ePoNiMoVie

At 35, the brash, glamour-loving Ryan Kavanaugh has become one of Hollywood’s most powerful players, his Relativity Media claiming $2 billion in revenues in 2009. His secret? Money–lots of it–plus a risk-assessment algorithm that Kavanaugh says takes a lot of the mystery out of the movie business.

Late last November, an array of movie-industry executives and talent gathered at the School of Visual Arts, in Chelsea, for the New York City premiere of Jim Sheridan’sBrothers. In addition to the film’s snowy-haired director, the audience included its co-stars Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman; the president and chief operating officer of Universal Studios, Ron Meyer; Lionsgate C.E.O. Jon Feltheimer; Lionsgate Motion Picture Group president Joe Drake; Harvey Weinstein, of the Weinstein Company; and Relativity Media founder and C.E.O. Ryan Kavanaugh. Among that group, Kavanaugh, only days away from turning 35, was a relative newcomer to the business. And yet, as one of the film’s producers, he was the center of attention, introducing the picture and then posing for photos at the party that followed. Two days earlier, he had similarly been the focus of aDaily Variety advertorial section of close to 30 pages entitled “Billion-Dollar Producer,” which included fawning testimonials and full-page ads from many of the same companies that had executives in attendance at the New York fête for Brothers. (“The Weinstein Company Proudly Congratulates Producer Extraordinaire, Partner, and Great Friend Ryan Kavanaugh.”) At the premiere, with his freckled, Conan O’Brien–pale complexion, a shock of red hair that makes him look like the French comic-book hero Tintin, and a wardrobe that recalled the late-70s New Wave band the Knack—skinny tie, dark suit, and blue Converse sneakers—Kavanaugh did not exude the shark-like intensity and sleekness of the other industry executives circling him, and yet the effusive praise that these same men had (for a fee) heaped upon him in Daily Variety sent the distinct message that they saw him as the future and salvation of Hollywood.

Read the entire article: Frank DiGiacomo on Ryan Kavanaugh | Vanity Fair..