HSX cofounders Max Keiser, 36, and Michael Burns, 38, made small fortunes on Wall Street in the ’80s. Keiser retired to write poetry in Paris, but a year ago he hooked up again with Burns, now an investment banker in Los Angeles. Over dinner one night they laid out the idea for the game, then spent about $500,000 to launch it.
Now Hollywood’s paying attention to HSX’s ““investors.’’ ““It’s an amazing barometer,’’ says Mark Amin, CEO of Trimark. The success of ““Beavis and Butt-head Do America’’ shocked the industry, but HSX players bought in from day one. Amin says, ““If this track record continues, every studio executive will tune in to the HSX.''
In a month HSX will start selling studios its players’ demographics–which players must provide to register. ““They’ll know a 25-year-old man who drinks cappuccino every day, buys three magazines a month and has a girlfriend named Shirley bought stock on a movie that won’t be shot for 22 months,’’ says Keiser.
Keiser and Burns now want to break into Hollywood themselves. Soon players will be offered the chance to buy real shares, for real money, in a movie HSX wants to produce. ““We’re democratizing the financing process,’’ says Keiser. ““Filmmakers can go right to the public; they don’t have to pitch some guy who says, “Well, is anyone naked’?’’ But democracy doesn’t necessarily make good movies. ““Stories don’t get told through market research,’’ says director Edward Zwick (““Courage Under Fire’’). ““Art is outside the system–it’s provocative.’’ And it gives us something to talk about other than the weekend box office.
from 3:30 to 4 p.m. last Thursday on the Hollywood Stock Exchange. Stocks predict a movie’s four-week gross. Bonds reflect a star’s worth and popularity.
