In a deal that shows there is still some signs of life in the material market--especially if you've got a brand name author launching a franchise with reincarnation and young protagonists--New Regency and Peter Chernin won a bidding battle for screen rights to “My Name is Memory,” the first of a three-book series written by Ann Brashares. Deal was high six against seven figures.

Regency acquired the book as Universal chased for Paul and Chris Weitz’s Depth of Field and Warner Bros. pursued for producer Denise DiNovi, who produced the screen adaptation of the Brashares novel “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants” for WB.

Sold on the basis of a first installment that will be published next June by the Penguin imprint Riverhead Books, the series begins as a college age couple meets, and a young man makes a startling confession. Turns out their souls have been reincarnated over hundreds of years, but these soul mates keep losing each other. While he remembers the details of their previous lives-- and his often exasperating attempts to connect with her romantically—she cannot recall the events of those past lives, nor the rivalry that exists with another soul that keeps getting in the way. The book has elements of “Twilight” and “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”

The acquisition becomes the first major book deal for Chernin since he established Chernin Entertainment as a Fox-based production entity. Chernin will produce with his production chief Dylan Clark. New Regency got an early look at the book through its Gotham-based exec Michelle Kroes.

New Regency has been aggressively acquiring and Chernin is becoming a busy buyer too as he establishes his company. Chernin most recently was in the center of a Fox acquisition of an untitled pitch by Adam Cooper & Bill Collage (“Moby Dick”) that re-telld the tale of Moses and his exploits as detailed in the Book of Exodus.

Chernin also boarded several projects already at Fox, including the John D. MacDonald novel adaptation “the Deep Blue Goodbye,” which is being scripted by Dana Stevens for Leonardo DiCaprio to play Travis McGee. Chernin is producing with Appian Way.

WME brokered the book deal.

Denzel Washington will return to Broadway in a revival of “Fences,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning August Wilson play.

Washington has closed a deal to play Maxson family patriarch Troy Maxson, a role originated by James Earl Jones. Kenny Leon (“A Raisin in the Sun”) is negotiating to direct.

Washington will begin rehearsing in February for an April opening. He will topline “Fences” in a 14-week run through mid-July.

Scott Rudin and Carole Shorenstein Hays will produce. Hays produced “Julius Caesar,” in which Washington played Brutus in his last Broadway turn in 2005.

The producers, who locked a deal with Washington’s WME rep Ed Limato late Friday, are now in talks to secure a theater.

Washington’s next big-screen turn is “Book of Eli,” the Allen and Albert Hughes-directed drama from Alcon Entertainment that Warner Bros. releases on January 15. Washington is currently starring with Chris Pine in “Unstoppable,” the Tony Scott-directed drama for 20th Century Fox.

Do you think movie stars read corporate earnings results? The reason I ask is that top stars are busily lining up their next movies. Johnny Depp, who's already committed to a new "Pirates" sequel and "The Lone Ranger," has now added "The Tourist," with Angelina Jolie to his list. Will Smith is zeroing in on his next movie. Depp and Smith, like all the stars, will be running into the studios supposedly rigid new rules limiting gross deals and other payouts.
But if the stars (or their reps) have been reading the papers this week, they would see that Viacom's profits are up 15% this quarter (good results from Paramount), News Corp's net climbed 11% thanks to movies and cable TV and while Time Warner's profits took a beating, its movie division did great. So in view of these good numbers, are the stars going to take a haircut on their next deals or are they going to say, "I want my paydays?"

 
Some agents are skeptical when told pay is lower because DVD sales have fallen precipitously on new titles, but clearly financiers/studios have all the leverage and they are using it to full advantage. I’m told that pictures are getting made with stars working for steep discount. For mid-level actors, there are more of them than there are roles and recognizable names are being offered at bargain prices, or they aren’t working. The exceptions, of course, are top stars like Depp, Jolie, Smith and Brad Pitt, the other big star who hasn’t landed on his next picture.

Even if studio parent companies experience a sustained resurgence, it seems like the days are over when studios gave away 25% of first-dollar gross on pictures and watched talent get bonuses before studios even recouped. If you look at big gross deals that were made on pictures like “2012,” “The Other Guys” and “The Adjustment Bureau,” I doubt any of those deals would be made at the moment. The other reaction I have about “The Tourist” cast is this: Wow. I’ve written a slew of stories about all the element changes on “The Tourist,” since Tom Cruise did not choose it. This picture ended up with two stars I sure want to see together, particularly if Alfonso Cuaron signs on.

 

The critics told us not to bother seeing the latest Vince Vaughn movie, "Couples Retreat," but the picture is approaching $100 million in the U.S. alone. Now critics are listing "Precious" as a must see and trying to make folks feel guilty if they don't buy tickets. Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry have essentially said it's our obligation to see the movie and groups like the National Education Association have endorsed it. In his shrewd piece in the Los Angeles Times, John Horn pointed out the problems in marketing "Precious." It's a tough, unrelenting movie -- Anthony Lane, critic for the New Yorker, suggests that some scenes are more graphic than necessary for dramatic impact. Serious films about social issues have not registered lately at the box office. Support is needed from both white and black audiences: Some quality black-themed movies like "The Great Debaters" or "Akeelah and the Bee" have not found much support among white audiences. Its proponents insist "Precious" is basically a feel-good movie, but it's about an illiterate black teen whose father rapes and impregnates her twice. So if you tell filmgoers they should see a movie, does that help or hurt?

 

I think if Oprah Winfrey can help elect the first African-American president, she can help draw an audience to this film. Perry also helps. I’m not sure about critics, since this film has created some extreme reactions, pro and con. “Precious” contains some incredibly tough subject matter that creates a whopping marketing challenge. I wonder if the same hurdle will be faced by the Peter Jackson-directed “The Lovely Bones,” the story of a murdered young girl who observes the aftermath — her grieving family, her killer — from above. I personally am predisposed to avoiding films that depict children or young women in sexual or violent situations. But I got swept up in “Slumdog Millionaire,” despite being unable to shake the image of watching a child being blinded so he would be a more productive beggar. “City of God” and “Monster’s Ball” made me feel the same way. So did Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon,” which is off-the-charts good and absolutely upsetting.

I respect that all of those pictures were made for the most artistically pure reasons and not because they fit audience quadrants. I think “Precious” happened because Lee Daniels had a burning creative desire. I don’t think he imagined he’d emerge poised to be a major director. “Precious,” which did outstanding numbers this weekend, has an enviable advantage with Winfrey and Perry in its corner and stars like Mo’Nique, Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz who can get booked on shows to promote a hard-sell picture. As described in Horn’s article, Lionsgate’s platform release strategy seems a good way to convince an audience to give the picture a chance. Quality and word of mouth will determine whether audiences respond, black or white. Oscar nominations would certainly help, but I suspect the film might overachieve at the box office because the reaction is so strong.

How do you blow a one-night-only show when you have signed two of the most famous rock stars (well, not quite) in the world? Well, some promoters showed us how this week. They had signed former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush to make joint appearances in Los Angeles and New York, booked such venues as Universal City’s Gibson Amphitheater and the Madison Square Gardenand taken out full page ads in LA and New York newspapers.

The whole thing was to happen early next year, except that both Bush and Clinton abruptly quit the gig over the weekend. Their spokesmen said that the promoters violated the contract in the way they promoted the event, making it seem like a debate -- “the hottest ticket in political history,” exhorted one press release -- rather than two stand-alone speeches.

Listed as sponsor of the event was an organization called the American Jewish University, which runs a public lecture series. Tickets were going to cost from $60 to $160.

But it’s not going to happen. And someone’s going to eat a big loss.

Maybe the American Jewish University should go with real rock stars, because they show up for their gigs.

The shortest path to a feature film: make the trailer first.

The decision by Screen Gems to acquire “Sheneneh and Wanda” as a comic vehicle for Jamie Foxx and Martin Lawrence is the second recent example of a parody trailer serving as the springboard for a real film.

The Screen Gems deal, which calls for Foxx to write the script for a comic caper in which he and Lawrence play female characters they created way back to their stand up comedy days, came from a movie trailer for a film called "Skank Robbers," which Foxx and Lawrence made for the BET Awards. After the trailer, both Foxx and Lawrence were inundated with inquiries of whether the film was real, or whether it will happen. It has been fast tracked by Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper, with Foxx and Lawrence producing together.

This follows an even more unlikely parody trailer to feature transfer of "Machete," which stars Danny Trejo as the title character, a day laborer-turned vigilante. The trailer--which bore the now classic tag line "This time, they fucked with the wrong Mexican"--was directed by Robert Rodriguez as one of the many mock trailers for the Rodriguez-Quentin Tarantino double feature "Grindhouse."

The trailer broadened into an indie film--financed by companies like Overnight and Hyde Park--that Rodriguez directed with protege Ethan Maniquis, and a cast that includes Trejo in the title role, Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, Michelle Rodriguez, Lindsay Lohen, Cheech Marin, Steven Seagal, Rose McGowan and Don Johnson.

It gives the biggest career opportunity yet for Trejo, a former hard guy who logged prison time before turning his life around as a drug counsellor. He got discovered on a movie set--pic was set in a prison--where he went there to help a PA stay clean, and Trejo has been acting in movies ever since. Trejo has used his platform--he's a hero in the Latino community for his work in films like "Heat"--to give lectures to young kids headed towards trouble. Between jobs, Trejo also still works construction jobs, and is not above signing his work, when asked, which happens often. 

Whether you’re studying the Oscar race or box office results or simply scanning headlines, one question keeps reasserting itself: What ever happened to “indie” cinema?

With the departure of Daniel Battsek, Miramax has now gone the way of Vantage and Warner Independent. Fox Searchlight is having an ominous autumn (Peter Rice knew when to jump ship) and the bloggers keep composing dirges about the Weinstein company (though most of them have not seen “Nine” or “A Single Man”).

The major studios, having vandalized the indie sector, now insist that low-budget dramas are toxic and that the future belongs to franchises (remember the era when the only “franchises” were sports teams?).

Virtually the last mainstay of the indie world is Sony Pictures Classics, a company built on the heretical thesis that “great indie films just happen, you can’t make them happen.”

Those are the words of Tom Bernard, who with partner Michael Barker, have steered their little label through 20 years of cinematic cross-currents. Their excellent Brit picture, “An Education,” surely an Oscar candidate, directed by an obscure Danish filmmaker, happened to find several puddles of financing before Sony Classics seized distribution rights for the U.S..

Then, of course, there’s the ultimate indie happening — “Paranormal Activity,” which was made on a tab of $11,000 and is headed for $100 million through an astonished Paramount.

Similarly, “Precious,” a true long shot, was financed by heirs to the Celestial Tea fortune and is being distributed by Lionsgate, which hopes to make it their “Crash” of 2010.

When compared to the carefully orchestrated government subsidies and lotteries of foreign countries, the American method of nurturing art films seems haphazard, if not downright uncultured. But it’s the only way that works.

When the “majors” tried to develop and package indie films, the budgets quickly became too lofty, the casts top-heavy and the marketing spends self-defeating. Too many of the studio-backed art films were star-driven passion projects; the random passions of actors — even top actors — are at best erratic.

I discovered this some years ago when I was a studio executive and Paul Newman had a passion to star in a film with the unfortunate title “WUSA.” I told Newman that while I admired his movies, “WUSA” was a tedious political polemic that no one would pay to see. He replied that I was an ignorant asshole. Given his vehemence, I told myself, “Newman is a star, he’s working for nothing, how bad can it be?”

The answer: really bad.

Today’s few and far between indie hits aren’t star-driven — their only common denominator is that they’re accidents of history. Take “Slumdog Millionaire” or “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” or look back to the days of “Sex, Lies and Videotape” or “The Gods Must Be Crazy.”

In years past, the indie world was bolstered by some shrewd decisions and also some good luck. Sony decided to set up an indie label and not mess with it. Harvey Weinstein decided that Oscars could be important to indie films and that Oscar showmanship represented a sound business investment.

It would be hard to imagine another autonomous Sony Classics being formed today. And though Harvey’s hypothesis worked brilliantly for him in its time, the majors don’t seem to covet statuettes any more.

To be sure, while orthodox methods of marketing indie films are being disdained, no one has really worked out a new strategy. Viral praise on the web and fierce Facebook advocacy can provide magic boosts for an art movie, but engineering all that is far from a science. Not even the youthful gurus of the web have managed to package Instant Zeitgeist.

And meanwhile the indie world continues to struggle along, its sagging fortunes buttressed now and then by happy accidents. Maybe, as Tom Bernard suggests, art is indeed an accident.

In the brave new world of 10 Oscar nominees (not just five), the accidents better happen with greater regularity. 

In one of the more unusual films being sold at AFM, former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi stars in the docu feature “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder.” The film bears the same title as a book Bugliosi wrote, arguing that the former president should stand criminal trial on the allegation he led the country to  invade Iraq using faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction that the White House knew was false. 

Bugliosi—most famous for convicting Charles Manson and his clan and turning that experience into the book “Helter Skelter”—got the cold shoulder from media when the book was published. His longtime agent, Peter Miller, thinks the global dislike for Bush and the war might lead to a better reception for the docu in theaters outside the U.S. Miller said this after entering negotiations with a publisher he wouldn’t name to get the book published in 22 Arab countries. The book, which became a bestseller despite media snubs, was also published in Germany, Korea, England, Australia and Canada.

In the film, Bugliosi bristles with anger and blames Bush--whom he calls a "draft dodging son of privilege"--for the death and destruction of a war sold to Congress by painting Saddam Hussein as an imminent threat. Bugliosi said that was done by using information that U.S. intelligence agencies discounted as likely false. Bugliosi then presents a blueprint and legal precedent for a prosecution. He's no crackpot: as prosecutor, he won convictions in all but one of 106 cases, he's written numerous bestselling true-crime books, and his 1612-page JFK assassination investigation, “Reclaiming History,” is getting miniseries treatment from HBO and Playtone. 

Still, the book wasn’t reviewed by a major newspaper when it was published, and Bugliosi was treated as a Don Quixote figure on the few interview shows that would have him. It would be easy to regard his campaign as a publicity stunt, but Miller said he hasn’t made a dime on the project, and Bugliosi said he is risking his legacy on it.   

Said Bugliosi: “How is it possible for Bush to take the country to war under false pretenses, resulting in cataclysmic consequences, and America does absolutely nothing about it, just gives Bush a free pass? No one even wants to talk about it. The mainstream media blacked me out for the first time in my career. I could not get on any national network and it got so bad that ABC Radio refused to take money from the publisher for a radio spot. We couldn’t raise a dime for this documentary in America.”

The notion of putting on trial a former president for actions taken while in the White House seems somehow unfathomable. Attorney Alan Dershowitz, after lauding Bugliosi’s record, says in the docu that he doubts the case will see the inside of a courtroom. 

Bugliosi understands the skepticism, but said he is too incensed by the death of over 4000 U.S. soldiers and significantly more Iraqi citizens, to let this go. He said he is determined to find a prosecutor to take the case, and feels the book and movie will help. There is a wide pool of potential prosecutors, as Bugliosi said that jurisdiction is possible in any state that is home to a soldier who was killed in Iraq.

“I’m willing to help any prosecutor, from serving as consultant up to being appointed special prosecutor,” Bugliosi said. “I have to measure my words here but I am making progress toward that goal and I’m not giving up. I may not succeed but I won’t be satisfied until I see Bush in an American courtroom.” 

Pic’s financier Jim Shaban, a Canadian-born exhibition exec who’s now building a production facility in Michigan, said he has assured Bugliosi the film will get theatrical distribution in the U.S. and Canada. That will possibly come through Independentbooking.net, a service run by ex-Cineplex Odeon exec Eric Ball. Ball said they will likely organize screenings for buyers, the goal being to open the film in February or March.

Gwyneth Paltrow will join Nicole Kidman in “The Danish Girl,” an adaptation of the David Ebershoff novel that tells the story of a relationship between the first post-operative transsexual, Einar Wegener, and his wife Greta.

Thomas Alfredson (“Let the Right One In”) is directing a script by Lucinda Coxon. Gail Mutrux, Anne Harrison and Linda Reisman are producing, along with Kidman and Per Saari.

One afternoon in 1920s Copenhagen, Greta, a portrait painter, asked her husband to stand in for an absent female model. Slipping on a dress, stockings and woman’s shoes began a metamorphosis into Lili. When the photos became wildly popular, Greta encouraged her husband to do more, but a harmless game evolved into something deeper that threatens their marriage.

Kidman had already been attached to play Einar, and Paltrow will play Greta, who stood by her partner through the sex-change operation, finally letting go when she realized the man she married no longer exists. .

Footprint Investments LLC is financing, and international sales are being handled by Kathy Morgan at KMI. Pic is a coproduction between Pretty Pictures in association with Harrison Productions and Blossom Films.

Paltrow most recently wrapped “Iron Man 2,” which opens May 7, 2010.

She’s repped by UTA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

Stephen Frears will direct “Lay the Favorite, Take the Dog,” an adaptation of an upcoming Beth Raymer memoir that is aiming for a June production start.

Pic’s being made in partnership between Random House Films and Focus Features.

Random House Films prexy Peter Gethers will oversee along with Focus Features prexy John Lyons. 

The book, which will be published June, 2010, is being adapted by D.V. DeVincentis, who previously co-wrote the Frears-directed “High Fidelity,” an adaptation of the Nick Hornby book.

Book tells the story of a young woman’s journey into the world of sports gambling, where she started as a cocktail waitress but soon got caught up in a gambling way of life that led her to New York and the Caribbean. She finally began questioning her life when she fell in love. The movie is viewed as a mix between Frears-directed films “High Fidelity” and “The Grifters.”

Frears is repped by ICM.

After making movies out of all three characters he created for "Da Ali G Show," Sacha Baron Cohen has created a production company to generate scripted comic vehicles for himself.

Baron Cohen has formed Four By Two Films, and has gotten his production shingle off to a rousing start with a spec pitch auction that saw Columbia Pictures spend seven-figures to beat out two other studios for an untitled vehicle for him. 

Baron Cohen will write the script with Ant Hines, Peter Baynham and Dan Mazer., the quartet scripted both “Borat” and “Bruno,” getting an Oscar nom for the former.

At the same time, Four By Two Films has made a deal with Universal Pictures for “Accidentes,” a Baynham-scripted comedy in which Baron Cohen will play an ambulance-chasing personal injury attorney of Latin descent who becomes a hero of the working class when he helps an immigrant win a judgment against his wealthy employer after a landscaping mishap. He becomes the enemy of L.A.’s power elite.“Accidentes” was originally acquired as a pitch last year by Fox Atomic, whose topper Debbie Liebling was the exec who acquired “Borat.” That production label folded, the rights lapsed, and a new deal was just made at Universal, which distributed the Baron Cohen-starrer “Bruno.” 

Baron Cohen will produce both pics.

Baron Cohen last starred in “Bruno,” and while that film didn’t match the weighty expectations created by “Borat,” the under $40 million comedy about the flamboyant Austrian fashionista grossed nearly $140 million worldwide. “Bruno” and “Borat” together grossed nearly $400 million worldwide.

He will now focus on playing characters in scripted fare, which he has already done in scene stealing work in “Talladega Nights” and “Sweeney Todd.”

Baron Cohen has hired Todd Schulman as vice president of development for Four By Two. Schulman was co-producer on “Bruno.” 

Baron Cohen hasn’t set up his next star vehicle, but the Columbia comedy is definitely a candidate. Baron Cohen’s repped by WME, Hines by ICM and Baynham and Mazer by UTA.