Page 1 of 6
May 3, 2012
Da
y
il
Inside:
FOX ORDERS
THE VOICE-LIKE
DATING SERIES
PAge 2
ROSS IN TALKS
TO HELM HOUDINI
PAge 3
PATTISON PLAYS
SADDAM HUNTER
PAge 3
REDSTONE DISHES
ON PAL CRUISE AT
MILKIN CONFAB
PAge 5
WARNERS UPS
FRITZ TO SR. VP
PAge 6
Access Renewed,
but Salaries Cut
By Alex Ben Block
The entertainment magazine
show Access Hollywood has
been renewed for at least
three more seasons, and
companion show Access Hollywood Live has been set for
at least one more season —
but some of the show’s production staff are grumbling
over most employees’ salaries
being cut.
The pay cuts, which
sources said were announced
to staff Monday, range from
10 percent to 20 percent per
employee. They follow layoffs
a week ago, when 14 full- and
part-time staffers were let go
in a cost-cutting move.
Sources said longtime
director Kim Anastasia will
be leaving the show at the
end of the upcoming May
sweep period. But a source
close to the show insisted
that the departure was a voluntary decision on her part.
Billy Bush and Kit Hoover host Access Hollywood Live, the companion
show to Access Hollywood. Both daytime shows have been renewed.
Owner Comcast/NBCUniversal, which renewed Access
Hollywood, airs the half-hour
show on a wide variety of stations, including most of its
owned-and-operated NBC
outlets. NBCU reps and the
show’s executive producer
would not comment on any
specific salary changes, additional layoffs or other business matters. The renewal of
the shows has not yet been
officially announced.
A spokesperson for the
show would only say, “Access
Hollywood made staffing
adjustments that make sense
for our business and position
us well for the future.”
The salary reductions,
according to a show source,
were part of a process that
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Page 2 of 6
May 3, 2012
TV NEWS
From page 1
has been underway for
weeks to make the operation
more cost-efficient. More
adjustments could be ahead
for some on-air talent,
though it is unclear when
that might happen. Sources
say it is unlikely that host
Billy Bush will have his salary cut.
The source claimed that
other entertainment magazines also have found
ways to cut costs in recent
months by ending the contracts of some highly paid
anchors, putting employees
on temporary hiatus and in
one case by replacing studio space with locations for
anchor stand-up reports.
That source denied that
the cuts were at the request
of the new owners at Comcast but rather were tied to
management looking for
ways to be smarter about
how they run the business.
That person said it is not
fair to compare Access Hollywood to the way E! Entertainment, also owned by
Comcast, does business.
Fox Orders
DATING SERIES
THE CHOICE
By Lacey Rose
“Four celebrities. Blind auditions. Spinning chairs. But
it’s not what you think …”
That’s how Fox is describing its latest reality effort,
The Choice, a new dating series hosted by So You
Think You Can Dance’s Cat
Deeley. Much like American
Idol rival The Voice on NBC,
the Fox series will feature a
blind audition concept with
some of the world’s most eligible — but not yet named
— celebrities competing
among of group of singles
they can’t see. The series is
set to debut at 9 p.m. Thursday, June 7.
The series, which relies on
the “love is blind” concept,
will be filmed in front of a
live audience. Each episode
will feature four bachelors
— and in one case, bachelorettes — seated in rotating chairs, with their backs
turned to the single hopeful. The Choice will include
a “blind round,” in which
each celebrity can only use
his suitors’ voice to make the
decision. If and when the
celebrity bachelor likes what
he hears, he pulls his “love
handle,” causing the seat
to spin around to face his
potential mate.
“I’ve wanted to do a dating a show, and I think
there’s a hole in the market. There hasn’t been a
big one since The Bachelor,
and there hasn’t been a studio-based success since, my
God, The Dating Game 40
years ago,” Fox’s alternative entertainment president
Mike Darnell tells The Hollywood Reporter, noting that
the genre’s relatability is its
appeal.
Once the three potential mates have been chosen
for each of the bachelors,
the teams will enter the
“speed choice” round, where
each woman has mere seconds to convince her leading man that she’s the one.
Ultimately, they will have to
make “the choice.”
When asked about the
Fringe showrunners and EPs J.H. Wyman, left, and Jeff Pinkner told
reporters Wednesday that they know how the show’s stories will end.
series’ similarities to the
NBC singing competition
show format, Darnell suggested employing spinning chairs was the best way
to approach the genre. “I
had three choices,” he says.
“Choice one: Do a wall like
they used to do on Dating
Game. Choice two: Blindfold them, which would look
ridiculous. Or choice three,
go modern and do a chair
that turns.”
The series hails from
A. Smith & Co. Productions (Hell’s Kitchen, Kitchen
Nightmares), with Arthur
Smith, Kent Weed and
Scott St. John (Deal or No
Deal) attached as executive
producers.
Deeley is repped by
WME, The Collective and
Hansen Jacobson.
Fringe Team:
No Alternate
Ending SHOT
By Philiana Ng
Fringe showrunners and executive producers Jeff Pinkner
and J.H. Wyman are setting
the record straight on speculation that an alternate ending was shot for the season
four closer in case the Fox
drama did not return in the
fall.“No, we did not shoot an
alternate ending,” Wyman
told reporters on a recent
conference call when asked
whether the other scene
would be on the season DVD
set. “We thought about it,
but we did not.”
The producers shared
when and how they found
out about the season five
pickup, which was given the
green light April 26. Pinkner
and Wyman said that they
knew of the renewal four
hours before the news went
public.
“I was actually getting
a guitar fixed,” Wyman
recalled. “ I got a call, and
it was all these very happy
voices. It was music to my
ears.” Pinkner, on the other
hand, had just dropped off
his kids at school when he
got a call from the studio
and network.
The producers are aware
of how the ultimate story
will end.
“We definitely know
where the series is going
to end and how it’s going
to end and what we’re saying with the final season,”
Wyman said.
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Page 3 of 6
May 3, 2012
FILM NEWS
‘Avengers’ to Hit
$500M Globally
by Sunday
By Pamela McClintock
Famously picky director Gary Ross declined an offer to helm Lionsgate’s
Catching Fire, the sequel to his worldwide smash The Hunger Games.
Gary Ross
in Talks to
Direct Houdini
By Borys Kit
Gary Ross, fresh off his wildly
successful adaptation of The
Hunger Games, is in negotiations to direct Houdini for
Summit.
The project is an adaptation of The Secret Life
of Houdini, The Making of
America’s First Superhero, a
biography of Harry Houdini
by William Kalush and
Larry Sloman.
The tome, published
in 2006 by Atria Books,
became known for insinuating that the master magician and premier escape
artist acted as a spy for
Britain, helped the Secret
Service and was in cahoots
with police organizations.
Summit picked up featurefilm rights to the book in
March 2009 with the aim of
launching an action-thriller
franchise featuring a character who is part Indiana
Jones and part Sherlock
Holmes.
Noah Oppenheim wrote
the most recent draft of the
script.
Ross is known for being
choosy when it comes picking directing vehicles; he
previously helmed 1998’s
Pleasantville and 2003’s
Seabiscuit before tackling
Hunger Games, which has
grossed more than $600
million worldwide.
Ross caused waves when
he opted to bow out of
directing the sequel, Catching Fire, which now will be
directed by Francis Lawrence. In a twist that a
magician would love, Lawrence is attached to his own
Houdini project that is set
up at Columbia.
A source says it has not
been determined whether
Houdini will be Ross’ next
project.
Ross is repped by CAA
and Jackoway Tyerman.
Disney and Marvel Studios
appear to have a runaway
hit on their hands.
The Avengers, which only
began rolling out at the
international box office late
last week, is easily on track
to become the most successful title produced in-house
by Marvel Studios, besting
the $623 million worldwide
gross of 2010’s Iron Man 2.
Directed by Joss
Whedon, Avengers is doing
massive business at the
international box office,
earning $218 million in its
first six days through Monday and breaking records
across the globe. And the
3D pic, which unites many
of Marvel’s marquee superheroes, could enjoy weekend-like business Tuesday
because of the May Day
holiday in many foreign
markets.
At this pace, Avengers’ foreign gross likely will
grow to $350 million-$400
million by Sunday, boosted
by its debut in Russia and
China this weekend.
Avengers opens at midnight Thursday in North
America, where it’s widely
expected to debut north
of $150 million, based on
the strength of prerelease
tracking. Bullish box office
observers believe Avengers could finish the weekend with a global gross well
north of $500 million, if not
closer to $600 million.
The superhero tentpole
is the first Marvel Studios
film marketed and distributed by Disney following
the company’s acquisition
of Marvel.
Last summer, Marvel’s
Thor grossed $449.3 million
worldwide, while Captain
America: The First Avenger
earned $368.6 million. The
first Iron Man earned $585
million globally in 2008;
all three characters are featured in Avengers.
Pattinson To play
Man Who Led
Hunt for Saddam
By Borys Kit
Rob Pattinson is attached to
star in Mission: Black List, a
psychological thriller that
aims to tell the
true story of
the man who
spearheaded
the capture
of Saddam
Hussein.
Pattinson
Preferred
Content’s Ross
M. Dinerstein is producing
alongside Erik Jendresen
and Kevin Waller.
Jendresen, who was a
writer-supervising producer
on HBO’s Band of Brothers, wrote the script adapting the book titled Mission:
Black List #1: The Inside
Story of the Search for Saddam Hussein — As Told by
the Soldier Who Masterminded His Capture.
The book was written
by Eric Maddox, the Army
interrogator who played a
see page 4
Page 4 of 6
May 3, 2012
FILM NEWS
From Page 3
key role in pinpointing Hussein’s hideout. Davin Seay
co-wrote the book.
Embankment Films, the
international sales and distribution company recently
launched by sales veterans Tim Haslam and Hugo
Grumbar, will sell the film
at the upcoming Cannes
Film Market.
Jean-Stephane Sauvaire
is attached to direct.
Hill to Helm
Possible Reboot
of Hazzard
By Borys Kit
Eastbound and Down co-creator Jody Hill is writing and
attached to direct an untitled action project set in the
American South for Warner Bros.
Billy Gerber is attached
to produce with Hill.
While the logline is being
kept under wraps, the story
is set in the 1970s South
and involves an outlaw duo.
Sources say Hill aims to
make a stylish action movie
in the mold of Sam Peckinpah, the director who made
the seminal action movies Wild Bunch and The
Getaway.
Sources say the project could become a reboot
of The Dukes of Hazzard,
originally a 1979-85 CBS
series that starred Tom
Wopat and John Schneider
as adventure-loving cousins in Georgia, who drove
a Dodge Charger nicknamed the “General Lee.”
A decision won’t be made
about whether to call the
film a Hazzard reboot until
Hill is finished writing, but
the involvement of Gerber, who produced the studio’s 2005 big-screen version
that starred Seann William
Scott and Johnny Knoxville, would make the process easier.
Hill wrote and directed
Observe and Report, Warners’ 2009 black comedy
that starred Seth Rogen as
a mall cop. He created Eastbound and Down, which just
wrapped its third season on
HBO, with Danny McBride
and Ben Best. He co-wrote
every episode and directed
much of the show.
Hill is repped by CAA
and Bloom Hergott.
Telenovela star
in Screen Gems’
No Good Deed
By Borys Kit
Mexican actress Kate del Castillo has joined the cast of
No Good Deed, a Screen
Gems thriller starring Idris
Elba and Taraji P. Henson.
Sam Hiller
is directing the pic,
which revolves
around
a former
DA-turnedDel Castillo
stay-at-home
mom (Henson) and her two small children who are kidnapped
from their home by a mysterious stranger (Elba).
Aimee Lagos wrote the
screenplay.
Del Castillo will play
Elba’s cheating ex-fiancee.
The part originally was
written for a white actor,
but Screen Gems decided to
make an effort to appeal to
Latino filmgoers, an audience segment that studios
increasingly are courting.
Screen Gems has proved
to be ahead of the curve in
making movies for an ethnically diverse audience and is
riding high off of Think Like
a Man, the box-office hit
that features a heavily African-American cast.
Will Packer of Rainforest
Films banner is producing
along with Lee Clay.
The reigning queen of
telenovelas, Del Castillo is
best known for starring on
La Reina del Sur, the hugely
popular soap that aired on
Telemundo. She received
acclaim for her performance in 2007’s La misma
luna (Under the Same
Moon) and had an arc on
Weeds.
She is repped by IMC and
Si Entertainment.
Brainstorm
Gets Solondz’s
Dark Horse
By Gregg Kilday
Brainstorm Media has
acquired Todd Solondz’s
Dark Horse and plans to distribute the film theatrically.
Brainstorm, the Beverly Hills-based sales agent
and distributor headed by
president Meyer Shwarzstein that specializes in
aggregating indie films for
video-on-demand and new
media, has put together a
team to handle the movie’s June 8 release in New
York, followed by openings
in additional cities. It will
mark Brainstorm’s entry
into theatrical distribution.
The company has
enlisted Ruth Vitale, who
runs the consultancy The
Film Collective; Vitagraph
Films president David
Shultz and head of marketing, publicity and digital strategy Margot Gerber;
Barbara Javitz, who has
held executive positions at
ARC Entertainment and
Lightning Entertainment;
and Marian Koltai-Levine
of PMK*BNC.
Dark Horse will be distributed in association with
producer Ted Hope‘s Double Hope Films. The film
was produced by Hope
and Derrick Tseng, with
Nick Quested as executive
producer.
Written and directed by
Solondz, the movie, which
debuted last year at the
Venice Film Festival, stars
Jordan Gelber and Selma
Blair as two lovers with
arrested development. The
cast also includes Justin
Bartha, Mia Farrow, Donna
Murphy, Christopher
Walken, Zachary Booth and
Aasif Mandvi.
“With Brainstorm, we
found a team that was willing to put our film and the
audience first,” Hope said.
“Like that old 35mm we all
once loved, Dark Horse will
be playing only in theaters
this summer. Meyer and
his team have constructed
a way for the filmmakers
and our investors to be true
partners in this venture.
How often do distributors
really want the producers to
make money?”
Page 5 of 6
May 3, 2012
business news
Redstone Dishes on
Cruise at Milken Event
By Paul Bond
Viacom and CBS executive
chairman Sumner Redstone reminisced Wednesday about firing Tom Cruise
but added that the two are
“best friends” today.
“Originally, I actually
fired Tom. His behavior was
terrible,” Redstone said at
a semi-private lunch at the
Milken Institute Global
Conference. “He was jumping on the couch on the
Oprah show. Women hated
him. A lot of people said
they would never come back
and see Tom Cruise.
“Actually, he was getting
$10 million, on the lot, for
doing nothing,” Redstone
continued. “That’s why I
fired him, and a lot of the
studios complimented me.”
Redstone, 88, whose
guests at the lunch
included CBS chief executive Les Moonves, music
impresario Quincy Jones
and film producer Robert
Evans, then described how
he reconciled with Cruise
and asked Paramount CEO
Brad Grey to welcome
him back to Paramount
Pictures.
“Later on, we had a meeting at a restaurant in Los
Angeles, and Tom said, ‘I
want to come back.’ I said,
‘You’re never gonna get the
same deal you had before,
Tom.’ He said: ‘I don’t care.
I want to work with them.’
So I recommended that we
take him back to Brad,”
Sumner Redstone, left, said of Tom Cruise on Wednesday, “He was getting $10 million, on the lot, for doing nothing. That’s why I fired him.”
Redstone said. “Today, he is
one of my best friends. We
go out to dinner. I’ve been
at his house with his wife
Katie.
“He doesn’t get what he
got before, and he doesn’t
care,” Redstone said.
Noting that Mission:
Impossible — Ghost Protocol
is outperforming the previous installments of that film
franchise, Redstone said,
“So, see, [fans] have come
back to see him.”
The session was one of
the more intimate at the
four-day conference in Beverly Hills, where 3,000 people paid as much as $6,000
each for a full-access pass.
Redstone made the comments during an interview
with conference founder
Michael Milken on the topic
of entrepreneurism.
Redstone spoke mostly
about growing up poor and
putting himself through the
elite Boston Latin School,
then Harvard University
and Harvard Law School.
Boston Latin, he said, was
tougher than the other two.
“Harvard was like kindergarten,” he quipped.
After informing the
guests that his Harvard
education was paid for via
scholarships, he said, “I
don’t believe in borrowing
money” — a joke, given that
Milken was responsible for
arranging the loans Redstone needed to purchase
Viacom 25 years ago.
“You charged me a quarter percent too much,” Redstone said. “And I’ve been
paying for it ever since,”
responded Milken.
Redstone said he was
determined to outbid others for control of Viacom
because he saw more value
in Nickelodeon and MTV,
especially the latter, than
did his competitors.
“I recognized MTV was
more than a music channel,
it was a generational channel,” he said.
Milken, noting the many
careers Redstone has had,
asked why he got involved
in media. “The entertainment business is exciting,”
Redstone said. “There’s
always something new
happening.”
Redstone said that his
decision to own the buildings and real estate rather
than lease when he was
creating his theater chain
proved prescient. “That’s
why I was able to borrow
a lot of money when we
needed it,” he said.
The exec also boasted of
his decision to split CBS
from Viacom, and Milken
noted the irony that CBS —
which was supposed to have
been the slow and steady
company — has been just
as high-growth, if not more,
than has Viacom.
Moonves, in fact,
reminded the guests that
CBS stock was at $3.09
three years ago, while today
it’s above $34. He added
that he “never got any
grief at $3.09” from Redstone. “Sumner’s also there
when you’re not winning,”
Moonves said.
Redstone said he enjoys
watching golf — on CBS,
of course — and offered
his unsolicited prediction
about Tiger Woods: “Tiger
will never make it again.
He’s done.”
Asked what he looks for
when he hires an executive,
Redstone said, “Hard work,
integrity and a relentless
drive to be No. 1. Opportunity never knocks at your
door. You have to go for it.”
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Page 6 of 6
May 3, 2012
business news
From page 5
Warner Bros.
Ups Fritz to
SENIOR VP
By Borys Kit
Suzanne Fritz has been promoted to senior vp domestic publicity at Warner
Bros. Pictures.
Fritz, who joined Warners
as a vp in 2004, is working
on the publicity campaigns
for the studio’s big summer
tentpoles, Dark Shadows and
The Dark Knight Rises, as
well as Ben Affleck’s Argo
and Baz Luhrmann’s adaptation of The Great Gatsby
coming later in the year.
She will continue “to help
create and
execute the
domestic publicity camFritz
paigns for a
wide range of
feature films,”
according to the studio and
will continue to report to
executive vp Juli Goodwin.
Since joining the studio,
Fritz is credited with spearheading the campaigns for
some of the studio’s biggest movies involving heavyhitter filmmakers. The
list includes Christopher
Nolan’s Inception and The
Dark Knight, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed, Affleck’s
The Town and Clint Eastwood’s Gran Torino.
In making the announcement, Warner’s worldwide
marketing president Sue
Kroll called Fritz “one of the
film industry’s sharpest and
most accomplished publicity executives.”
Fritz is a member of the
Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences. Before
joining Warners, she was
head of publicity at Revolution Studios. She also
worked at Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin’s
Centropolis Entertainment
and MGM.
Puss in Boots
Drives DWA in
First Quarter
By Paul Bond
DreamWorks Animation on
Wednesday reported firstquarter earnings of $9.1
million on $136.1 million
in revenue, driven by the
international theatrical
success of Puss in Boots and
strong home video sales of
that title.
Puss in Boots, which has
grossed $554 million at the
worldwide box office thus
far, contributed $73.6 million in revenue during the
second quarter.
In the year-ago quarter,
DWA earned $8.8 million.
Revenue quarter-over-quarter was up 26 percent.
In after-hours trading,
shares of DWA were down
2 percent after rising 2 percent during the regular session to $18.46.
FCC: Comcast
Must Move
News Channel
By Eriq Gardner
The FCC has sided with
Bloomberg in a fight with
Comcast over whether
the media conglomerate favored NBCUniversal’s news networks. In a
decision Wednesday, the
regulatory agency says
Comcast has violated the
“news neighborhooding”
conditions of the agency’s
approval of the NBCUniversal acquisition.
Bloomberg had alleged
that its own business
news network was left
out of a tier of news stations, including CNBC and
MSNBC, and was regulated to the backwaters of
the cable dial. Bloomberg
pointed to 11,000 channel
changes made by Comcast
last year and said there
wasn’t any excuse for its
own station being discriminated against.
On Wednesday, the
FCC’s Media Bureau
agreed with the assessment, finding that Comcast has violated a promise
on “independent” news
channels such as Bloomberg’s. “We find that Comcast is placing a significant
number or percentage of
news and business news
channels substantially
adjacent to one another on
certain headends’ channel
lineups,” the decision read.
As a result, the FCC has
given Comcast 60 days to
put Bloomberg’s station
near the other news stations on some of its cable
systems.
Comcast responded in
a statement: “We respectfully disagree with the
Media Bureau’s interpretation of the ‘neighborhooding’ condition, which
so clearly rewrites the history and any permissible
underlying rationale for
the condition. Since by definition, no ‘discrimination’
against Bloomberg in favor
of CNBC could have taken
place before the NBCUniversal transaction, any retrospective condition on this
subject would have been
arbitrary and capricious.
And there is simply no support in any record for a
four channel definition of a
‘neighborhood.’ ”
Comcast said it intends
to appeal the decision to
the full commission.
Barrack Out
as Canada
Labor Chief
By Etan Vlessing
TORONTO — Industry veteran John Barrack has left
his post as COO and top
labor negotiator for Canadian indie producers.
A spokeswoman for
the Canadian Media Production Association said
Wednesday that Barrack had left the organization “to pursue other
opportunities.”
His sudden departure
follows Norm Bolen unveiling plans to step down
as president and CEO of
the CMPA after the Banff
World Media Festival in
June.
Barrack joined the then
Canadian Film and Television Production Association in 1999 and was lead
negotiator for North American producers during
the 2007 Canadian actors
strike.
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