremy Irons; the Kevin Costner-starring Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991); True Romance (1993), written by Quentin Tarantino, just off Reservoir Dogs; and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective (1994); which made Jim Carrey a movie star.
In 1996, Robinson was named ShoWest Producer of the Year.
“There’s a lot of things for me that go into choosing a movie. From the top: Is it a good script? Because if it’s not a good script, why don’t we just stop right here?” Robinson told THR in 2007. “I sit down with a lot of people. I don’t isolate myself in a vacuum. There is no simplistic formula. Let’s just say I think we’ll do fine around the world. OK, now can we cast it? Can we get the right director? Is the budget the right budget for this film? Everything is fluid. It’s story, director, cast.”
The Paul Mazursky-directed Enemies, A Love Story (1989) brought Morgan Creek three Academy Award nominations, and Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans (1992), starring Daniel Day-Lewis, won an Oscar for best sound.
Maximizing product potential, Robinson generated several sequels to Young Guns, Major League and Ace Ventura and in 1990 revived a fabled spooky franchise with The Exorcist III, followed by three other films and a Fox series reboot.
Other features Robinson ushered to the big screen included Skin Deep (1989), Pacific Heights (1990), Freejack (1992), White Sands (1992), Diabolique (1996), Soldier (1998), American Outlaws (2001), The Good Shepherd (2006) and Georgia Rule (2007), on which he sparred with Lindsay Lohan, calling her a “spoiled child” who had “endangered the quality of this picture” in a letter.
In 2014, Morgan Creek struck a deal with the Roth-founded Revolution Studios to sell international distribution rights and copyrights to its film library for $36.75 million.
Survivors include his wife of 61 years, Barbara; children Michael, Patrick, Brian, David, Thomas and Beth; and grandchildren Blake, Meghan, Kaitlin, Aidan, Cali, Campbell, David Cameron and David Henry.
His son David, married to actress Susan Ward, followed in his father’s footsteps as a producer and eventually as president of Morgan Creek Entertainment Group.
Robinson never lost his love of Baltimore, raising his family in Lutherville, just north of the city. Though Morgan Creek had a Los Angeles headquarters, more often than not, he operated out of offices in his hometown.
“I love Baltimore,” he said. “I’d make all my movies here if I could. It all comes down to a matter of cost. If it was close, maybe a difference of a million between filming here and somewhere else, I would always choose Baltimore.”