Who

A towering (if jobless) figure in the movie industry, maverick producer Shaye was until recently the co-chairman and co-CEO with Michael Lynne of New Line, the studio responsible for Austin Powers, Dumb & Dumber, and the epic Hobbit trilogy The Lord of the Rings.

Backstory

Shaye started his film career at 15 when he made a training film for employees of his father's supermarket. After earning a B.A. from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Columbia, he founded New Line Cinema in 1967 out of his Greenwich Village apartment. In the early years, the company focused on first-run domestic distributions of foreign films and re-releases of campy American films, scoring its first hit with a re-release of marijuana agitprop film Reefer Madness. In the '80s, Shaye was joined at New Line by his law school classmate Michael Lynne, who had been providing legal counsel to the company. Thanks to Lynne's arrival and New Line's subsequent acquisition by Turner in 1993 (Turner was then subsumed by Time Warner in 1996), the company moved into commercial moviemaking in the late '80s/early '90s with franchises like Street Fighter, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Freddy movies. As time progressed, New Line's genre-defying catalog—a mix of highbrow and lowbrow—came to include hits like Dumb & Dumber, Seven, Austin Powers, Rush Hour, Boogie Nights, The Wedding Singer, About Schmidt, and, of course, The Lord of the Rings. The also continued to make artsy films and finance foreign productions through their Fine Line subsidiary. Shaye and Lynne departed the company in 2008.

Of note

The studio's biggest success—and biggest gamble—was Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. Initially ridiculed for backing the costly fantasy trilogy—it was easily the most expensive project they'd ever undertaken—Lynne and Shaye laughed all the way to the bank. The franchise racked up $2.92 billion at the box office, took home 17 Academy Awards, significantly boosted New Line's standing in the industry, and became a cultural touchstone and merchandising bonanza.

But the post-Rings era was decidedly gloomier for New Line. While it continued milk revenue out of DVD sales of earlier films and had a few demi-hits like Hairspray, there were all too many duds, including Snakes on a Plane, which tanked despite immense pre-release buzz, and Brett Ratner's lackluster third installment of Rush Hour. Worse, the mini-major bet over $200 million on the long-gestating fantasy epic The Golden Compass, whose take at the domestic box office proved embarrassingly weak. In light of the studio's decline, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes folded New Line into Warner Brothers in 2008 and canned Shaye and Lynne, along with 600 of their employees. For their part, the former New Line honchos have vowed to remain "actively involved in the industry in an entrepreneurial capacity."

Close call

In March 2005 Shaye contracted a highly lethal form of pneumonia that left him in a medically-induced coma for six weeks. He was out of commission for months afterward and barely able to walk, but returned to New Line full-time in 2006.

On the side

In 2007, Shaye debuted his first proper directorial effort, The Last Mimzy, starring Rainn Wilson and co-written by deputy Toby Emmerich. The time and money Shaye devoted to the atrocious vanity project added to the ill will that ultimately led to his dismissal.

Legal file

New Line was mired in litigation for years with the man to whom it owed its biggest success, Rings director Peter Jackson. In his suit against New Line, Jackson alleged that the company cheated him to the tune of $100 million on subsidiary rights. In a desperately-needed shot of good news for the studio, New Line settled with Jackson in December 2007 for a reported $40 million, and the newly-amenable Jackson agreed to executive produce The Hobbit for the studio. But the settlement was hardly enough to save the Shaye and Lynne from the chopping block.

Personal

Bob and his wife, Eva, have two grown children. They split their time between their apartment on Central Park West and their house in Beverly Hills. Although Shaye's modern art collection pales in comparison to Lynne's, it's nothing to scoff at, and contains pieces by Francis Bacon among others.