The Ladd Company
[1] The day after the contracts expired, the trio placed ads for the newly named "Ladd Company" in The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.The Ladd Company's co-founder Gareth Wigan died at his home in Los Angeles on February 13, 2010, at the age of 78.[7][8] The Ladd Company's co-founder Jay Kanter died at his home in Beverly Hills, California, on August 6, 2024, at the age of 97.[9] Alan Ladd Jr. had been a successful studio head of 20th Century Fox, helping make films such as Star Wars,[10] Julia, Alien, The Turning Point, Young Frankenstein, An Unmarried Woman and Silver Streak.[13] They signed a deal with Warner Bros who would finance and distribute their films, although the Ladd Company had creative control."[14] On November 2, 1979, Ladd announced the company's first films: a Bette Midler concert movie (Ladd greenlit Midler's The Rose while at Fox) and Madonna Red a $10 million Joseph L. Mankiewicz film starring Paul Newman as a Vietnam War veteran turned priest.[15] Then they announced Five Days in Summer from Fred Zinnemann who had made Julia, and Twice Upon a Time a $3 million film from Lucasfilm.The company helped make Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, which was a cult classic years after its theatrical release, but under performed critically and commercially.[25] Less successful were Purple Hearts (1984) and Once Upon a Time in America (1984) which the company extensively edited without the cooperation of Sergio Leone.