Diary of a mad businessman
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Tyler Perry, 37, the writer-director-producer-actor-composer who began his career as a playwright, is building a maverick media company by translating “urban theater” – the often melodramatic, revival-style stage plays that tour the country catering to black audiences – into mainstream movies and television shows. It’s a niche he has come to dominate so thoroughly that he is able to do things in Hollywood that most others – especially newcomers – simply can’t.
In September, Perry opened Tyler Perry Studios in Atlanta, one of the first movie studios in this country owned by an African American. He made his first two films – 2005′s “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” and 2006′s “Madea’s Family Reunion” – with Lions Gate Entertainment for a total of just $11 million. They both opened at No. 1, and together they grossed over $110 million, shocking Hollywood with their profit margins. His third movie, this month’s “Daddy’s Little Girls,” is opening with similar projections.
Since 1998 his 11 touring stage plays have brought in over $150 million. And DVDs of the movies and plays have sold more than 11 million copies. He even took the top spot on The New York Times nonfiction bestseller list with the publication in 2006 of “Don’t Make a Black Woman Take Off Her Earrings: Madea’s Uninhibited Commentaries on Love and Life,” written in the voice of Madea, the over-the-top grandma he’s played in his films and many of his plays.
Remarkably, Perry has retained ownership of all his work. In a business where a cardinal rule is to use other people’s money, he has used his own to create a library of substantial and growing value.
Perry bypassed the entire standard sitcom route – selling a show to a network, running a new episode every week, and hoping to stay on the air long enough to enter syndication, where the real money is – and did it his way. He put up $5 million to do the test episodes, maintained creative control, and, when TBS and others showed interest, made an incredibly lucrative deal that would allow him to have his show on up to five nights a week from the start. In the sitcom world, that’s unheard of.
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