Iron Man's paparazzi pic, plus Tom Cruise's edited Nazi shot

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Two eyebrow-raising Hollywood scandals popped up this week, one including an actual eyebrow! Must we make Tinseltown worry about anything other than budgets and insuring Lindsay Lohan?

First up, the battle between Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment and paparazzo Ronnie Adams, who snapped a photo of Robert Downey Jr. on the set of big-budet action flick Iron Man while the movie was still filming.

As producers for the big and small screen continually battle back against potential spoilers, the studio demanded Adams remove the photo from his website, where he had posted it. He refused, but they eventually got to his web host, who yanked his account.

And then … his photo resurfaced. In Iron Man.

That's according to Adams' lawsuit, which claims that after all its complaining, Marvel used the copyrighted photo – after removing Adams' watermark – in a scene in the movie, showing a newspaper article headlined "Who is this Ironman." Fiscally savvy Adams, filing suit against the studios, now wants to get remunerated for his unsolicited efforts in contributing to this "pivotal scene."

So that's one photo scandal. This next one features Tom Cruise and Nazis! And an eyebrow!

CONTINUED »

Jun 18, 2008 · posted by david · Link · 8 Responses

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Taking in another $50.6 million at the box office, Paramount's Iron Man chugs along with blockbuster status. (We finally saw the movie this weekend. The Sunday evening showtime sold out.) The domestic total now comes in at $177 million, but that's not an accurate picture of the total revenue the flick is pulling in.

You would've been a fool not to notice the rampant corporate sponsorships in the movie, from the Burger King sandwich that Robert Downey Jr.'s Tony Stark just had to have, to the hot Audi cars, like that R8, that all the good guys were driving. (We might be wrong, but all the villains were driving Chevys, or something equally lower profile.) And that scene on the highway, where cars were crashing all over the place as Iron Man faced off against his foe? How convenient, then, to see only an Audi SUV brake just in time to escape crashing (those anti-lock brakes!) and then speed off to safety (0-60 in two movie-seconds!). There's a microsite, if you're into that sort of thing.

May 12, 2008 · posted by david · Link · Respond