We're less than a month and a half away from finding out whether United Artists, under the not-so-watchful gaze of chief executive Tom Cruise, and very watchful gaze of co-owners MGM, will sink or float with their bankrolled Valkyrie. A vanity project starring Mr. Cruise about Col. Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who tried to kill Hitler, Valkyrie has been plagued with trouble since Tom Cruise was announced as the star of a film about German World War II heroes.
So far, things haven't looked great. Nazi extras are suing left and right, it's rumored to not have much of an audience market, the release date is being pushed around more than a reporter looking for an exclusive about Mr. Cruise's ties with Scientology. As much as anything in Hollywood can rest on one blockbuster, the fate of United Artists does so on Valkyrie.
And you know what? It just might work out for those crazy kids after all.
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What is the idiom about those who fly too close to the sun? For Harvey Weinstein, the "sun" in this analogy would be the apex of Hollywood success, the bright shining stardom that the producer and his brother Bob found themselves in the middle of for the last two decades. But lately Harvey has lost his shine: First, MGM dumped all of the movies they were planning on promoting for the brothers back onto Weinstein's lap, then there was the injunction to keep Weinstein from moving Project Runway to Lifetime. And now, Weinstein is paying one million dollars to charity in penance for lying to the New York Post about the producer's relationship with the late Sydney Pollack during the last days of the actor/director's life.
Despite news that this holiday season will "be fucked" for movies, Tom Cruise's Valkyrie is a standout since it is now all but guaranteed to bomb. Waah waah, we're all in the same, sinking boat. At least Cruise has it coming to him.
So after the jump, some reasons why there is less hope for United Artist's success than Claus von Stauffenberg's of killing Hitler:
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Though MGM is dumping all their distribution for Weinstein films back on Harvey's lap, the studio may finally be seeing some pay-out for their co-ownership in United Artists. With Tom Cruise at the helm after partner Paula Wagner left, there's been some nail-biting to see whether or not UA would actually produce any films; so far, the only thing they've managed to get out recently was Lion for Lambs, and that was what? A year ago?
And despite promises of $500 million from Merrill Lynch, Cruise seems to be just sitting on his studio's pile of money, twiddling his thumbs and pushing around the release date of his ego project, Valkyrie, based on the life would-be Hitler assassin, Claus von Stauffenberg.
So MGM is smart to be nervous with Cruise leading the charge at UA, which is why they rushed out this trailer for Valkyrie before word got around about the MGM/Weinstein split-up:
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MGM dropped Kevin Smith's controversial (well, it had a controversial poster) feature, Zack and Miri Make a Porno, from their fall lineup and back into the lap of Harvey Weinstein and Co., despite a contract saying that the lion studios would continue distributing Weinstein films until January. MGM already pulled their logo from the stick figure posters and the trailer for the film, slated to open Oct. 31st.
Super annoying, because the brothers Weinstein are already up to their eyeballs trying to finance their own films, let alone get distribution on them. Pain in the ass MGM decided to reneg on Porno, either because of the flack it already received from the MPAA, or because they are having enough budget problems of their own with United Artists, which the studio co-owns with Tom Cruise, of all people.
United Artists was promised $500 million dollars by Merrill Lynch before the banks began to tank, and as late as last week MGM said the money would be available to UA no matter what. But with this economy, who knows.
Or the third option for why the studio dropped the Seth Rogan/Elizabeth Banks feature, as well as Academy contenders The Road and Reader, back on the Weinsteins: CONTINUED »
Just because Paula Wagner jumped ship doesn't mean everyone gets to: Merrill Lynch's quick buyout/merger/whatever to Bank of America will not affect the $500 million the bank promised for funding to Tom Cruise's United Artists.
“The terms are set and will not change. All of the funds are available to UA,” claimed an MGM studio exec with little to no sarcasm, despite the fact that the money's barely been touched since Cruise took over with Wagner at two years ago.
Merill Lynch might actually be in trouble should Tom Cruise and his vanity project studio quit trying to market Vaklyrie for the umpteenth time and actually start making movies.
50 Cent, Jay-Z, and Diddy are all names that get thrown around a lot when you're talking about parlaying those rapping dollar$ into a business venture like Sean John or Rocawear. These men made their money off spitting rhymes, then built actual businesses off their street cred, which gave way to personal empires of bling, cars, studios, and women — which they then turn around and write new raps about. Circle of life, folks.
But now there is a new contender for the hip hop artist/mogul title. Someone who took the money he made from his early 90s career and invested it into his own movie company, of all things. And he's white. And it's not Vanilla Ice. CONTINUED »
Eleven actors portraying Nazis in Tom Cruise's dead-before-it-opens vehicle Valkyrie are suing United Artists for an accident last summer where the anti-Semitic reenactors literally fell off the back of a truck during shooting. This will fall firmly on Cruise's shoulders since he owns all of UA now, though if he's anything in real life like his cameo as a ruthless producer in Tropic Thunder, he deserves every single complaint from the Hitler Youth.
The accolades for Tom Cruise's brief cameo in Tropic Thunder last week were followed by even louder backlash against the once-admired-now-ridiculed star. Mr. Scientology's last big number was Lion for Lambs, the dismal think-piece propped up by Cruise's own company United Artists. The fact that his partner at UA, Paula Wagner, just quit five days ago isn't helping matters. So you would think Cruise would finally, mercifully, vanish into the background noise like so many other mediocre celebrities, at least until his lost his back fat. Mais non, quel dommage:
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Poor Suri Cruise, she is going to grow up into a demasculinized household, where mommy and daddy have the same haircut, and daddy is always throwing hissy fits about how hard it is for a man to have a career nowadays. Ugh. Why are people always treating him like a piece of meat?! And now his partner at United Artists, Paula Wagner, is bailing on him?! It's not fair, Katie!!
Wagner's departure is only one of several blows Cruise's star has dealt him recently; Valkyrie's release date was changed again, proving that his own studio — which he runs — has no idea how to market him, now that his celebrity weirdness has totally overshadowed any sort of acting skillz he may once have had. The Nazi flick, originally slotted for 2008, was pushed forward to Feb. 2009, and now is back to being slated for December of this year. Blah, no amount of preview hype is going to convince anyone to see the movie, which will inevitably involve Cruise hamming it up at his most hammiest. And wearing an eyepatch. And let's not forget the scandal that blew up when the Germans got furious about a Scientologist playing Claus von Stauffenberg, failed Hitler assassin and national hero. CONTINUED »
Remember this photo, at right? It was part of our item "The 2 Photo Scandals Rocking Hollywood," which also included a possible Iron Man infringement. But this photo was at the center of Slate's argument that United Artists may have Photoshopped a pic of Claus von Stauffenberg — who Tom Cruise plays in the ill-fated Valkyrie — to make the would-be Hitler assassin look more like the high-profile star playing him, all in an effort to appease Germans who were furious a Scientologist would be playing a national hero. Except as Slate now concludes in a correction: CONTINUED »
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 »
Editorial Director
