GIGGLE Does anyone else laugh at the Hollywood trades' continued insistence on using industry jargon in their copy, because it'll save space or make them sound more insider-y or whatever? How are we supposed to take Variety seriously when they write lines like, "Nonetheless, MRC TV prexy Keith Samples said he knows the Sunday block faces an uphill battle against established competish." [Variety]
Responding to complaints, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says California must to more, such as increase tax incentives, to keep film and TV projects within California's borders. [THR] The suggestion comes a wee too late for one project: Ugly Betty has already packed its bags for the Big Apple.
Ya know who's not excited about Ugly Betty moving to New York? The production crew that's being left behind in Los Angeles, where the show has spent the last two years filming. So upset are they at losing their jobs, and the possibility that other shows could follow suit to the Big Apple, where tax credits for filmmakers have tripled, that they're taking out a full page ad in Friday's Variety "that begs state and Los Angeles officials to do something to keep productions local." [DHD] They're going after folks like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to do more to increase incentives to keep Hollywood, well, Hollywood. The text of the ad below. CONTINUED »
Movie stars are dead! Long live movies! In 2007 (that would be, um, last year), only four of the 25 top grossing top 25 domestic movies were headed primarily by movie stars. That's the lowest number in history. And it's worrisome for up-and-comers like Shia LaBeouf, Seth Rogen, and Katherine Heigl, who are kind of banking on their brand names to turn them into bonafide life-long bankable actors. The Hollywood Reporter is also very worried, which is why it's devoted thousands of words to the gloom.
Why aren't audiences interested in heavy hitting stars like De Niro and Pitt and Ms. Julia Roberts? Well they are, to a point: Will Smith can still drive any movie he's in to an orgy at the box office, and Matt Damon's Jason Bourne franchise is a Moet-popping undertaking, but they're among the few. CONTINUED »
Just because the Writers Guild of America isn't striking anymore doesn't mean their scribbling members are actually back to unleashing scripts on Hollywood. Might Tinsletown be running dry on fresh script ideas? If you answered yes, then it'll lend credence to one theory that studio development units are turning to books, magazines, and "graphic novels" for ideas.
There's the $3 million book deal for trilogy The Flag of Orpheus, from Heroes writer Tim Kring, that's said to have studio execs salivating. And DreamWorks snapped up the Wired article "Deep Sea Cowboy," from Joshua Davis, about a company that races around the world to salvage sinking ships. Miramax grabbed the Wall Street Journal article "The Heart Has Its Reasons," by Kevin Helliker, about "an unlikely romance between 27-year old convicted murderer John Manard and Toby Young, a 48-year-old social worker who was a married mother of two when she smuggled Manard out of prison. They ran away together with $42,000 of her retirement money before they were caught in a cabin in Tennessee."
And Warner Bros. paid up for The Lost Girls, a HarperCollins "87-page proposal by Amanda Pressner, Jennifer Baggett and Holly Corbett, who gave up their media jobs and boyfriends to travel the world for a year, blogging every step of the way."
Which is basically Into The Wild, but with a broadband Internet card.
Jennifer Aniston is starting her own production company, because she has nothing else to do besides be jealous of Brangelina (right, Star?). Jen’s no stranger to the business — she and ex Brad Pitt owned Plan B films when they were married. She shares the new company with former Plan B employee Kristin Hahn, and the two decided to name it Echo. Jen explained why, but we fell asleep during her explanation.
Hollywood producer Drew Savitch Levin was indicted todayon charges on illegally inflating the stock price of Team Communications Co., the NASDAQ-traded production outfit he founded. "The 13-count indictment includes charges of of conspiracy, falsifying Team's books and records, making false statements in Team's annual and quarterly reports filed with the SEC, making false statements to Team's outside auditors, and giving false testimony to the SEC in a deposition. Levin is expected to self-surrender to authorities on Friday and appear that afternoon in U.S. District Court in L.A.. If convicted on all counts, Levin faces a statutory maximum penalty of 200 years in federal prison." [DHD]
Now that the writers strike is coming to a close – though it's not a done deal yet – and you know what to set your TiVo for and when, and what the industry will look like for the next few weeks, it's time to answer the question on everybody's mind: WHO WON THIS MOTHER F-ER?
Lots of people have lots of different answers. CONTINUED »
FABULOUS FABIEN From the mailbag: "Don't know if anyone still cares about this guys, but [Fabian Basabe] was at The Abbey in West Hollywood on Tuesday night coming on VERY strong to straight bartender as his wife (Fabian's) and mother-in-law watched! Later the bartender made the mistake of calling him 'Fabio' which didn't go over well at all!"
Reese Witherspoon asks, and gets, $15 million to lead in a comedy. Angelina Jolie snags the same. And Cameron Diaz, too. Though Cam snagged a cool $30 million on her Shrek 3 voiceover deal, thanks to snagging part of the movie's gross revenues. As you might have guessed, it's "Top Earning Actresses" listicle time. [THR]
Clueless as to the nitty gritty about why those WGA types are striking about DVD and new media residuals? Let entertainment attorney and HuffPo blogger Jonathan Handel explain: They wanted to double their DVD residuals (from four cents to eight cents), double their video streaming cut (from 1.2 to 2.5%), and octuple their download share (from 0.3 to 2.5%). So why are the studios resisting? Because then the directors and screenwriters' guild will want the same deal-io based on their similar, but quantitatively larger, formula. And: That's a lot of Excel spreadsheets to update. [HuffPo]
Will those growing rumors of a Hollywood strike trifecta – with SAG, WGA, and DGA ordering members to halt work until contracts are negotiated – pan out? And, more importantly, would such a strike last the nearly six months that 1988's dispute did?
We're hearing reports of Tinsle-types being "panic stricken" over the possibility. (Then again, we love us some sensationalism.) As of last night, guild members and members' employers were meeting.
We're hearing not so good things. Says one WGA type of attended last night's tension headache: "I wouldn't so much call it a 'meeting' as it was a forced gathering of in-laws who would rather throw glass vases at each other than engage in conversation."
While Marty Singer, supposedly, doesn't say "Hold off on this and I'll give you another story" to the tabloids, the man behind the always-amusing celebrity cease-and-desist letters from Hollywood muscle firm Lavely & Singer does claim to be on good terms with them. Then again, he has to be: "A lot of people come to me and our firm to deal with the media," he tells The Hollywood Reporter, Esq. as part of its series on power lawyers.
You have a potential article that's about to be published in four hours or 24 hours or somewhere in between, and you typically want to prevent an article from being published. At that point, you have to be persuasive because you can't simply say the article is false and "We'll sue you," because they don't really care. You have to be able to convince publications why they shouldn't publish the article notwithstanding the law in the U.S. that relates to defamation, which is a difficult. [...]
When it comes to defamation, I believe we have the reputation that we will sue. If people know that you're dealing with a lawyer that has perhaps more defamation suits in the last five years than anyone in the entire country, it makes a difference. I think it's also being effective and writing a good letter so that someone might be scared when they get that letter. But you still have to know the facts and develop a relationship with the people you are working with to be successful.
So, from Celebrity Litigation 101: Scare tactics work best. Except when they don't.
A "usable amount" of cocaine was found somewhere in Lindsay Lohan's car when she crashed her Mercedes SL-65 (a 2005, olllld) on Sunset Boulevard Saturday morning. At 5:30am.
The cops even held a press conference on the matter, where they would only say the coke wasn't Lindsay's, so, through the awesome power of deduction, we must assume it belonged to one of the other two passengers.
But that didn't spoil all the fun: Cops arrested Linds at the hospital for suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs (which one, or any at all, TBD). But let's all breathe a sigh of relief for the paparazzi, who are getting a pass on this one.
After all, it's not like they forced her to ram into a curb while making a turn. Which begs the question: How come there were no paparazzi around to capture this? We've searched far and wide, and no agency appears to have the goods.
We expected better.
It's funny when business magazines ask relevant questions. You know, because so many question their relevancy. (Okay, we only mean "so many advertisers.") But here's BusinessWeek, asking a question that not even Portfolio managed to get to the question mark of during its Ryan Kavanaugh profile, which is: If the "smarties" at movie studios are making so many budget cuts, why are the smarties on Wall Street thinking the movie biz is something to make a mint on? CONTINUED »
If loose lips sink ships, what do departing editors do? Activate nuclear warheads? The Hollywood Reporter will soon find out, given yesterday's pair of high-profile departures to the competition.
THR editor Cynthia Littleton and deputy film editor Anne Thompson have taken off for new roles at Variety, as Nikki Finke was first to report; Littleton is deputy editor for news development and Thompson is Variety.com deputy editor.
I hear Littleton is taking the marquee role as a new Variety columnist and will be expected to break news. Thompson is switching her re-branded movie column and online blog — mostly profiles and pick-ups notoriously soft on the industry — from HR to Variety.
All of which says, to anyone with the slightest knowledge of trade warfare, that The Hollywood Reporter is slip-sliding away, once and for all. At least until THR gets mouthpiece Deborah Patton into action and spins this whole mess into one of a bright future. (Hey, if Time can do it …) Though if the past tells us anything, we're not going to see much wisdom there.
Hollywood power law firm Lavely & Singer (clients: Reese, Jennifer, Colin) might be scary to a couple of lowly agent assistants, but to websites? We laugh off their cease and desists. Sure, we enjoy our chats with John and Marty as much as the next trouble-rousing blogger, but moreso, we love when they send us sternly worded documents – often unintentionally – and expect us to do nothing with them except comply. Little do they know we've figured out how to post PDFs as image files on the web.
But let's allow WSJ's Saturday edition (because Saturdays are for lifestyle!) play catch up with this year-old story about high-powered attorneys providing fodder for gossip blogs.
In the perpetual cat-and-mouse game between gossip publishers and celebrities' lawyers, Lavely & Singer, of Los Angeles, has long been a prominent player on the side of skittish stars. The firm, which has about 17 lawyers, often threatens media outlets over the pending publication of stories, photographs or videos of its clients, who have included Michael Jackson, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Brad Pitt.
Oh, good. For a second there we thought we were the only ones experiencing the phenomenon called "Don't Give A Shit."
Today in asinine decisions made by media conglomerates:
U.S. movie superstar Tom Cruise and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios Inc. are resurrecting United Artists, the movie studio founded more than 80 years ago by screen legends including Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, MGM said on Thursday.
Cruise will star in and produce films for the studio, and production partner Paula Wagner will serve as chief executive.
Cruise and Wagner will set the company's production slate from development to production greenlighting ability, subject to certain parameters, MGM said.
"Certain parameters?" Why, yes. Namely: Do not fire your PR handlers and go it your own. Also, replace couches with Ikea futons. They cost less to replace.
Because this can only end in embarassment and the box office pull of Man of the Year, Hollywood rep firm United Talent Agency has gone and created an online unit, devoted to discovering tomorrow's Internet stars today. Yes, of course this item requires a lonelygirl15 mention. Also required? Mentioning the actress behind lonelygirl15 has scored exactly one Jay Leno appearance, and little else — and she's at the top of the web celebrity racket. But while UTA's new division will ultimately fail as a vehicle to land white kids doing the ratchet a pilot deal, it will be a boon to the fresh crop of agent hopefuls — we can just see an entire floor of cubicles, stuffed with post-college twentysomethings, wasting even more time on YouTube.
Talent Agency Is Aiming to Find Web Video Stars [David Halbfinger, NYT]
Editorial Director
