THE ART OF BETTING $100 MILLION

By Jeffrey Ressner

THINK IT'S DIFFICULT DECIDING WHICH movie to see on a Friday night? Try betting hundreds of millions of dollars on what will be the next box-office hit. Running the show at a big movie company may seem like a glamorous job, gilded with that Gucci and Gulfstream lifestyle, but to survive at the top, it also requires a near biblical gift of prophecy. Fail enough times, and you can say bye-bye to studio life--and the perks that go with it.

At the Paramount Pictures group, the person on the hot seat is its chairman, Sherry Lansing, 60, who smashed the industry's glass ceiling in 1980 when she became the first woman to head production at a major studio. Lansing is the first to admit that there's no surefire way of predicting the next blockbuster. "Sometimes you can make all of the right decisions, and the movie gods will shine on you. Other times they don't," she says. "Luck is needed in nearly every business, but even more so in this one, where you have to catch the zeitgeist and the zeitgeist moves so quickly."

She has certainly had her share of luck. Lansing has been responsible for bankrolling many of the past decade's biggest hits (Titanic, Forrest Gump, Braveheart). But Paramount has recently faced rocky times, scoring well with quirky, smaller films such as Mean Girls and School of Rock while stumbling with big-budget titles like the remake of The Stepford Wives and the effects-heavy Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Still, despite the recent fumbles, no one dismisses Lansing's innate savvy. "She understands stories early on in their idea phase, and she's brilliant when it comes to breaking down scripts and casting," says Lorne Michaels, the Saturday Night Live impresario who produced Mean Girls and more than half a dozen other films under Lansing's watch. Her 2005 slate is highly diverse, ranging from a music film with gangsta rapper 50 Cent to a new version of War of the Worlds starring Tom Cruise and directed by Steven Spielberg.

Lansing says her method for green-lighting projects is simple: absorb all the data you can, but trust your gut instinct. "I read all the market research and use it as a tool," she says. "But movies are an art form. You have to look into the eyes of a filmmaker and an executive and see their passion."

This season will put her method to the test. In addition to a fantasy starring Jim Carrey (Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events), a kiddie cartoon featuring cable TV's SpongeBob SquarePants and a remake of Alfie with Jude Law, one of Paramount's most anticipated releases is Team America: World Police, a raunchy, red-hot political satire from the South Park crew, using goofy marionettes.

Lansing sees studios gravitating toward emotional stories in 2005 and '06 and away from whizbang effects movies. She's also a big booster of comedies. "When you're worried the world is going to blow up, you want to escape and see something that's funny," she says. "That doesn't mean we're not going to make serious films, but we're living in nervous times, and people want to laugh." --By Jeffrey Ressner