Monday April 21, 2008

BOX OFFICE

FILM………………………………………. GROSS
1 Forbidden Kingdom, The ………………… $20,870,000
2 Forgetting Sarah Marshall……………….. $17,347,600
3 Prom Night…………………………………… $9,100,000
4 88 Minutes…………………………………… $6,800,000
5 Nim’s Island…………………………………. $5,650,000
6 21………………………………………………. $5,500,000
7 Street Kings…………………………………. $4,000,000
8 Horton Hears A Who……………………… $3,500,000
9 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed…… $3,152,896
10 Leatherheads…………………………….. $3,021,840

PROJECTS ANNOUNCED

• Columbia has bought an untitled buddy-comedy pitch from scribes Jon Lucas and Scott Moore’s for $700,000 against $1.5 million. Neal Moritz is producing through his Sony-based Original Film shingle. “They came in for a general meeting, and I said I’ll buy it,” said Moritz. Moritz said he tried to buy the duo’s spec “The Hangover,” which Warner Bros. bought for $2 million just before the WGA strike. Lucas and Moore, who will serve as exec producers on the project, also wrote the Matthew McConaughey-Jennifer Garner starrer “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past,” currently shooting in Boston. Last week, Moritz reupped his first-look deal with the studio through 2012. His recent films for the studio include “Prom Night” and “Vantage Point.”

• Rob Schneider, Tania Raymonde, Kristin Cavallari, Rumer Willis and Ryan Merriman will star in indie ensemble comedy “Wild Cherry” for Redwood Palms, Rampage Entertainment and Farpoint Films. Dana Lustig will helm from Chris Charney’s script; shooting starts May 7 in Winnipeg. Gavin Wilding is producing with Kyle Bornais; Jesse Kennedy, Mike DiManno and Scott Reid exec produce with Evan Tylor. Schneider will play the father of a high school senior who’s decided to lose her virginity to her boyfriend, the football’s team kicker. But when she finds out the boyfriend’s only interested in her for the sake of the team’s “bang book,” she and her best friends plan their revenge inspired by the Greek play “Lysistrata.”

• Michel Shane and Anthony Romano (”I Robot,” “Catch Me if You Can”) are developing “Lifeboat 13,” based on the WWII story of the four chaplains who gave their lives during the 1943 sinking of the Dorchester after it was torpedoed by a U-boat. Shane and Romano have acquired the screenplay by Michael Justiz and Steven Sikes, based on a story by Justiz, Sikes and David Fox. The script’s inspired by the story of a rabbi, a Catholic priest and two Protestant ministers, as well as an African-American Coast Guardsman, who gave up their life jackets as the Dorchester sunk off the Greenland coast in 36-degree waters.

PROJECT UPDATES

• Lakeshore Entertainment has found its leading lady and villain for sequel “Crank 2: High Voltage,” starring Jason Statham as hitman Chev Chelios. Amy Smart will reprise her role as Chelios’ girlfriend and Clifton Collins Jr. will play his nemesis. Bai Ling is joining the cast as well, along with Dwight Yoakam and Efren Ramirez, who are both returning from the original.

• Eric Winter (”Brothers & Sisters”) has been cast in “The Ugly Truth,” alongside Katherine Heigl. He’ll play a surgeon who becomes infatuated with Heigl’s character. Winter will appear on CBS’ “Moonlight” in coming weeks and he’s on the bigscreen in “Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay.”

• Justin Bartha has signed on to star opposite Catherine Zeta-Jones in romantic comedy “The Rebound,” lensing in Gotham. He’ll play Zeta-Jones’ younger love interest. Bartha was last seen in Disney’s “National Treasure: Book of Secrets” and he just wrapped on “Shoe at Your Foot.”

• A $250,000 Aston Martin ordered for the latest Bond movie, “Quantum of Solace,” crashed Saturday in spectacular style before the cameras even started rolling. The car was being delivered to a set on the edge of Italian beauty spot Lake Garda when the driver lost control on a tight bend and plunged through a safety barrier. Lake Garda’s mirror-smooth waters may have been briefly stirred, but in true James Bond style, the vehicle’s Brit driver was hardly shaken. Fraser Dunn, 29, calmly freed himself from the wreck and swam ashore. He suffered minor injuries and was due to be released from the hospital Sunday . “Solace,” the latest film in the 007 franchise, is due for release this fall.

BUSINESS NEWS

• There is officially trouble in Sumner-ville. Capping a tense period when CBS and Viacom have acted more like rivals than corporate cousins with a common chairman in Sumner Redstone, Viacom announced Sunday a pay-TV joint venture with Lionsgate, MGM and Paramount Pictures. The as-yet-unnamed channel, which will have a robust online and on-screen video on demand component, will launch in fall 2009 and be based in Viacom’s Times Square headquarters. A chief exec has been hired but that announcement will be made in the coming days once the ink is dry. Given that Par, Lionsgate and MGM all have output deals at CBS-run Showtime that were due to expire, the venture is a direct blow to the pay cable net, which has been gaining traction with shows like “Dexter” and “Weeds.” In recent interviews, Showtime CEO Matt Blank has spoken of the “diminished value” of firstrun films and has said library titles and new series would continue to be his main focus. In an interview Sunday, Blank told Daily Variety that Showtime had been unwilling to pay the price the three studios were asking for their pics.

• It’s not game over yet for Electronic Arts’ $2 billion bid to acquire Take-Two Interactive. On Friday, EA extended until May 16 the deadline for shareholders to accept its offer. It had been set to expire that day. As of Friday, only about 8% of Take-Two shares had been offered to EA at the $26 price. EA slightly reduced its bid to $25.74 to reflect new shares being issued to ZelnickMedia, the consulting company that’s running Take-Two via executive chairman Strauss Zelnick and CEO Ben Feder, among other top execs. Zelnick had previously said EA’s bid was the wrong price at the wrong time. EA’s extension eliminates the latter concern, since it goes well past the launch of “Grand Theft Auto IV” on April 29. Zelnick accused EA of trying to lowball Take-Two shareholders before the full value of the hugely anticipated game became apparent when it went on sale. It has since been assumed “GTA IV” will gross approximately $400 million worldwide in its first week (Daily Variety, April 16). However, the Take-Two topper maintained his concern about price on Friday. “Take-Two’s board of directors has maintained from the beginning, and continues to believe, that EA’s proposal vastly undervalues our company,” he said. “It undervalued the company at $26 per share, and it certainly undervalues Take-Two at $25.74.” He also noted that at Take-Two’s annual meeting on Thursday, shareholders voted overwhelmingly to re-elect the board of directors and to approve their new compensation plan. However, EA has objected to the stock grant that ZelnickMedia received, since only shareholders of record before Feb. 19 — five days before EA’s bid went public — were allowed to vote. Analysts estimate that more than half of the vidgame publisher’s shares have been sold since then as their price skyrocketed to just under $26 once the offer became known. EA is apparently betting that a sizable number of the new shareholders won’t be happy about ZelnickMedia’s significant and widely criticized raise, or that at least 42% of them will sour on the company in the next month for other reasons.

• Nu Image/Millennium Films plans to break ground on a new studio in Shreveport, La., on Tuesday. The company said it will build on 6.7 acres and eventually expand to 20 acres with three soundstages, production offices, a mill and a prop house. Nu Image/Millennium noted that it has already shot five films in Shreveport: Jessica Simpson films “Blonde Ambition” and “Major Movie Star”; “Mad Money”; “My Mom’s New Boyfriend”; and “Cleaner.” Nu Image/Millennium said the Shreveport studio will accommodate up to six productions at any given time and employ up to 500 production personnel.

• Dubai is getting a dose of superhero power following the announcement that Marvel Entertainment has inked a deal with U.A.E.-based real estate company Tatweer to build the first-ever Marvel Super Heroes Theme Park. Attraction, which will be completed by 2012 and will span over 4.5 million square feet, will feature the likes of Iron Man, Spiderman and the X-Men across a series of themed rides. It will be based at Tatweer’s three billion sq feet entertainment destination Dubailand, which has also inked mega bucks deals with Dreamworks Animation and Universal Studios to offer a plethora of branded rides using characters from their franchises. Marvel deal was originally announced last year with fellow U.A.E.-based real estate developer Al-Ahli but Tatweer, which is fast becoming the dominant studio broker in the region, have now taken over control of the project. “The decision to move over to Tatweer’s Dubailand is strategic and is aimed at positioning Marvel Super Heroes theme park in the world’s most diverse leisure and entertainment destination.”

• Spike TV, chalking up the best young-male demos in its history last week for multiple runs of various “Star Wars” movies, has grabbed another movie franchise, buying all four “Rambo” pictures starring Sylvester Stallone, including the latest incarnation released earlier this year. Lionsgate has sold the 2008 “Rambo” to Spike for $4.5 million, in a deal that includes four library titles, two starring Jan Claude Van Damme (”Kickboxer” and “Replicant”) and one with Steven Seagal (”Ticker”) plus “National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.” Spike has picked up the first three “Rambo” movies from CBS TV Distribution. “Rambo: First Blood,” premieres May 24. “Rambo: First Blood Part II” becomes available in January 2010. In a chronology switch, the 2008 “Rambo” will be available sooner (June 2010) than “Rambo III” (March 2011). But the network plans to schedule multiple marathons of two or more of the titles early in the next decade. Spike has bought the fourth “Rambo” under a four-year contract, giving Lionsgate the right to sell a window or two within the four years to another network.

STRIKE NEWS/ LABOR ISSUES

• Will the Screen Actors Guild go on strike when its feature-primetime contract expires June 30? With Hollywood still unnerved by the possibility of a second strike in less than seven months, the answer will become much clearer this week. SAG’s negotiations with the majors will become much more serious after a week of laying the groundwork at meetings at the AMPTP headquarters in Encino. SAG leaders have insisted repeatedly they don’t want to strike. And some muted optimism has emerged from the first five days of bargaining as the talks remained cordial, with no public sniping. But the two sides remain far apart on key issues and will have to start tackling those areas this week, when the guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers are scheduled to meet every day through Saturday. Negotiators met for five straight days last week before recessing Saturday afternoon and announcing that they would resume talks today. As with previous end-of-the-day announcements, both sides kept a lid on details and whether any progress has been achieved. But it’s believed that much of the focus is on new-media compensation — which dominated the negotiations on DGA and WGA contracts earlier this year. Though the congloms have indicated that they will only sign a deal that follows the patterns set in the directors and writers pacts, SAG president Alan Rosenberg has insisted that SAG needs a better new-media deal and a sweetened DVD pact. What’s unclear is how hard SAG will press its positions since its members who work on TV shows took a hit during the 100-day WGA strike and may be reluctant to go out again.

• In an angry post-strike blast, the WGA has publicly identified 28 writers — most of them working on soap operas — who resigned from the guild during the work stoppage by filing for financial core status. The list includes several winners of daytime Emmys — Paula Cwikly (”The Young and the Restless,” “As the World Turns”), Hogan Sheffer (”Days of Our Lives,” “As the World Turns), Barbara J. Esensten (”The Guiding Light”), Dena Higley (”One Life to Live”) and John F. Smith (”The Young and the Restless,” “The Bold and the Beautiful”). Cwikly, Sheffer and Smith have also won WGA Awards. The disclosure came Friday in a letter to members from WGA West president Patric Verrone and WGA East prexy Michael Winship, who opened the letter by citing the high level of compliance with strike rules among the 10,500 WGA members.

INDUSTRY MOVES

• Rising NBC News star Richard Engel has been upped to chief foreign correspondent for the Peacock. Engel, previously senior Middle Eastern correspondent and Beirut bureau chief, will have an expanded role on “NBC Nightly News,” MSNBC and other NBC News platforms.

• Richard Quest, a CNN on-air personality with an outre style of reporting, made some outre news himself over the weekend as he was arrested inside New York’s Central Park with a small amount of methamphetamine in his pocket. Cops nabbed Quest, 46, at 3:40 on Friday morning near 64th Street, initially for violating the park’s overnight curfew. News reports stated that Quest told police he had meth in his pocket. According to the New York Times, “The police (then) searched him and recovered a small amount of methamphetamine in a Ziploc bag.” By Friday afternoon, news of the bust was all over the Internet. Then the New York Post offered up some salacious details: Not only did Quest have meth in his pocket but also “a rope around his neck that was tied to his genitals, and a sex toy in his boot,” according to the tabloid. “It wasn’t immediately clear what the rope was for,” the paper said. Quest was charged with loitering and for possession of a controlled substance. His attorney said that Quest was not aware that Central Park had a curfew from 1-6 a.m., according to news reports. Quest was said to have agreed to attend six months of drug counseling in exchange for the likelihood that the charges against him would eventually be dismissed. Having spent most of Friday in jail, Quest was later released without bail.

TECHNOLOGY/ MULTI- PLAFORM CONTENT

• Former Fox TV exec Sandy Grushow has joined with “Bend It Like Beckham” producer Deepak Nayar to create Filmaka.com, a web-based movie studio that is attracting aspiring filmmakers with promises of big coin for their feature films or series pilots. Filmaka.com hosts a series of contests judged by a jury that includes Wim Wenders, Paul Schrader and Werner Herzog. The entrants submit a fee and a three-minute short, of which Grushow said the site has received 3,600 from 95 countries. Filmaka.com hosts the shorts for the curious, but when the contest is over, Grushow and Nayar will produce the winner’s feature film with coin “in the range of $2 million to $3 million.” Though the studio hasn’t advertised its services, the volume of submissions has already been large enough for Filmaka to start producing Web series — Grushow said one of the shows has 12 episodes in the can. The series are funded cheaply — between $700 and $4,000 per episode. Filmaka doesn’t exist in a vacuum; Grushow touts partnerships with William Morris, which is managing the company itself and has first rights on the talent that Grushow and Nayar decide to produce. The site also hosts a competition to produce a $40,000 pilot for FX. Should FX choose to pick up the series, Grushow and Nayar would become exec producers. The site’s boilerplate for the competish emphasizes the style of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” as template for prospective TV directors.

WEBSITES TO WATCH

http://video.google.com/

Google rolled out a new video search interface enabling users to toggle between list view, grid view and TV view as they search for videos or browse the most viewed, most shared, most blogged about or movers & shakers.

http://www.bebo.com/Profile.jsp?MID=367137231&MemberId=4832408676

Chicagoan Cara Cioni, 24, was chosen to represent the US in Bebo’s online interactive travel series The Gap Year, produced with Endemol UK. The show pushed off on May 21.

http://abc.go.com/primetime/lost/index?pn=lostscape

ABC.com launched a cool new Flash-based minisite called Lostscape to catch viewers up on what’s happened so far in Lost. Users can click on up to 34 items strewn across the beach to pull up different clips from past episodes, along with text-based background info. Each item also includes a link back allowing viewers to watch the entire episode. Dedicated Lost fans who find all 34 items will be entered into a contest to win an all-expenses paid trip to Comic-Con.

SOURCES:

www.variety.com
www.cynopsis.com