8. PETER RICE
AGE 41
JOB TITLE President, Fox Searchlight
SMART BECAUSE His impeccable taste
and savvy business
skills have transformed
Searchlight
into the gold standard
for studio specialty
divisions. Together
with distribution chief
Stephen Gilula and
marketing maven Nancy Utley, Rice sees the profit potential
in unconventional films and turns low-budget indies
into genre sensations (28 Days Later), culture-shifting
comedies (Napoleon Dynamite), acting showcases
(The Last King of Scotland), and Oscar bait (Sideways,
this year's Once and Juno). No indie division is more consistently
successful with a more eclectic slate, and
Searchlight's marketing concepts — e.g., using that now-iconic
yellow for Little Miss Sunshine's posters — are envied
(and copied) industry-wide. Rice has also navigated
the corporate culture of Twentieth Century Fox with
grace, keeping a low media profile and letting his label — and his films — get the light.
COMPANY MAN He began
working at Fox as a summer intern in 1989.
