Neophyte producers Halcyon started shooting the $200-million fourth Terminator movie Monday in Albuquerque, New Mexico, starring Dark Knight's Christian Bale and Avatar star Sam Worthington under the direction of McG. Set in post-apocalyptic 2029, Terminator Salvation pits a Messianic John Connor (Bale) and humankind against the rage of the machines. Halcyon hopes to deliver distrib Warners an intense, action-packed adventure with a PG-13 rating.
This a strange and significant story. It was inevitable that a studio would sever its pay-TV ties and start its own movie channel with a deep library and downloads, but I didn't think it would happen this soon and in this way. It's the wave of the future, and will accelerate the pace of change. So far the studios have been talking behind closed doors about how to take charge of their own delivery windows free from the impediments of their Pay-TV deals with HBO, Starz and Showtime. But not one had been willing to walk away from millions of dollars.
Now Viacom chief Sumner Redstone has done it--but at the expense of one of his own units, CBS, which owns Showtime. When Paramount and partners MGM and Lionsgate all withdraw from Showtime, it leaves open the question of what movies the channel will show. Variety's Dade Hayes explains. Here's Reuters. And the NYT. And PaidContent. And the LAT.
Apparently Redstone and Viacom prexy and CEO Philippe Dauman realized they had an opportunity, because Paramount and Paramount Vantage's Showtime deal ended at the end of 2007, and Lionsgate and MGM's were up at the end of 2008. In effect they had a chance to get a jump on the other studios which are tied up in other deals for years to come (including Paramount sibling DreamWorks, which has a separate deal with HBO).
UPDATE: Many questions remain about how long it will take--this thing won't launch until January 2009, apparently--to set up distrib agreements with major carriers and infrastructure.
In retrospect, the MGM-UA idea is starting to look suspect.
When movie star Tom Cruise and partner Paula Wagner had a producing pact at Paramount, a studio controlled the purse strings, with the power to say no.
But put Cruise and Wagner in charge of a studio, and you have Wagner assembling a slate on the one hand, but who does she answer to? Cruise! And CAA (and husband Rick Nicita) are helping to package projects like Lions for Lambs, which was doomed to be a noble failure from the start. From Cruise/Wagner's perspective, coming from big-studio projects, at $35 million Lambs probably seemed like a modest effort. But it was still too expensive for what it was. Its $15 million domestic gross (of which less than half is returned to the studio) didn't cover its marketing costs. It also earned $42 million overseas. The just-launched DVD release will have to bring the movie into the black.
And Valkyrie is a perfect storm. I hear that director Bryan Singer, who has runaway director tendencies anyway, has run up a $90-million negative tab, which probably seemed reasonable to him, since he was coming off the $200-million Superman Returns. Because Cruise had to promote the opening of Lions for Lambs, Singer postponed three key scenes of the Valkyrie shoot, including one big battle sequence in North Africa. (That's when Cruise's Nazi officer loses his right hand, plus two fingers from his left hand, and an eye.)
But pushing the movie's release date back twice has made it look like tainted goods. Cruise and Wagner took a calculated risk pushing it back to February, knowing that an October date was facing off against the looming Presidential election. As soon as Wolfman and the Pink Panther sequel moved off of Presidents Day, UA jumped on the date. Their October weekend usually yields a b.o. of about $55 million, the thinking went, as opposed to Prexy Day, which usually generates about three times that. Singer and Cruise signed off on the promise of a possible Superbowl spot, Berlin Film Fest launch, and a bigger boxoffice bonanza.
They must have known how the town would react. When you say: "No, we don't have a summer movie, it's a fall movie," it really means: "we don't have a commercial movie that will stand up to the competition in wide release, but a quality smart film with possible Oscar potential that needs critics, so we'll go for fall." But push that same movie again into February, and it conjures up All the Kings Men, which was too weak to earn rave reviews and had no identifiable core audience.
The trouble with the whole MGM construct is that a decision about making or picking up a movie for release has to be based on a slew of market equations. Targeting your audience is crucial. Just because Hot Director Bryan Singer and Major Star Tom Cruise want to make a period movie about a Nazi hero doesn't make it worth $90-million (not to mention marketing costs). (Much as I loved it, Alfonso Cuaron's Children of Men shouldn't have cost that much either. Who was the audience?)
MGM CEO Harry Sloan was smart to hire Mary Parent to run MGM. She will run studio production, marketing and distribution. (That's why Rick Sands is out.) She will be damn sure to pick movies she can market. That's half the battle. And Hollywood sat up and took notice of this move, because they know that Parent gets it.
We all know producer Judd Apatow has four movies coming up in 2008. But which ones will work at the boxoffice? By my guess, all of them. It's just a case of how high is high.
I forecast correctly that the musical biopic parody Walk Hard would fail. It was a smart comedy satire of narrow interest to a wide audience, and asked folks to spend entirely too much screen time with John C. Reilly, who is the original definition of a great actor who has to be cast in the right (co-starring) role.
Here's USA Today's interview with Apatow. And my column on Apatow before Knocked Up and Superbad opened last year.
Sight unseen, based on marketing materials and ShoWest reaction, I'm predicting the following:
BOFFO HOME RUN
Step Brothers R (dumb male comedy starring Will Ferrell and Reilly; trailer (below) is hilarious)
SMASH
Drillbit Taylor PG-13 (Owen Wilson star power, may have family appeal)UPDATE: Boy was I wrong! Maybe Apatow and Wilson work best in the R-rated universe; also this was a familiar old plot. Bad reviews and poor opening.
Pineapple Express R (stoner comedy)
DOUBLE
Forgetting Sarah Marshall R (relationship comedy, may have femme appeal)
New Line's Bob Shaye represents a dying breed in Hollywood, writes the LAT's Patrick Goldstein.
[Photo courtesy LATimes]
Ex-Disney chief Michael Eisner has the clout to pull a few key strings as he goes about setting up various shows in various places, like the Internet.
[Photo courtesy the New York Times.]
Bob Evans is one of the Hollywood icons who still resonates in the culture, as The Hollywood Deal attests. Here's his Oliver Peoples short. Evans has a great voice.
The NYT's Michael Cieply profiles Paramount studio chief Brad Grey. This story was timed to follow Friday's official announcement (after various leaks) of Grey's studio promotions. Rob Moore moves from president of worldwide marketing, distribution and home entertainment to vice chairman of Paramount Pictures. John Lesher moves from prexy of Paramount Vantage to run the Paramount Film Group, where he will supervise creative affairs for Paramount Films, MTV Films, Nickelodeon Movies and Vantage, and work closely with Moore on theatrical business affairs.
Former agent Lesher is about talent relations, assembling packages, and supervising production. Moore's about running the studio and delivering the numbers. Given that Lesher has been spending more than he's been earning as he established Vantage, moving to the deep-pocketed studio may be a good fit. This may be why Lesher wants to leave the relatively calm waters of a specialty division (although the indie marketplace has been unforgiving of late) for the nasty crazy vagaries of a studio (plus all the unresolved issues at DreamWorks playing out on the side). "It's what I've been wanting to do my whole life," he told me.
On the eve of the Oscar nominations January 22, Lesher is looking damned good, with two major contenders in the mix, No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood, both produced by Scott Rudin and co-financed with Miramax Films. These two films are likely to be competing for best picture, with a possibility of a third Lesher film, Sean Penn's Into the Wild, in the Oscar mix.
Lesher has already shepherded An Inconvenient Truth and Babel through the Oscars. As expected, his co-prexy, Nick Meyer, who came over from Lionsgate in 2006, will take over the sole presidency of Vantage. The well-respected exec will take the lead at the upcoming Sundance Film Fest.
Meanwhile, production prexy Brad Weston, who was initially unhappy to be reporting to Lesher as his deputy, has decided to stay on because with departing exec Scott Aversano out of the mix, Weston will move into his MTV and Nickelodeon domains. While Lesher's taste runs to the arty side, Weston is an unabashed fan boy. Weston's big-studio slate for 2008 looks promising, from J.J. Abrams' Cloverfield to his reinvention of the Star Trek franchise. Early footage from Iron Man played well at Comic-Con.
[Newsweek's David Ansen, director Paul Thomas Anderson, John Lesher]
The unfortunate fallout of a weak $26-million estimated opening for the $180-million would-be fantasy franchise The Golden Compass is that New Line Cinema's future is now in question, as Pam McClintock points out:
“Compass,” directed by Chris Weitz and starring Dakota Blue Richards, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig, is based on the young-adult book trilogy “His Dark Materials” by Brit author Philip Pullman. Story is set in a multidimensional world where each person’s soul is contained in an animal and a diabolical church seeks to control all.New Line has floundered for much of the year at the box office and looked to “Compass” to ride the same wave that turned “The Lord of the Rings” into a blockbuster film franchise. Some have put the production budget for “Compass” at north of $200 million, while the studio said it cost $180 million.
New Line’s contract with Time Warner is up in 2008, so the studio’s box office performance is sure to be scrutinized.
While New Line scored in the summer with “Hairspray” and “Rush Hour 3,” its fall releases have been lackluster, with “Rendition,” “Martian Child” and “Love in the Time of Cholera” failing to connect with auds.
New Line emphasized the worldwide performance of “Compass,” saying Pullman’s books are far more popular overseas. Even though the studio has sold off international territories, meaning its returns will be capped, it says it is in solid financial shape.
In the U.S., some Catholic orgs have called for a boycott of the film, saying it will encourage children to read the books, which offer a decidedly negative view of the church. New Line and Weitz toned down this aspect in the film.
Domestic audience was 50% families and 50% people aged 15-55. Audience was evenly split among the genders.
“We are a bit disappointed with the domestic opening, but we still think we are set up very well for the holiday. We are the first film out of the gate and will have good word of mouth and slow build. We should have a successful holiday season,” said New Line prexy-chief operating officer of worldwide marketing and distribution Rolf Mittweg.
This Friday, Entertainment Weekly will publish a new standalone special issue, the first Hollywood “Smart List.” The brain behind this rejuvenated list, which replaces the tired old EW Power 100, is my old colleague Sean Smith, ex-of Newsweek and Premiere, who worked with me on quite a few Premiere power lists. We prided ourselves on reporting the hell out of those lists, and that's what EW has done here, too. A phalanx of EW reporters canvassed the film industry, conducting hundreds of background interviews, seeking info on “the savants and the wunderkinds whose ideas are driving the film industry forward,” according to EW.
Needless to say, anticipation of which actors, directors, producers and agents made the list is already building. Those who can’t wait until the magazine hits newsstands Friday can find just who made the cut-- right here. The question is, having abandoned the old Power 100 model--which readers were far less interested in than the super-driven power-mongers in NY and LA--will folks care about this reinvention of the list? I suspect it makes for better reading, and focuses attention on some worthy folks like FX master John Knoll and composer Gustavo Santaolalla.
EW can't help but go back to some of the same old/same old list of names: Steven Spielberg, Bob Zemeckis, Dick Cook and Brian Grazer are still on there. But otherwise, it's pretty interesting: Number one is Judd Apatow, because "you can't argue with success," says Smith. "He has his finger on the pulse of comedy right now, he's king of it and made three stars out of Steve Carell, Seth Rogen and Jonah Hill would never have been movie stars. He's made himself a household brand."
At the start of the process back in August, as LA bureau chief Smith commandeered seven film reporters in LA and three in NY, he found that it was hard to steer clear of old "power list" habits. "We kept slipping back into power discussions," he says. "We had to rethink. I kept telling them we were free to recalibrate, to consider the overall influence on the future of the industry." The list gets more surprising the farther down you go--including an entry for one Roderick Jaynes, the well-known editor of the Coens brothers' movies--a fake name for the Coens themselves.
Here's the top 20 of the top 50, with the rest on the jump:
Entertainment Weekly's 50 Smartest People in Hollywood:
1. Judd Apatow, director/writer/producer
2. Steven Spielberg, director/producer
3. James Cameron, director/producer
4. Ari Emanuel, partner of the Endeavor Agency
5. Will Smith, actor/producer
6. Meryl Streep, actor
7. Peter Rice, president of Fox Searchlight
8. Tyler Perry, actor/director/writer/producer
9. David Heyman, producer
10. John Knoll, visual-effects supervisor of Industrial Light & Magic
11. Brian Grazer, producer
12. Dick Cook, chairman of the Walt Disney Studios
13. George Clooney, actor/director/producer
14. Jerry Bruckheimer, producer
15. Amy Pascal, co-chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment
16. Peter Jackson, director/producer
17. Will Ferrell, actor/producer
18. Robert Zemeckis, director
19. Tom Rothman, co-chair of Fox Filmed Entertainment
20. Ben Stiller, actor/director/producer
Continue reading "Goodbye Power 100, Hello EW's Smart List" »
The reaction to Saturday's NYT story about DreamWorks negotiating to move to Universal is fascinating. If you look beyond the question of who's spinning who, obviously someone with an agenda tipped Sharon Waxman (who has been on book leave and is scheduled to return to the NYT's metro desk in January). But her story (co-bylined with Brooks Barnes) did little to advance the DreamWorks cause. Here's Variety's take.
Mssrs. Spielberg, Geffen and Katzenberg don't want to be perceived as beggars going around from studio to studio with hats in hand. They see themselves as mighty and powerful players. But the day they sold DreamWorks, library and all, they stopped being owners and became another top-of-the-line production entity not unlike Universal's own Imagine Entertainment. (The word studio gets thrown around a lot these days. It used to mean a lot with soundstages and if you were a "major," you owned theaters.) My sense is that DreamWorks would rather be back at Universal, where Spielberg still keeps his offices, than anywhere else, although Geffen has been talking to both Fox and Universal. But DreamWorks is asking for a studio to give them hundreds of millions of dollars with which to make movies. (And is there room for two 500-pound gorillas on the Universal lot? Here's the latest puff piece on Brian Grazer, riding high off American Gangster, in the NYT.)
So why not raise their own production funding? That would give DreamWorks more of the autonomy they so seriously crave. These men are beyond wealthy, and are accustomed to living large at the top of the Hollywood pyramid (without spending their own money). The question is, who's going to be willing to pay them to do that?
It was a mistake.
While DreamWorks partner David Geffen has always demonstrated pitch-perfect timing in his big business decisions, the fateful move to take DreamWorks away from Universal to Paramount was a huge blunder. With a big financial deadline looming and General Electric dragging its heels, the DreamWorks partners sold DreamWorks live action to Paramount. And have regretted it ever since.
It's telling that Steven Spielberg did not leave the Universal lot. And likely never will. While the filmmaker is still at the top of the Hollywood food chain, DreamWorks' best hope for landing the rich deal they're after is the troica of Universal's Ron Meyer, NBC's Jeff Zucker and General Electric's Jeffrey Immelt (who admitted after the fact that it was a mistake to let the DreamWorks team go). It's less likely that anyone else will come through for them--although last week word was that Rupert Murdoch was in the mix. Here's today's NYT story.
And yet, leaving Paramount and starting over at Universal is a risky move for DreamWorks, no matter how much they despise working under the capricious leadership of Sumner Redstone. They would leave behind much of their development--unless they can buy some material back and make co-production arrangements on others. They will have to build their inventory up again. (Will Stacey Snider want to take on that backbreaking task? Will she want to return to the studio that she once ran?) What DreamWorks could lose is that often ephemeral thing that you don't want to ever lose in Hollywood. Momentum.
They're at it again: rival billionaires David Geffen and Sumner Redstone trade barbs in the latest issue of Vanity Fair. Apparently, the DreamWorks vs. Viacom war is not over. Pamela McClintock reports.
Here's a sampling of the Bryan Burroughs piece:
In a series of talks with Vanity Fair beginning in August, Redstone’s men have blamed Geffen, the mischievous music turned film magnate, for practically every bad press notice they have received, even the reports of trouble in Redstone’s marriage. “This is all Geffen,” an executive close to Redstone told me. “We know what’s going on. He’s doing all of this. He’s relentless. He and Sumner, when they’re in a fight like this, it’s war. It’s war.”When I first relayed these sentiments to Geffen, he exploded. “Whoever said these things, they must be out of their minds,” he said, his voice rising with each syllable. “I am not responsible for the public discourse about Mr. Redstone at all. He is. To imply I have anything to do with his image problems is just shameful. The lawsuits with his children and the statements he has made on the record speak for themselves.”
But Geffen, who to his credit had no problem speaking on the record, was only warming up. “I don’t care for Sumner’s behavior,” he went on, “and I have that in common with a great many people in the entertainment business. I don’t like the way he treats people. Most of all, nobody is going to treat me or my partner [Spielberg] in that manner and stay in business with us. Nobody.”
The December issue also profiles Francis Ford Coppola; here's his online Q & A.
While Brit producer Working Title's sequel Elizabeth: The Golden Age got off to a rocky start, the movie should still have a fighting chance in such Oscar tech categories as art direction and costume (not score, though). It is not widely known that Working Title has enjoyed a long and illustrious relationship with Oscar: since 1986 their films have landed 38 noms and four wins. (See chart.) Here's a taste of my column on Working Title:
Working Title co-heads Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner have the best of both worlds.They're the big fish at the top of the British film pond, drawing top scripts and directors. At the same time, they boast a rich seven-year first-look deal with Universal Pictures, which finances and releases their films Stateside via the studio or Focus Features, and overseas, where their films earn the lion's share of their grosses. This fall they're back in the Oscar race with Focus Features' World War II romantic epic "Atonement," starring Keira Knightley and Vanessa Redgrave, which is shaping up to be the award season's early front runner.
Because Working Title is so profitable for Universal, they have earned rare autonomy within the studio -- they even control their own international marketing. Bevan and Fellner nurture edgy American fare from the likes of the Coen brothers and "United 93" helmer Paul Greengrass alongside comedies like the "Mr. Bean" films, which have vastly more appeal to global auds than they do to Americans.
While they still wince at their biggest box office debacle, the $55-million bigscreen version of Brit kid fave "The Thunderbirds," Bevan and Fellner are enjoying the fruits of maturity, churning out such global sequels as "Mr. Bean's Holiday," starring Rowan Atkinson, alongside the ambitious $55-million sequel "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," in which Cate Blanchett reprises her role as the British monarch. "Golden Age" did not woo critics and crowds at September's Toronto Fest as well as "Atonement," which is steadily building Oscar buzz.Working Title has enjoyed a long and fruitful dance with the Oscars. Since 1986's "My Beautiful Laundrette," which earned a writing nom for Hanif Kureishi, Working Title has earned 38 Oscar nominations and four wins: best actress for Susan Sarandon for "Dead Man Walking" and Frances McDormand for "Fargo," which also scored for original screenplay, and a makeup prize for "Elizabeth."
Here's Bevan and Fellner's Toronto Fest interview on Shootout:
David Geffen spills on Viacom-Paramount-DreamWorks fracas to Merissa Marr of the WSJ:
In Hollywood, when filmmaker Steven Spielberg says jump, most people ask "How high?" Not Viacom Inc.Less than two years after Viacom's Paramount Pictures announced with great fanfare a deal to buy DreamWorks SKG, a battle over its future has been slowly coming to a boil. Members of the DreamWorks team -- headed by Mr. Spielberg and co-founder David Geffen -- have been making noises that they may leave when their contracts allow it next year. Mr. Geffen made his first detailed public comments on the subject in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.
"Whether we renew our contract is unclear," Mr. Geffen said, confirming that he has been speaking to other studios. "We'll continue to do what we've always done: make eight movies a year. But who we make them for is up for discussion."
And here's the LAT's Claudia Eller's front page story today. UPDATE: Here's the NYT's Michael Cieply.
Well, it looks like things aren't working out for the recent Paramount/DreamWorks marriage!
Variety has more. Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone doesn't suck up to anyone. And he hasn't treated David Geffen and Steven Spielberg the way they want to be treated. Redstone's number two, Philippe Dauman, made it clear to Wall Street yesterday that Viacom is prepared to let DreamWorks go. And suggested that it would be tough for them to raise the billions they would need to go it alone. Bets are on Universal or Warners as the likely next safe harbor for DreamWorks.
While it's easy to point out how terrible the results would be if Paramount did not have DreamWorks' product over the past year, the truth is, even when DreamWorks leaves, Paramount gets to keep much of their upcoming slate and sequel rights to Transformers, etc. DreamWorks still shores up their ongoing performance. For its part, DreamWorks would lose some momentum going forward. Much of DreamWorks' recent success came from a mature slate of pictures that were ready to roll, well-supervised and brought to fruition by Stacey Snider.
Time Warner prexy and COO Jeffrey Bewkes is on the way to taking over the corporation's top post from current CEO Richard Parsons, according to the WSJ:
Time Warner is expected to confirm Mr. Bewkes as the next CEO before the end of the year, people familiar with the matter say. He is expected to take the reins as early as Jan. 1, five months before Mr. Parsons's contract expires. Mr. Parsons is expected to retain the chairman's title. Time Warner's board has yet to vote on Mr. Bewkes's appointment, but that could happen in the coming weeks, these people say.
Ex-HBO chief Chris Albrecht, who was first raked over the coals and then ardently wooed, is respected as a creative entrepreneur. He's returning to his roots as an agent, reports the NYT, and joining agency IMG in a deal brokered by Endeavor's Ari Emanuel, who inspired Emmy-winning Jeremy Piven's Ari Gold on Entourage.
I'm still not sure that Mark Cuban has ever understood the movie business (2929 Entertainment), theatrical exhibition (Landmark Theatres), indie film distribution (Magnolia Pictures) or even high def cable (HDNet). But he does understand the Internet --love his blog: his latest post, "the internet is dead and boring"-- and insists on doing his press interviews by email. Judging from this Portfolio Q & A, clearly, Cuban is impatient with the pace of change.
Edward Redstone doesn't like Newsweek's portrayal of his family's internal battles. Did he read the LA Times?
As News Corp's Rupert Murdoch bears down on The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair's Michael Wolff examines the corporate baron's love of newsprint.
[Vanity Fair illo by Michael Elin; Murdoch photo by Peter Morgan/Reuter/Corbis]
Variety's Peter Bart talked to a number of the players at Viacom, DreamWorks and Paramount last week. At this point, obviously, the marriage isn't working. The DreamWorks founders chose to sell their studio and now must deal with new bosses. Things are not what they were when Universal's Ron Meyer treated them like gold.
That is not Viacom chief Sumner Redstone's way. This is the man who kicked Tom Cruise off the lot. He doesn't lavish much respect either on his own daughter Shari, the veteran National Amusements exhibitor who's on Viacom's board. Redstone does what Redstone wants to do and there's not a whole lot anyone can do about it. 
Monday's LAT story detailing the Redstone family disputes is fascinating. As Bart suggests, these issues may all end up in court. Here's the NYT.
But what if the DreamWorks team did walk away with their brand and start over again? Their names are as stellar as ever--in fact they've just come off an amazing run. But those films didn't come into existence overnight. Stacey Snider was able to come in and capitalize on years of development, while Paramount ferried the completed projects into the marketplace. Does the DreamWorks team want to do the heavy lifting of building from scratch all over again? And what value would Paramount get for its $1.6 billion without Spielberg and Snider? Not much.
It's hard to figure what would make the DreamWorks troica happy, since boxoffice success seems only to have made things worse. The DreamWorks/Paramount impasse reveals yet again the risks of moving from one corporate culture to another. In ways that are hard to measure, you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.
Michael Ovitz was never quite the same separated from his power base at CAA. Tina Brown walked away from one of the great jobs on the planet as editor of The New Yorker because she heard the siren call of independence, Hollywood, money, fame...and has since struggled to find her new niche, emerging this year as Princess Diana's respected biographer. Similarly, Harvey Weinstein, who helped to lure Brown away to run the now defunct Talk Magazine, has worked hard with brother Bob to find his footing in the harsh reality outside a studio environment.
The DreamWorks folks are operating at rarified levels at the top of the studio pyramid. And they will want to continue to do so.
There's action in Viacom City. With Steven Spielberg positioned with Businessweek's Ron Grover as a possible DreamWorks/Paramount flight risk, and respected Sumner Redstone sprig Shari Redstone possibly leaving the board of her father's company, something's going on.
UPDATE: Well, Shari Redstone ably runs Viacom's exhibition chain National Amusements. One scenario has Redstone pere, 84, letting her walk away with the theater chain he built. It's the business she loves. But the NYT paints a starker, more divisive story.
Over at DreamWorks and Paramount, you'd think everyone would be deliriously happy about their $1 billion hot streak at the boxoffice, which will spawn a litter of Transformers sequels and more. But the truth is, David Geffen hates nothing more than leaving money on the table. While less than two years ago Paramount was accused of paying too much to buy DreamWorks ($1.53 billion) it now looks like they paid too little. Spielberg, especially, hated giving up his dream of ownership of a movie studio. Now that they've scored so big, it looks like they gave up too soon. 
But DreamWorks isn't going anywhere. They're enmeshed too deep at Paramount. I understand that Spielberg had the option of getting out of his contract early, but didn't. Instead, DreamWorks had lawyer Skip Brittenham renegotiate, as Grover reports, for Spielberg and Stacey Snider's greenlight authority over higher budgets and more movies. Who wouldn't pick Spielberg and Snider's slate over Brad Weston's?
Which does make it all the more important for the Paramount side of the equation to deliver some hits and prove their worth.
The question that still hovers in the air: what does David Geffen want? There's one big-billion sale that could put smiles on the faces of the DreamWorks troica and make Spielberg renew his contract: DreamWorks Animation. If Paramount, which owns distribution rights to the company's films (two more Shrek sequels are promised), were to buy Animation, what would Jeffrey Katzenberg do then? Current scuttlebut has him filling that open Tom Freston slot. Which would leave Grey working for Sparky.
While that scenario is bound to delight Katzenberg, Spielberg and Geffen, that doesn't mean it's anything more than a delightful fantasy.
The NYT's David Carr wraps up Herbert Allen's annual Sun Valley Meeting of the Moguls with a superb description of the disconnect between the corporate establishment and Silicon Valley:
Despite some of the past deals between old and new media (the News Corporation’s purchase of MySpace, a hot young trophy wife for a wizened enterprise) and maybe because of some of them (AOL Time Warner comes to mind), there are still a lot of suspicious looks from both sides of the aisle. Just beneath all the panel manners and after-hours bonhomie, there is a murderous fight for custody of that future.Many of the old-line media guys, resentful of a market cap of $170 billion, see Google as a one-trick pony and a larcenous one at that. (In the realm of stunts, developing a search application that smashes the competition and creates something that is a noun, a verb and a juggernaut is a pretty neat trick.)
The moguls think the search and video business was built on their backs, while Google and its digital posse believe traditional media should quit whining and suing and instead find ways to meet the new dynamic of consumer choice. To their minds, traditional media companies love to talk about giving control to consumers, but they’ll rip the remote out of their hands as soon as anyone fast-forwards through a commercial.
Fortune's Tim Arango updates the annual dance of the moguls in Sun Valley, including what these brainy titans of industry are reading this summer:
"At the Center of the Storm: My Years in the CIA," by George Tenet, the embattled former CIA boss of "slam dunk" fame who is in attendance here, dressed like a frat boy in flip flops, khaki shorts and polo.
"This Time, This Place," by Jack Valenti, the late head of the Motion Picture Association of America. Valenti, a long time attendee here, passed away in April at age 85.
"The New American Story," by Bill Bradley. The former senator, presidential candidate and New York Knick, is an Allen & Co. advisor.
"Edge of Disaster: Rebuilding a Resilient Nation," by Stephen Flynn, of the Council on Foreign Relations. Flynn spoke to the gathering Thursday morning about security.
Judith Regan made tapes of conversations with Fox execs and has juicy details on News Corp's Rupert Murdoch, whom she is suing for defamation, among other things, reports the NYDN, which also reports that when photographer Annie Leibovitz asked Queen Elizabeth to take off her crown during a photo shoot, the Queen gave her an icy retort and walked out.
UPDATE: The BBC had to apologize to the Queen for making it look like she stormed out.
Wisely, the NYT has sicked its best blogger, media columnist David Carr, on the super-egoes descending by jet on Herb Allen's annual Sun Valley confab. He'll be live-blogging all week from the Lodge for the NYT's Dealbook. Michael Eisner. Michael Ovitz and Michael Volpi of Joost are there; presidential hopeful Michael Bloomberg is expected.
Alan Ladd, Jr. is no longer the lion of industry that he once was. But, as the NYT reports, he still wants to get his due.
I think this is the first time I've gotten a press release at 5:33 AM.
The announcement came from NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker: Universal Studios prexy and CEO Ron Meyer will continue to run the studio for five more years, through 2012. (He supervises the studio's motion picture division, parks, resorts, and operations.) Who knew that the soft-spoken ex-CAA co-founder and president, who for two decades ran that agency with Mike Ovitz, would wind up being the industry's longest-running studio chief? He's been running Universal since 1995, through thick and thin, Vivendi, Diller, GE. He's a survivor. And he's still making the transition from a post-Stacey Snider Universal with co-heads Marc Shmuger and David Linde. Judd Apatow's raucous $30-million comedy Knocked Up should prove a much-needed smash. But some of Universal's big-ticket movies need to work this summer, too: the $200175-million Evan Almighty and $125-million The Bourne Ultimatum, for starters.
UPDATE: The LAT goes over the upcoming sked with Linde and Shmuger.
Time Warner wasted no time in giving HBO czar Christ Albrecht the boot Wednesday after his arrest in Las Vegas after an alleged violent altercation with a woman friend. At first the company put Albrecht on leave to cope with what he termed an alcohol problem. But today Warners acted more decisively, after the media revealed that a prior alleged abuse of a female coworker that had been swept under the rug in 1991.
Kudos here to the LAT's Claudia Eller. I am quite sure that if Warners had been willing to hide the first incident, they would have cast a blind eye again. But Eller made that impossible. With both Time Warner execs Jeff Bewkes and Richard Parsons harboring lofty career ambitions, there was no way they could afford to be lenient this time.
I've been wanting to write a Scott Rudin story. That's because the New York-based producer is on a roll. This is the year that the guy--a prolific filmmaker, with fabulous taste, a theater producer as well as a film producer--will probably finally make it to the Oscar derby. He missed, with The Hours. He deserves to get there. But Rudin won't go to Cannes to share the kudos for the Coens' No Country for Old Men, based on the Cormac McCarthy novel. Rudin doesn't like publicity. He hates it because so often it's negative. That's because he's a diva and a control freak--along with being a brilliant producer of excellent movies.
I've been prepping a column about all his promising projects coming up. The Paul Thomas Anderson movie There Will Be Blood, starring Daniel Day Lewis, wasn't finished in time for Cannes. Rudin also produced Noah Baumbach's Margot's Wedding, starring Nicole Kidman, and the Kimberly Peirce movie, Stop Loss, starring Ryan Philippe. And there's more in the works, from Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay to Jonathan Frazen's The Corrections. And what's going on with Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking?
I know Scott. I've talked to him many times. And I'm the idiot. Because when I said, "I'm going to do it with you or without you," and he bit my head off, I thought he wanted to time the story. He had his PR rep call and promise to work something out. And then went ahead and played ball with the NYT.
So it goes.
Here's the NYT's Dealbook on what Rupert Murdoch must do to win The Wall Street Journal:
And now for the charm offensive.That is the course Rupert Murdoch is expected to pursue after the board of Dow Jones & Company, which publishes The Wall Street Journal, said late Wednesday that it would "take no action" on his $5 billion bid for the company because the Bancroft family, its controlling shareholder, opposed the offer. The board's brief statement contained a wealth of subtext, because it did not reject the offer outright and appeared to leave room for Mr. Murdoch to try to work his powers of persuasion on the Bancroft family.
The family, which bought The Wall Street Journal and the Dow Jones news service in 1902, seems deeply divided -- and therein in may lie the opportunity for Mr. Murdoch, the head of the media conglomerate News Corporation. Earlier this week, the family indicated that it would vote shares representing 52 percent of the voting power at Dow Jones against the transaction.
Floyd Norris of The New York Times estimates that about 40 percent of the Bancroft family, as measured