Mary-Kate & Ashley Articles: Wall Street
Double Vision
Wall Street Journal March 10, 1997
John Lippman
HOLLYWOOD- Quick: After Disney, what is the most popular name in
kids' entertainment these days? Sesame Street? Barney? Try Olsen. With a
series of low-budget videocassettes that have raked in $77 million in
sales, 10-year-old twins Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have taken the No. 1
spot in the nonanimated children's video market. In the process, the
sisters, who cut their teeth on the hit ABC television sitcom "Full
House," have become millionaires to boot.
"Thanks to skillful maneuvering by their parents, a careful master
plan by an ambitious lawyer-manager, and a dearth of movies and videos for
young girls, the sisters now sit atop an entertainment empire. Their
credits include an eight season run on network TV, three made for TV
movies, 14 shows made specifically for home video, and a feature film.
"When the girls left the TV show, everybody said their careers
were over." says Robert Thorne, 42, the Hollywood lawyer who has
carefully orchestrated Mary-Kate and Ashley's acting careers and business
dealings since they were four. Instead, he says, "we decided it was time
they could step out."
The girls aren't taking baby steps either. Dualstar Entertainment
Group Inc., the twins' Los Angeles holding company, now encompasses film
and TV production, records, publications and interactive divisions.
Their two video series, "The Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley"
and "You're invited to Mary-Kate and Ashley's," have sold more than six
million units, and now Scholastic Inc. is distributing a line of 14
children's books based on the shows. The video of their first feature
film, "It Takes Two," sold 3.2 million copies, bringing in $36 million in
revenue to 'distributor Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc. Two
Olsen music CDs have each sold more than 350,000 copies and 500,000 copies
of their music video have flown off the shelves.
In Las Vegas, thousands of children wait in line while Mary-Kate
and Ashley sign autographs from inside an air-conditioned bubble; in New
York, a line wraps around FAO Schwarz so kids can spend a few seconds
single-filing past the girls and waving while parents snap pictures; at
Sea World in San Diego, Mary-Kate and Ashley pack a stadium usually
reserved for Shamu the Whale.
What's their secret? "They're no Shirley Temple," says Andy
Tennant, who directed the twins in "It Takes Two," produced by Rysher
Entertainment. "They don't have exquisite talent. What they have is a
lot of charm and a huge marketing campaign. That's what sells these
days."
For girls who grew up watching the twins on "Full House,"
Mary-Kate and Ashley are cute, likable role models who sing, dance and
throw cool slumber parties. "I like the things they do," says Clea
Litewka, who had a slumber party of her own-complete with Olsen videos-for
her ninth birthday. She has memorized all the songs on the twins' music
videocassette, "Our First Video," which has been on the bestseller charts
for the past three years.
A Surefire Formula
"There is nobody competing with them," says Arnold Holland, chief
executive of Lightyear Entertainment, an independent video and recording
label in New York. "Most TV properties are either aimed at boys or
families. It's rare that there are any girl-oriented properties."
In the lucrative home-video market, the Olsens' parents and Mr.
Thorne have hit upon a sure-fire formula. For "The Adventures of
Mary-Kate and Ashley," the girls play two dimpled detectives whose agency
motto is "will solve any crime by dinner time." Mr. Thorne's wife coined
the detectives' nickname, "Trenchcoat Twins."
The story lines are extremely simple: the hunt for Dad's missing
"secret computer disk" during a family Caribbean cruise, or the search for
something spooky in an amusement park that is scaring customers away from
the fun house.
And the videos are shamelessly crosspromotional. In exchange for
the being featured prominently in the shows, companies like Carnival
Cruise Lines, Sea World and U.S. Space Camp cover all lodging,
transportation and catering costs on location.
For "The Case of the Hotel Who Done It," the twins repeatedly plug
the Hawaiian Village Hotel. "This hotel was so cool, they even had
someone who parked our bikes," the twins say, adding that the lobby is "so
awesome." Just when it seems the only thing left for them to do is list
the hotel's amenities, the girls break into a song during which they raid
the minibar, watch in-room movies and chant, "Why can't we live in a hotel
all the time?"
The profit margins on the videos are huge. Each half-hour program
takes only four to five days to shoot on a shoestring budget of about
$250,000, peanuts compared with the $1.6 million it cost to produce one
episode of "Full House." Yet every one of the dozen videos released so
far has sold several hundred thousand units, at $12.95 apiece. After
distribution and marketing costs, Dualstar's royalties to date ahve
exceeded $6 million.
Two more videos will hit stores next week, "The Case of the U.S.
Navy Adventure" and "The Case of the Mystery Volcano"; the latter is timed
to capitalize on two volcano films in theaters this year. Mr. Thorne is
negotialing a second deal with Warner Home Video for the girls to produce
six more videos and is developing a second TV series and another feature
film.
The selling of the Olsen twins began when they were just four
months old. When their mother, Jarnette, took them to an audition for
"Full House" to play the role of Michelle Tanner. Producers often look
for twins to play a juvenile role because labor laws restrict the hours
children are permitted to work.
The sugary sitcom was a big hit for ABC, and soon network research
revealed that Mary-Kate and Ashley had a higher "Q Rating" - a measure of
star's popularity - among girls than Henry Winkler had when he played The
Fonz on "Happy Days" or Michael J. Fox had on "Family Ties."
The girls' compensation rose with the show's popularity, from
$2,400 per episode at the start of the series to $80,000 an episode for
both of them during the last season. They will continue to earn
substantial syndication profits from "Full House" for years to come; so
far, Dualstar has collected at least $3 million of such proceeds, a figure
that could triple by the time all revenues are received. Mr. Thorne and
the girls' parents decline to discuss Dualstar's profits.
The move to establish a productoin company for the girls began in
early 1993 as they started breaking out of their "Full House" role. Alan
Berger, head of the TV department at talent agency International Creative
Management, remembers meeting with Mr. Thorne shortly after the Olsens'
first made-for-TV, movie, "To Grandmother's House We Go," became one of
the seasons top TV movies in December 1992. Mr. Berger's client Jeff
Franklin, who has directed the movie and created "Full House," has worked
with the twins for eight years, sometimes waving a cookie to elicit a
response from them. Now he wanted to become executive producer of the
twins' second TV movie.
But Mr. Thorne had a different plan. "The girls are going to be
executive producers," he told Mr. Berger, who winced at the suggestion.
"The girls? But their combined ages are 12," Mr. Berger protested.
"Yeah," Mr. Thorne acknowledged, "but they're going to carry the movie."
Mr. Berger's client opted out. "I just couldn't deal with the
absurdity of having Jeff Franklin report to two six-year-olds," Mr.
Berger says, shaking his head. Mr. Thorne, he says, "wanted to establish"
them as executive producers and run it through their own company."
Sure enough, by the time the second TV movie, "Double, Double,
Toil and Trouble" appeared in 1993, Dualstar Productions was listed as a
co-producer. Of course, Mary-Kate and Ashley didn't actually hire the
writer and director. Instead, the move was the first step in "empowering"
the girls and their company, Mr. Thorne explains.
Mary-Kate and Ashley took in $500,000 for each of the first two TV
movies. For their third TV movie, "How the West Was Fun," their fee
doubled to a million. "That was their price," says Jim Green, whose
dcompany produced the shows. The shows did well, both on ABC and in video
sales, and the next obvious step was to put the girls in a theatrical
film.
The film "It Takes Two" paired the girls with actors Steve
Guttenberg and Kirstie Alley. For their roles as identical rich
girl/poor girl who conspire to have their respective guardians fall in
love, they earned $1.6 million. The $14 million film garnered only $19.5
million at the box office, but gushed a hefty $75 million in home-video
retail sales, making it Warner Home Video's fourth-biggest seller ever in
the family category.
"They are an unexplainable phenomenon," says Mr. Tennant, the
director. He recalls with amazement a day when three packed school buses
passed near the movie's set in New York's Little Italy and come to a stop
three blocks away. "Ten minutes later there was this stampede of 75
children who had gotton off the bus all screaming... It looked like the
Beatles. They swarmed the set. Everything came to a standstill."
The girls live in southern California with an older brother, a
younger sister and their parents, who are divorced and have joint custody.
The twins attend a private Christian academy, where they are in different
classes and have separate groups of friends. They got straight A's on
their last report card.
Their father, David Olsen, says Mary-Kate and Ashley's personal
welfare and education have always come first and they aren't under any
pressure to act. "from very early on, it's been about controllling their
environmetn," says Mr. Olsen,, a mortgage banker and one of the country's
top amateur golfers. "it's not just throwing them to the wolves. They
like acting. As soon as they stop enjoying it, it ends."
Asked what she wants to do when she grows up, Ashley is ready with
a response: "I really like acting. It's a lot of fun." She also
mentions directing. Mary-Kate says she wants to train dolphins and
whales, preferably at Sea World.
Still, the girls' parents defer to Mr. Thorne on even the smallest
of career matters. "Robert likes them in baseball caps," Mr. Olsen says
to Harold Weitzberg, the marketing director for Dualstar, one afternoon as
Mary-Kate and Ashley are haveing their hair styled for a publicity photo
shoot. "I don't want him yelling at me," the father says.
Mr. Thorne comes up with story ideas for the girls' videos and
works with the writers. One day, he says, he found himself thinking,
"Let's put them on jet skis." In a flash, the girls were filming their
next video: "You're Invited to Mary-Kate and Ashley's Hawaiian Beach
Party."
A fierce negotiator with a laconic outward manner, Mr. Thorne
spent several years at a Los Angeles law firm, carving out a niche in
children's entertainment. He also represents R.L. Stine, author of the
blockbuster "Goosebumps" Series of books, and the child actor Jonathan
Taylor Thomas from "Home Improvement." He recently opened his own
practice, Thorne and Co,. with two other lawyers.
A Watchful Eye
Mr. Thorne keeps his eyes on creative details. When he walks onto
the set of the WB network sitcom "Sister Sister" where Mary-Kate and
Ashley are making a special guest appearance, he glances up on the sign
where their names are painted in red letters. "There's no hyphen in
Mary-Kate's name," Mr. Thorne notices. "I hate it when they do that."
Within minutes, two scenery carpenters are up on a ladder to paint in a
hyphen. When the girls have a problem, Mr. Thorne is often the first
person they call. Once after a morning of acting that had gone badly,
Mary-Kate was being interviewed by a TV crew. Suddenly, she turned to one
of the production assistants and said: "I want a phone. I want to call
Robert."
A call was swiftly put through to Mr. Thorne's office. "I don't
want to do this interview. I had a bad morning. The interviewer is
dumb." Mr. Thorne recalls Mary-Kate telling him.
The twins glide from set to set in large entourage that often
includes a lawyer, marketing manager, nanny, tutor, and a personal acting
coach... At the center are two extremely mild little girls who appear
oblivious to the money-making machine around them. Their allowance is
just $10 a week. Asked during a break in the taping of "Sister, Sister"
whether they understand the business they have spawned, Mary-Kate and
Ashley shake their heads "no" in identical movements.
Salary or Allowance?
While shooting "It Takes Two," Mr. Tennant, the director,
overheard the girls discussing their salary. Ashley figured they must be
making $5 a week, their allowance at the time. "No way," Mary-Kate
protested, "We got to be making at least $10."
"People say to them: "What's it like to be a millionaire?" They
just get this glazed look on their face," says Barbara Daoust, their
acting coach.
By law, more than half the profits from Dualstar Entertainment
must go into a trust for the girls. The parents are allowed to take a
percentage as a "management fee," but they decline to disclose the amount:
Mr. Thorne calls it "nominal."
With the girls now 10, Mr. Thorne is heading into a delicate phase
of their career, one that has turned many child stars before them into
troubled teens and trivia-quiz answers.
"The kids are going through a transtion right now. As they
mature, they are going to have to reinvent themselves," says Jim Green,
the producer who works on their TV movies. "They can't continue to do the
same stories they have been doing. When the kids become teenagers, it
will be interesting to see what happens."
Though the girls are in heavy demand- "Rosie O'Donnell's been
after me for weeks," Mr. Thorne says- they aren't doing any TV interviews
now. "We don't do the electronic media anymore. It's overkill," Mr.
Thorne says. "After a while, the word 'ubiquitous' was cropping up too
much... The family wanted them to take some time off, step back, and come
back fresh."
Mr. Thorne says he wants to start limiting the girls' projects as
well. He says he has turned down merchandising and licensing bonanzas,
from "lunchboxes to horrible network specials."
"That's exploitative," he says. "It doesn't build a career."
Credits:
Double vision: watch out Mickey: Olsen twins gain fast in kids'
entertainment; 'they're no Shirley Temple.' but shrewd marketing makes
video stars rich; case of the missing hyphen. (Mary-Kate and Ashley
Olsen) John Lippman. The Wall Street Journal, March 10, 1997
Leonext Olsen Gorrell for the typing of this article...
Bruce Jahn for the collection of this article...