Wednesday May 28, 2008

PROJECTS ANNOUNCED

• Producers David Permut and Steve Binder have acquired screen rights to Alanna Nash’s 2003 book “The Colonel: The Extraordinary Story of Colonel Tom Parker and Elvis Presley.” Permut and Binder will develop a feature titled “The Colonel” based on the book about the man with shadowy origins who reinvented himself as the Svengali behind the world’s most famous entertainer. Parker started his showbiz career as a hustler on the carnival circuit before promoting Minnie Pearl and Eddy Arnold. Parker built Presley into a global music and film star — and took 50% of the spoils.

• In a preemptive deal worth $850,000 against $1.6 million, Touchstone Pictures has sprung big for “Wedding Banned,” a comedy spec script by Jack Amiel and Michael Begler. A long-divorced couple kidnap their daughter on her wedding day to keep her from making the mistake of her life. The divorced parents rekindle their relationship as they elude cops and the angry groom. Mandeville’s David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman will produce with Nicole Rocklin and Blye Faust. Rocklin and Faust developed the project with the scribes.

• “Made of Honor” scribes Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont have signed on to rewrite and direct the teen comedy “Big Man on Campus” for Columbia Pictures. Story kicks off when the most popular girl in school is unexpectedly rejected by the nerdiest guy. Her social status drops, his rises, and the rules of popularity shift for the entire school. Gina Wendkos penned an earlier draft based on her own pitch. Hal Lieberman (“Bridge to Terabithia”) is producing.

STRIKE/ LABOR NEWS

• Even as insiders insisted that a deal was within reach, AFTRA and the majors continued to test the town’s patience by going down to the wire after three weeks of talks. With rival thesp union SAG champing at the bit to resume its negotiations at 10 a.m. today, AFTRA and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Televison Producers had been widely expected to announce a tentative agreement Tuesday. Negotiators had worked for nine consecutive days, including well into evenings in recent sessions, to finalize details. Instead, no deal had emerged as of late Tuesday amid a news blackout. Much of the negotiations have been devoted to a single issue — the companies’ proposal that actors agree to drop the consent requirement for online clips — and momentum has stalled on small details in recent sessions.

TECHNOLOGY/ MULT-PLATFORM CONTENT

• Wetv.com is sporting a clean new look to go with a new focus on exclusive web video. Users can navigate the site by clicking on genre tabs designed to represent stages of a woman’s life including relationships, pets, style & health and fitness. Planned exclusive web series include Hot (as in studly) Coffee Break, Puppy Weddings and She Got Game.

WEBSITES TO WATCH

http://www.imc2.com/csr/ClearSkyMediaTool.aspx

Check out this cool online carbon offset calculator from Clear Sky Media. It helps determine the cost to offset the carbon footprint of a given online media campaign by measuring ad types, file sizes and total impressions.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI

The viral video sensation of the Memorial Day holiday appears to have been the new Pork & Beans music video from Weezer, racking up over 3.5 million views since Friday. How do you ensure viral success in an increasingly crowded space? Cast as many YouTube celebrities as you can get your hands on. They’re all here: Chris “Leave Britney Alone” Crocker, the Chocolate Rain guy, Mr. Numa Numa, the Star Wars kid, even the daffy Miss Teen South Carolina. The band is hoping viral video fame will translate into MP3 sales on Amazon and iTunes. The Pork & Beans single is already available and iTunes is accepting pre-orders for Weezer’s self-titled “Red Album,” due out June 3rd.

SOURCES:

www.variety.com
www.cynopsis.com

Tuesday May 27, 2008

PROJECT UPDATES

Production of troubled indie comedy “Nailed,” starring Jessica Biel and Jake Gyllenhaal, has been shut down for a third time due to financial problems. Below-the-line crews refused to work Thursday. Members of the Intl. Alliance of Theatrical & Stage Employees were ordered by IATSE leaders not to show up at the South Carolina set after not being paid. A person familiar with the situation said production’s expected to resume Thursday in South Carolina. Previously set plans had been for filming to go on to a Thursday-through-Monday work week at that point to accommodate the availability of locations such as the state capitol buildings. IATSE-repped employees also stopped production on May 15 after not being paid, then resumed on Monday. The Screen Actors Guild had ordered its members to stop working on May 9 after film financer Capitol Films failed to deposit enough required money in SAG accounts set up to pay the actors. Capitol Films was not immediately available for comment. IATSE also would not comment. Pic, directed by David O. Russell, began shooting April 15 and is due to wrap in mid-June. Catherine Keener, James Marsden and Tracy Morgan also star. In a previous interview, Capitol Films topper David Bergstein insisted his company was on firm financial footing despite reports about unpaid bills and lawsuits. “Nailed” is produced by Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher through their Red Wagon banner and by Persistent Entertainment. Script by Russell and Kristin Gore, centers on an uninsured woman who goes on a crusade for better health care after a nail is accidentally shot into her head.

ACQUISITIONS/ FESTIVAL NEWS

As the Cannes Film Festival came to a close over the weekend, Sony Pictures Classics picked up North American distribution rights to animated Israeli docu “Waltz With Bashir,” capping a late-hour buying spree by the specialty unit. Michael Barker and Tom Bernard’s Sony Classics also sealed deals for Competition pic “Lorna’s Silence” and Un Certain Regard’s “O’Horten.” In addition, Sony’s specialty arm is expected to close a deal for all rights to James Toback’s Mike Tyson docu “Tyson” in the next few days. For much of the festival, there was a noticeable lack of dealmaking on the part of North American buyers, prompting some to proclaim that the market was dead. A burst of activity by IFC Films and, at the 11th hour, by Sony Pictures Classics changed that perception.

Regent Releasing has acquired distribution rights to ensemble comedy “Kabluey,” starring Lisa Kudrow, Scott Prendergast, Teri Garr, Christine Taylor, Conchata Ferrell, Chris Parnell and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Regent plans to release the film this summer. Prendergast directed from his own script and shot in Austin, Texas. Story centers on a man who’s forced to take a humiliating job as a corporate mascot to help his sister-in-law tend to her toddlers while his brother is off fighting in Iraq. “Kabluey” was produced by Rick Rosenthal through his Whitewater Films banner along with Gary Dean Simpson, Rhoades Rader, Jeff Balis and Doug Sutherland. Sarah Feinberg and Nancy Stephens exec produced.

BUSINESS NEWS

Sydney Pollack, the prolific director, producer and actor whose films tackled a variety of social issues while garnering critical acclaim and earning boffo numbers at the box office, died of cancer Monday afternoon at his home in Pacific Palisades. He was 73. Pollack’s publicist Leslee Dart said he was surrounded by family. Pollack continued to work after his cancer diagnosis, with several of his projects bowing recently or still to premiere.

The opening of Steven Spielberg’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” crystallized into a $311.1 million behemoth at the worldwide box office. Performance marks a triumphant return for the classic action-adventure film franchise after an 19-year slumber, and for topliner Harrison Ford. On the strength of baby boomers and their kids, “Crystal Skull” grossed an estimated $126 million domestically from 4,260 theaters over the long holiday weekend in the second-best Memorial Day bow. Last year’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” ($139.8 million) holds the record. “Crystal Skull” opened Thursday; its five-day domestic haul clocked in at an estimated $151.1 million, according to Rentrak. Overseas, where it began rolling out Wednesday, “Crystal Skull” grossed $160 million through Monday. The weekend international take (through Sunday) of $146 million reps the fifth best international opening of all time.

STRIKE/ LABOR NEWS

With SAG anxiously waiting in the wings, AFTRA and the majors are believed to be near a tentative deal on the union’s primetime contract. Amid a news blackout, neither side issued any official announcement as of Monday evening, but it was understood that AFTRA and the AMPTP had entered the final stages of reaching a three-year agreement. Monday marked the 16th day of negotiations between the two orgs. AFTRA leaders, who have touted their pragmatic approach, had been widely expected to make a deal before the Screen Actors Guild did. SAG is scheduled to resume its talks with the AMPTP on Wednesday. In agreeing to negotiate over the Memorial Day holiday weekend, both AFTRA and the AMPTP had started sending strong signals that they were closing in on a deal. Monday’s session marked the eighth consecutive day of bargaining over the contract, which covers a handful of primetime shows including “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” “Reaper,” “Rules of Engagement” and “‘Til Death.”

TECHNOLOGY/ MULT-PLATFORM CONTENT

USA Network launched a Facebook app around its new show In Plain Site. Users take the role of a U.S. Marshall as the game dynamically pulls public information from a friend’s profile and delivers it into the game as “clues” to see how quickly the player can guess the friend’s identity.

Although it’s early days, signs of an (eventually) thriving mobile advertising market are on the horizon, according to Paul Burns, Director IPTV, Mobile, Broadband at Sympatico MSN at Vidfest’s parallel event, Convergence 2008. To defend his position he ticked off:

Ten (Encouraging) Trends in Mobile Media
1.   Better devices
2.   Faster networks speeds
3.   Cheaper mobile data plans
4.   Increased mobile web traffic
5.   Advertiser demand is increasing
6.   Mobile media is ramping up significantly
7.   Mobile advertising is now possible via text, display or video
8.   Carriers are open to new revenue models
9.   Mobile data plans are beginning to be subsidized by advertising (via data credits)
10. International markets are showing the way
Source: Sympatico MSN

WEBSITES TO WATCH

http://www.thelostring.com/index.html

Feeling the need to strengthen its connection with digitally savvy gen Yr’s, the McDonalds’ interactive marketing team launched the UGC-powered alternative reality game The Lost Ring that has taken on a life of its own. Interactive banners around the world ask consumers Are you in? Trailers tease the audience with pieces of the backstory, which involves a young heroine who wakes up in a parallel universe not knowing who or where she is. What does she do? She sets up a blog to connect with other lost souls and together they begin to piece together clues about “Esperant,” a long lost universal global language that has the power to unite the human race at the summer Olympic Games in Beijing. The beauty of the campaign is that users are doing all the heavy lifting. Fans have launched wikis, video channels and Esperanto translation sites in more than 100 countries. Cleverly, the McDonald’s brand is barely noticeable. The depth and execution of the project is amazing.

SOURCES:

www.variety.com
www.cynopsis.com

Thursday May 22, 2008

PROJECT UPDATES

• Jonathan Demme is taking over from Martin Scorsese as the director of an authorized Bob Marley documentary. Docu, produced by the Marley family’s Tuff Gong Pictures and Steve Bing’s Shangri-La Entertainment, has a target release date of Feb. 6, 2010, the 65th anniversary of Marley’s birth. Fortissimo Films is handling international sales. Scorsese, who announced in February that the untitled pic would be the follow-up to his Rolling Stones concert pic “Shine a Light,” dropped out for scheduling reasons.

ACQUISITIONS/ FESTIVAL NEWS

• For the first time in years, Michael Barker and Tom Bernard’s Sony Pictures Classics might leave the Cannes Film Festival empty-handed. Sony Classics is known for being bullish on foreign-language fare, and has bought two or three films out of Cannes annually. Last year, Bernard and Barker bought “The Counterfeiters” and “The Band’s Visit.” They’re not the exception. Among American studio specialty arms and indie distribs, this year’s fest has been notably lean on deal-making. Despite plenty of advance buzz, James Gray’s “Two Lovers” and Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” are still up for sale.

• Music Box Films has puckered up for domestic rights to Emmanuel Mouret’s Gallic romantic comedy “Shall We Kiss.” Mouret (“Change of Address”) wrote, directed and co-stars in the cause-and-effect tale of a kiss on multiple couples. Plans are for a late summer release. Virginie Ledoyen, Julie Gayet, Michael Cohen, Frederique Bel and Stefano Accorsi also star. Deal, Mouret’s first with a U.S. distrib, was sealed in Cannes by Music Box partner William Schopf and TF1’s Dimitri Stephanides.

• IFC Films has devoured domestic rights to tyro writer-director Steve McQueen and writer Enda Walsh’s drama “Hunger.” Pic had its world preem in Cannes as Un Certain Regard opener and is a Camera d’Or contender. Michael Fassbender and Liam Cunningham star. “Hunger” picks up in the aftermath of the 1981 IRA hunger strike led by Bobby Sands and takes a look at life behind bars in the Maze Prison in Northern Ireland. IFC has been particularly hungry at this year’s fest, snapping up rights to seven titles so far.

BUSINESS NEWS

• Filmmakers Mark and Michael Polish have formed Prohibition Pictures. To launch the shingle, they’ve lined up financing for two features they’ve co-written, which will shoot back to back starting next week. The siblings start with “Manure,” a comedy about manure salesmen in 1960s heartland America that reteams them with their “Astronaut Farmer” star Billy Bob Thornton. Tea Leoni and Kyle MacLachlan also star in the film, which begins production Tuesday. Days after the film wraps July 14, the brothers will begin production on “Stay Cool,” a comedy that will star Winona Ryder, Sean Astin and Chevy Chase. The pair co-wrote the scripts, and Mark Polish will be a featured thesp in both films. They will partner in Prohibition Pictures with longtime collaborator Jonathan Sheldon, financier-producer Ken Johnson and his partner-producer Ja’net DuBois, who has invested in the company. The Polish brothers will produce the films with Johnson, Sheldon and DuBois, with Nick Byassee serving as associate producer.

STRIKE/ LABOR NEWS

• Hopes for the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists closing a primetime deal with the majors soon have started to vanish, with a June 30 contract expiration looming. The majors held their 11th day of contract negotiations Wednesday with talks slated to resume today amid a news blackout at the headquarters of the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. Expectations had been high that AFTRA – with only seven shows to cover — would have wrapped up a deal before this week and put pressure on SAG to make a deal when it comes back to the table next week. Instead, AFTRA took a stance this week mirroring the Screen Actors Guild and declared that actors must still be asked for their consent for clips of their work to be used online. That’s significantly lowered expectations of a deal coming any time soon. Studios and broadcast networks can use clips for promotional purposes but are required to negotiate with the performers when clips are re-used for entertainment. The companies have asserted that there’s plenty of potential coin for actors via developing a market for clips to compete with the massive amounts of pirated footage on the Web.

INDUSTRY MOVES

• Hutch Parker, vice chairman of the 20th Century Fox Film Group, has been named chairman of Fox-based New Regency alongside Bob Harper. Parker will end a 13-year run as a Fox exec when he begins the new job in mid-June. At Fox, he had a hand in such recent successes as “X-Men,” “Night at the Museum,” “Borat,” “I, Robot,” “The Day After Tomorrow,” “Alien vs. Predator,” “Dodgeball,” “Fantastic Four” and “Master and Commander.”

TECHNOLOGY/ MULT-PLATFORM CONTENT

• Michael Eisner divulged some details about Vuguru’s next big online series. (This one will launch during the 50-webisode run of Foreign Body, a prequel to the Robin Cook hospital thriller about medical tourism set in India, set to launch May 27.) Back on Topps stars Randy and Jason Sklar, former hosts of ESPN’s Cheap Seats, as two of a group of executives vying to succeed the fictional founder of their company, Marvin Topps. The yarn is constructed to synergize with Topps trading cards, acquired by Eisner last year.

• Newly renamed and reorganized KIT Digital (formerly ROO) will announce the acquisition of digital video content creator Kamera today, adding mobile content to its suite of IPTV solutions for the first time. Kamera offers video content to over 100 clients, including 40+ mobile operators and 70+ broadband media publishers, enabling companies such as Vodafone, MSN, Orange, Telefonica, O2, Hutchinson and China Mobile to deliver IPTV channels and content to their customers over mobile and online networks.

• MTV will produce an array of VOD extras around films nominated for MTV Movie Awards this year for affiliates including Comcast, Time Warner, Cox and Charter. Look for making of featurettes behind-the-scenes clips, music videos, etc. There will also be a reprise of the best movie spoofs online UGC contest as well as the top nominated films from mtvU’s Best Film On Campus.

• RDF Digital is producing original webisodes based on RDF’s faux Japanese game show format Banzai, which will have an exclusive home on MySpaceTV for the first 30 days before being syndicated to popular U.S. platforms YouTube, Hulu, MetaCafe and Dailymotion. The show, which has aired on Fox, USA, Comedy Central and G4 in the U.S., has attracted an array of celebrity guests including Angelina Jolie, Kelsey Grammar and Bill Murray.

• Social entertainment producers Miles Beckett and Greg Goodfried, creators of LG15 and KateModern, look to branch out into a variety of interactive genres in upcoming EQAL projects for CBS including comedy, drama and non-scripted series, the two said in an interview. (In the meantime, the deal has provided enough funds to allow them to move their workspace from their living rooms to an actual LA office space.) Miles, head writer on both projects, did not rule out more shadowy, conspiracy-themed material he admits to gravitating toward. The point after all is to engage the audience and nothing lights up a chat board or motivates a wiki contributor like a good conspiracy yarn. Also expect more strong female characters. More than 65% of the fans that follow their shows are women.

WEBSITES TO WATCH

http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/stonehenge-decoded-3372/Overview#tab-stonehenge-theories

Spinal Tap fans have to check this out. Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) pontificates about his theories on Stonehenge in a series of brilliant viral videos to promote Nat Geo’s Stonehenge Decoded special, premiering Sunday, June 1 at 9 pm. There’s even a puzzle game created by Arkadium that reveals facts about the monument, which continues to fascinate hippies the world over. Nigel himself doesn’t watch the channel – it’s too difficult for him. “They should do puppets shows,” he suggests.

SOURCES:

www.variety.com
www.cynopsis.com

Wednesday May 21, 2008

PROJECTS ANNOUNCED

• Relativity Media has bought tyro scribe Wendy Diane Miller’s untitled thriller spec. Story centers on a college student who takes on a summer internship and finds himself trapped in a dangerous affair with the boss’s wife. Michael De Luca is producing via his Sony-based De Luca Prods. banner. Relativity’s Ryan Kavanaugh and Tucker Tooley are also producing. De Luca Prods.’ Alissa Phillips will serve in some producing capacity. Luber/Roklin Entertainment’s Stephen Crawford, who developed the project with Miller, will exec produce alongside colleague Matt Luber. Untitled thriller marks Miller’s first sale.

• Sony Pictures Entertainment has won out in spirited bidding for the ’30s comicstrip “Flash Gordon,” negotiating with Hearst for the rights to make a live-action film. Breck Eisner (“Sahara”) is attached to direct. Neal Moritz will produce through his Sony-based Original Films banner. Deal being negotiated is for high six figures against seven figures if the film gets made. “Flash Gordon” was turned into a 1980 film that starred Sam Jones. Hearst Corp.’s King Features Syndicate optioned the property to Universal four years ago, with “The Mummy” director Stephen Sommers and his partner Bob Ducsay to produce. Those rights reverted back to Hearst. Eisner had been attached to direct that version of the movie. When the rights reverted, he teamed with Moritz. Eisner will also exec produce.

• Summit Entertainment will produce a remake of fantasy thriller “Highlander” with the aim of kick-starting the franchise. Summit’s signed the “Iron Man” writing team of Art Marcum and Matt Holloway to script, with plans to expand on the original pic’s premise of immortals battling each other for a mysterious prize. Company’s aiming to go into production next year.

• Spike Lee is set to shoot a feature-length documentary about Michael Jordan. Helmer told a Cannes crowd that he hopes to bring the basketball legend to the fest with the pic next year. The NBA is financing the docu, with Lee’s 40 Acres & a Mule Filmworks shingle producing.

• John Woo will direct “1949″ as soon as he has finished his epic “Red Cliff.” Romancer “1949″ is a $40 million Chinese-language epic to be produced by Woo and Terence Chang’s Lion Rock, with Fortissimo Films handling worldwide rights outside China. Based on true events at the end of WWII and the final years of the Chinese Civil War, pic will star Chang Chen and Korea’s Song Hye-kyo. Wang Hui-ling (“Lust, Caution”) penned the screenplay.

• DreamWorks has acquired from Tokyo Broadcasting System the remake rights to the Japanese box office hit “Yomigaeri” (“Resurrection”). Based on a novel by Shinji Kajio, “Yomigaeri” centers on a government official who is sent to a rural town to investigate a child who, after vanishing for 60 years, returns to his mother not having aged at all. William Nicholson is writing the screenplay.

PROJECT UPDATES

• Universal Pictures has acquired “Hater,” David Moody’s 2006 novel. The adaptation will be produced by Mark Johnson and Guillermo del Toro. The thriller is about an epidemic of random violence in which ordinary people strike lethally without warning or remorse. Book will be adapted for the screen by Glen Mazzara (FX’s “The Shield”). Pic will be developed under the first-look deal that del Toro made at U when the studio committed to “Hellboy 2.”

BUSINESS NEWS

• Lionsgate and Eros Intl., the leading distributor of Indian movies, have set up a joint venture spanning distribution and production in India and North America. Initial aim of the alliance is to better exploit existing slates and library content and to put more volume through the two companies’ respective distribution networks. Production, likely to involve movies in the $10 million-$20 million range, will follow.

STRIKE/ LABOR NEWS

• Forget about any quick, easy deal for SAG when bargaining resumes next week. SAG leaders are warning that labor peace isn’t at hand any time soon — though they continue to avoid mentioning going on strike once the current feature-primetime deal expires June 30 and haven’t yet scheduled a strike authorization vote. Instead, Hollywood’s likely facing a tough slog for several weeks.

INDUSTRY MOVES

• Screen Gems has upped Glenn Gainor to head of physical production. Gainor will oversee all Screen Gems films from pre-production through post-production. He will report to Gary Martin, prexy of production administration at Columbia Pictures. Gainor most recently oversaw production on “This Christmas” and “First Sunday,” as well as upcoming pics including “Lakeview Terrace” and “Armored.” Move coincides with Screen Gems’ mandate to increase film production to eight titles per year

TECHNOLOGY/ MULT-PLATFORM CONTENT

• CBS content will find its way on the Hulu portal after all, sort of. The venture announced a wave of new distribution partners including TVGuide, Break.com, Zap2it, BuddyTV, Flixter, myYearbook and the CBS/CNET-owned TV.com. Nielsen Online’s April video streaming numbers made Hulu #1 among TV station sites where users watched 63.2 million videos and spent an average of 129.3 minutes per month. The fact that it got to #1 isn’t surprising – having the advantage of two network suppliers instead of one is quite an advantage – but the speed it got there is impressive, as April was its first full month in operation to the public.

• A group of IFC Films movies will make their digital debut available for rent or purchase on Amazon’s Unbox service including Cristian Mungiu’s 2007 Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days; Alfonso Cuaron’s Oscar nominated Y Tu Mama Tambien, Susanne Bier’s Oscar-nominated After the Wedding, Patrice Leconte’s My Best Friend; and Todd Graff’s Camp.

• Netflix has rolled out the device that will allow its 8.2 million DVD rental service subscribers to rent movies the digital way. It’s made by a company called Roku in nearby Saratogo, CA, known more for its online music players. The good news is that it’s cheap; at $99 it’s the cheapest of the last-10-feet boxes sold by far. The bad news is that it looks like half of a Scientific Atlanta cable box circa 1985. Also Netflix’s digital library (about 10,000 movies and shows) has a lot of catching up to do reach the breath of its DVD library (100,000 titles.)

WEBSITES TO WATCH

http://www.redlasso.com/

One of the fastest growing blogger tool sites over the past few weeks has been redlasso.com, providing a one-stop resource for embeddable national and local news clips. (It went from private beta to some 24 million uniques in one month). The interface is pretty basic – searches rely on the standard metadata stored on each clip. And you can only search raw footage from the past two weeks. But what a handy service for self made pundits who don’t want to spend all day on YouTube sifting through junk. However, it turns out redlasso never got permission to mine the video news data the site is sourcing. NBC, Fox News, Fox Television Stations and CBS jointly wrote a cease and desist letter asking the start-up to stop or else. The move demonstrates how quickly media companies are now willing to move to protect their assets, even if it comes at the price of alienating influential bloggers.

SOURCES:

www.variety.com
www.cynopsis.com

Tuesday May 20, 2008

PROJECTS ANNOUNCED

• Mandate Pictures has preemptively bought “Broken City,” the first screenplay from Brian Tucker. Set against the backdrop of contemporary New York, story centers a former cop-turned-P.I., who, while attempting to turn his life around, finds himself thrust in the middle of the seedy backroom politics of a corrupt mayoral election. Mandate is aiming to attach a director and cast in the summer

• CBS Films has picked up “Legally Blonde” scribe Karen McCullah Lutz’s romantic comedy spec “Permission.” Story revolves around a married couple in their 30s who give each other permission to sleep with someone else while on separate vacations. Lutz and longtime writing partner Kirsten Smith have penned such female-centric laffers as “She’s the Man” and “10 Things I Hate About You” as well as the upcoming “The Ugly Truth” and “The House Bunny.” The sale of “Permission,” which Lutz wrote independently, comes on the heels of another solo effort sale, “Long Time Gone,” which she is producing alongside Seth Jaret and Rainstorm Entertainment. Jaret and Lutz will produce “Permission.

• Olympus Pictures and Rob Morrow’s Bits & Pieces Picture Co. are producing a feature version of Robert Charles Wilson’s sci-fi thriller “Spin.” Olympus exec Leslie Urdang, who brought the property in, will produce. The novel, which won the Hugo Award, centers on a young scientist trying to save humanity from the impending apocalypse of a “spin” that has enveloped the Earth amid realization that salvation may be found with the discovery of life on Mars. “Spin” is the first of a planned trilogy, published by Tor Books. “Axis” was released last year and will be followed by “Vortex.” Wilson’s other works include Hugo Award nominees “Blind Lake,” “The Chronoliths” and “Darwinia” (1998).

PROJECT UPDATES

• Lasse Hallstrom is set to direct Channing Tatum in “Dear John,” a Nicholas Sparks book adaptation that starts production in September. Screen Gems and Relativity Media have come aboard the film, which had been developed by Temple Hill partners Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey for New Line as part of their first-look producing deal. It is one of the first high-profile titles to be put into turnaround since New Line was downsized. Bowen and Godfrey are producing. Relativity’s Ryan Kavanaugh and Tucker Tooley will exec produce. Tatum stars as a soldier who, while home on leave, falls for a conservative college student. Relativity will fully finance the film, while Screen Gems will distribute domestically and in a few other territories.

• John Cusack has signed on to topline Roland Emmerich’s apocalyptic thriller “2012” for Columbia Pictures. “Redbelt” star Chiwetel Ejiofor also is in talks to join the big-budget epic, whose title refers to the end days of human civilization as foretold by the ancient Mayan calendar. Story kicks off with a global cataclysm, which brings an end to the world as we know it, and chronicles the heroic struggle of the survivors. Emmerich and Harald Kloser penned the screenplay, which Sony bought in February. Shooting will begin in July in Los Angeles, barring a Screen Actors Guild strike. Mark Gordon, Kloser and Larry Franco are producing. Emmerich is exec producing.

ACQUISITIONS/ FESTIVAL NEWS

• IFC has snapped up North American rights to “The Chaser,” the Korean actioner that Warner Bros. has already purchased for remake. Other major territories sold Monday by sales agent Fine Cut were Japan, where pic was co-acquired by the Klockworx Co. and Asmik Ace, and the U.K., where it was sought out by Metrodome. IFC will likely release the film late this year or early in 2009.

BUSINESS NEWS

• European Union theaters are screening an increasing number of films that are neither local nor Hollywood productions, according to the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO). Such “third-country” films made up 14.7% of features distributed in at least one EU state in 2002, rising steadily to 21.2% in 2006. The impact on admissions is more modest. From 2002 to 2006, third-country films accounted for just 2.3% of the 3.6 billion admissions analyzed by the EAO. However, the share in admissions rose from 1.6% in 2002 to 3.3% in 2006. While Asian features are by far the most numerous third-country films appearing on EU screens, the box office draw is more mixed. George Miller’s “Happy Feet,” from Australia, topped the ranking by admissions during the period, with 8.7 million tickets sold. Canada also scored highly with pics such as “Silent Hill” and “Resident Evil: Apocalypse.”

STRIKE/ LABOR NEWS

• In a surprise development, AFTRA has joined the Screen Actors Guild in declaring that actors must still be asked for their consent for clips of their work to be used online. With both performers unions putting their feet down on the clips issue, Monday’s announcement probably means the town’s ongoing uncertainty over labor will linger for the foreseeable future. “A resolution may not be quick or easy,” warned AFTRA president Roberta Reardon in a message to members. The move by the American Federation of Television & Radio Artists came as its primetime negotiations with the majors were in their ninth day amid a news blackout. Talks will resume this morning

INDUSTRY MOVES

• Shyama Friedenson has joined Paramount Vantage as senior VP of international marketing, reteaming with Vantage prexy Nick Meyer. Friedenson was most recently prexy of international marketing for Lionsgate. Meyer was prexy of Lionsgate Intl. before ankling to join Vantage.

SOURCES:

www.variety.com
www.cynopsis.com