Carolco May Be Headed For A Quick Dissolve

No one has more Hollywood style than Mario F. Kassar. When the 40-year-old Carolco Pictures Inc. chairman cruised into last year's Cannes Film Festival on a rented 203-foot yacht, he drew as much attention as the film he came to promote--a little number called Terminator 2. But when Hollywood hit the Riviera this year, the good ship Kassar had been dry-docked. "I have no reason to party," he told reporters as he strolled with Basic Instinct stars Michael Douglas and Sharon Stone.

Give Kassar credit for knowing when the music has stopped. Things have been tough all year for the producer whose extravagance--he shelled out $16 million to Sylvester Stallone for Rambo III and gave Terminator 2 star Arnold Schwarzenegger his own airplane--could make the rest of Tinseltown look like pikers. Burdened by a mountain of debt and restive bankers, Kassar's Los Angeles film-production company, which posted some $601 million in 1991 revenues, has lost $269 million over the past 15 months. Its management is in flux. And on June 12, it said it had hired New York investment-banking firm Allen & Co. to manage a massive restructuring.