Jon Peters

For other uses, see: John Peters.

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Jon Pagano Peters (born on 2 June 1945 in Van Nuys, California to Jack Peters and Helen Pagano) is a movie producer.

Career

Peters went into the family hair styling business and was successful on Rodeo Drive in Hollywood where he made many industry connections. He dated Barbra Streisand and in 1976 he was given a producing credit on her remake of A Star Is Born.^{[citation needed]} He worked with Peter Guber for the next ten years. Their hits included The Color Purple and Flashdance. He headed Sony Pictures with Guber for two years until Guber fired him. The pair were the subject of the book Hit and Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony for a Ride in Hollywood by Nancy Griffin and Kim Masters.^[1]

Criticism

Legal actions

In November, 2008, Peters was sued for sexual harassment by his Superman: Man of Steel co-producer Brian Quintana.[1]

In December 2008, Peters sued his past President & General Counsel, Ronald Wayne Grigg. Peters accused Grigg of a campaign of deceit that included hiring an assistant with the company's money, stealing his computers, and drugging and raping two women on Peters' property. ^[2]

Book Deal

Nikke Finke's Deadline Hollywood blog reported on a book proposal for the autobiography of Jon Peters, written by him and Los Angeles writer William Stadiem. ^[3] Peters withdrew from the Harper Collins book deal after adverse publicity triggered by the leaking of the proposal. ^[4]

Peters and Superman

In his Q&A/comedy DVD, An Evening With Kevin Smith, writer/director Kevin Smith relates an anecdote about working with Peters when he was hired to write a script for a new Superman movie, then called Superman Reborn, and would later be renamed Superman Lives^[5]. According to Smith, before being hired to draft a screenplay he had to meet with Peters, the project's producer. During this meeting, Peters expressed disdain for most of Superman's iconic characteristics by demanding that Superman was never to fly or appear in his trademark costume, which he considered "too faggy". He also suggested Sean Penn as being ideal for the role, based on his performance as a violent death row inmate in Dead Man Walking saying that Penn had the eyes of a "caged animal, a fucking killer," even though Superman is known for refusing to ever kill. Peters then demanded that if Smith were to write a script, the third act of the film would have to include Superman fighting a giant spider, to be unveiled in an homage to King Kong.

Smith says he met with Peters again after finishing a 80 page outline, which Peters asked him to read aloud in its entirety. Peters then instructed him to include a robot sidekick for Brainiac (who would speak with a stereotypical homosexual lisp), a fight scene between Brainiac and two polar bears, and a marketable "space dog" pet for Lex Luthor, similar to Star Wars character Chewbacca. While Smith, against his own judgment, acquiesced to Peters' demands and inserted them into his script, the project eventually fell through and the script was discarded entirely.

In Look, Up in the Sky: The Amazing Story of Superman, Jon Peters admitted that the Superman franchise was problematic for him: "the elements that I was focusing on were away from the heart, it was more leaning towards Star Wars in a sense, you know. I didn't realize the human part of it, I didn't have that." He subsequently served as Executive Producer for Superman Returns, the 2006 movie directed by Bryan Singer.

Peters and The Sandman

Jon Peters involvement in producing the adaptation of the Sandman comics for Warner Brothers met with controversy. One draft script commissioned by Peters was reviewed on the Internet at Ain't It Cool News^[6], and was met with scorn. Sandman creator Neil Gaiman called the last screenplay that Warner Brothers would send him "...not only the worst Sandman script I've ever seen, but quite easily the worst script I've ever read."^[7] By 2001, the project had become stranded in development hell.

In a 2005 interview, Gaiman summarized the Peters approach as follows: "But Sandman movies, they just got increasingly appalling. It was really strange. They started out hiring some really good people and you got Elliott and Rossio and Roger Avary came in and did a draft. They were all solid scripts. And then Jon Peters fired all of them and got in some people who take orders, and who wanted fistfights and all this stuff. It had no sensibility and it was just...they were horrible."^[8]

Selected filmography as producer and executive producer

• Superman Returns (2006)
• Wild Wild West (1999)
• Money Train (1995)
• The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
• Tango & Cash (1989)
• Batman (1989)
• Caddyshack II (1988)
• Clue (1985)
• An American Werewolf in London (1981)
• A Star Is Born (1976)

References

Further reading

• Griffin, Nancy; Masters, Kim (1996). Hit & Run: How Jon Peters and Peter Guber Took Sony For a Ride in Hollywood. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80931-1. 

External links

• [2] "Jon Peters Faces Prison"
• [3] "Cop Visits Movie Moguls Ranch"
• [4] "Jon Peters Shocking Sex Charges"
• [5] "Jon Peters Hit With Multiple Maid Fluffing Lawsuits"
• [6] "Court Restrains Former Hollywood Big Wig"
• [7] "Peters Evicts Minor Children From Bel Air Mansion"
• [8] "Suck-Up Ads Let Jon Peters Know Who His Real Friends Are"
• [9] "New Trouble for Superman"
• Youtube Video extract of Kevin Smith's Jon Peters/Superman experience, from "An Evening With Kevin Smith"
• [10] IMDB Page