Movie Producer Dead At 49

Bobby Newmyer, an independent film producer whose prolific and diverse credits include "Training Day" and "The Santa Clause" movies, has died. He was 49.

Newmyer died Monday of a heart attack triggered by an asthma attack while he was working out at a gym in Toronto, his friends said.

Newmyer, who had more than two dozen movie credits, was known for his passion for making both big studio pictures and independent films.

"He liked to move people," Jeffrey Silver, Newmyer's partner at Outlaw Productions, told the Los Angeles Times. "He liked to make them laugh, and he liked to make them cry."

"Training Day," a drama about a veteran cop and a rookie at the LAPD, moved mountains in 2002 when it won the best actor Oscar for Denzel Washington, the first African-American to win that award since Sidney Poitier in 1963.

Newmyer started off as a vice president of production and acquisitions at Columbia Pictures. He and Silver formed Outlaw Productions in the late 1980s, which was named after Newmyer's favorite Clint Eastwood character, the outlaw Josey Wales.

"We formed Outlaw to make film fares that the studio didn't know how to make: lower budget, edgy," Silver said.

Newmyer's projects covered a wide range of genres.

Outlaw Productions won its place on the map in 1989 with the unquestionably edgy "sex, lies and videotape," which was nominated for an Academy Award. Five years later, the company hit it big when it produced the Tim Allen blockbuster, "The Santa Clause."

Newmyer also produced 2002's "The Santa Clause 2" and was in the process of producing a third part in the Disney series, planned for 2006.

This year, Newmyer mortgaged his homes in Los Angeles and Telluride, Colo. to raise $3 million to finance "Phat Girlz," a romantic comedy about an aspiring plus-size fashion designer starring MoNique Imes-Jackson. Fox Searchlight Pictures acquired the film, which is scheduled to be released in April.

"Bobby was a true maverick and a true risk-taker," said Amy Pascal, chairwoman of Sony Motion Pictures Group. "He was unlike anyone else. He put all his cards on the table."

One of his pending projects, "The Lost Boys of the Sudan," developed from a CBS News' 60 Minutes segment about a group of young boys who were trying to flee the violence in the African country. He was so moved by their stories that he housed some of the boys in his home over the last several years, said Lucy Fisher, his cousin and fellow movie producer.

Other Newmyer credits include "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead," "Mr. Baseball," "Dennis the Menace Strikes Again!", "National Security," "The Thing About My Folks," a father-son movie starring Peter Falk and Paul Reiser which opened earlier this year, and "Joe's Last Chance," an as-yet-uncompleted film starring Jackie Chan.

Newmyer is survived by his wife, Deborah; his children, Sofi, Teddy, James and Billi; his parents, James and Virginia Newmyer; and his sisters, Elsa and Laurie.