Agents to the stars -- of new media?

But once it became clear that Myst was a megahit, the now-famous Miller brothers, founders of Cyan Inc., did what any other self-respecting media stars would do: They hired an agent.

Hiring an agent may have been the natural move for Cyan. But one Cyan official recalls that it surprised Broderbund Software, which was eager to sign Cyan to a Myst sequel.

"Broderbund was not very receptive to having an agent involved," recalls Chris Brandkamp, vice president of operations for Cyan. Indeed, the last thing Broderbund would want is a game of hardball with a representative accustomed to Hollywood's multimillion-dollar advances and generous profit-participation plans.

Broderbund denies that it reacted adversely to the arrangement, adding that the agent, Harvey Harrison, "actually helped" the process.

Breaking new ground
But all sides admit that dealing with an agent in the interactive-game business was a novel concept, and that negotiating a sequel to a ground-breaking phenomenon like Myst forced industry executives to rethink traditional compensation practices in the digital entertainment realm.

Negotiations proved sticky and lengthy - and nearly ground to a halt before Rand Miller and his associate Chris Brandkamp came to the table themselves to cut a final deal. The parties decline to reveal any of the terms of the deals for either Myst or its hit sequel, "Riven."

Today, digital-entertainment companies still aren't exactly accustomed to dealing with agents. But many are running into the practice.

Agent representation "started to come in in a big way several years ago, and now it's pretty standard at top levels and often at lower levels as well," says Steve Hulett, business representative for the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists, Local 839, in Los Angeles. Animation, like many other parts of filmmaking, has become increasingly computer-oriented, especially the visual-effects side of the trade.

Big business appears
The corporate rush to so-called new-media - encompassing everything from interactive games to digital film animation to Internet services - began in earnest in the mid-1990s, about the same time "Myst" appeared. That's when the likes of Time Warner and Walt Disney began building big interactive-game and Internet divisions. And once the major studios bought into it, the influential agencies followed in lockstep.

The venerable William Morris Agency formed a new-media unit. International Creative Management (ICM) devoted two account executives to the field full-time. And Creative Artists Agency, super-agent Michael Ovitz's old shop, teamed with chip giant Intel Corp. to build a sophisticated multimedia lab inside its Beverly Hills headquarters.

Suddenly, a new breed of agent had sprung up, one that couldn't simply collect a group of writers or actors and broker their talents to traditional movie and TV studios. This new cadre was turning over a new set of stones entirely, scouring computer shows and game communities, for instance, in search of the interactive version of Steven Spielberg.

People like Lewis Henderson at William Morris and Stefanie Henning at ICM found they had to create new models for Hollywood deals. Sometimes they would convince traditional agency clients like actor Bruce Willis or brewer Anheuser-Busch to branch into the interactive realm by endorsing a new game or backing an Internet venture. Meanwhile, the agents heavily courted high-tech companies like Intel and Sun Microsystems, promising to introduce them to the digital stars who could bring some "buzz" to their products.

Appetite for interactive entertainment
Behind all their actions was a core belief that an entirely new form of entertainment had emerged. "The post-linear generation has arrived," says Harrison, who works out of a small agency called Catalyst, "so the appetite for interactive entertainment is here."

After two or three frenzied years, however, that appetite had waned - if not on the part of audiences, certainly on the part of major media companies. Beginning in late 1996, the studios began to realize that the digital entertainment revolution would need more than a couple years of nurturing to become a mass medium on the order of television.

More immediately, the game industry simply buckled under the weight of so many new titles. As retail shelves became overcrowded with Myst-wannabes, studios found that it took more than just the licensing of hit-movie names to create interactive hits. Beginning in 1996, layoffs at Time Warner, Disney, Viacom and elsewhere certified that a shakeout was under way. Even film animation, which had enjoyed an unprecedented run-up fueled by such products as the computer-animated hit feature "Toy Story" and the effects-laden "Jurassic Park" movies, began to lose favor late last year.

"The studios are basically all staffed up," says Jon Cantor, an attorney who specializes in representing film animators. "As a result, it has become a studio market, vs. what used to be an animators market." Several studios have laid off animators, and a salary surge that reached 50 percent a year has abated.

The big chill
Suddenly, new media, an area recently viewed as red-hot, was considered ice-cold. Major companies and artists no longer were so eager to branch into the digital realm. Meanwhile, several new-media agents say their quests for credibility in traditional Hollywood suffered.

Today, one new-media agent frets that many traditional agents don't even pay attention to the digital realm anymore: "Whenever I say the word 'inter...,' by the time I say '...active,' I've lost them."

The dip in the new-media road has required plenty of adjustment. Montana Artists agent Carl Bressler, for instance, says digital deals now comprise 15 percent to 20 percent of his workload, down from about 50 percent two years ago.

Bressler and others have responded to the downturn by diversifying. Bressler spends much of the balance of his time producing movies and representing talent in traditional realms of entertainment.

At William Morris, the new-media group of agents is teamed with the firm's corporate group. That means Henderson often works with the likes of Anheuser-Busch (which sponsored a TV show set at Busch Gardens) and Intel (which is investing in a wide range of multimedia properties).

As the animation boom slackens, Cantor says agenting is "nothing I rely upon to feed my family." Instead, he concentrates on developing his traditional business law practice.

Despite the harder times, few new-media agents have turned their backs on the digital niche. "This is the future," Henderson, the William Morris agent, insists. "This is the future of how content will be distributed."

Henderson and the others take solace in, among other things, the sheer size of the interactive games industry now - an estimated $7 billion in the United states, and growing quickly. And the Internet continues to generate excitement (a new government report forecasts Internet commerce will account for $300 billion in sales by 2002), if not yet many profits.

It is underlying facts like these that keep this first generation of new-media agents in the digital fold.

The work brings them back too, of course. In fact, Catalyst's Harrison is back on the case for the Myst team. The agent is interested in putting together a deal for a 30-minute TV special: "The Making of 'Riven.' "