Warner Bros. President and COO Alan Horn has announced the closure of studio specialty divisions Picturehouse and Warner Independent Pictures today. The striking news follows the recent move to severely scale back New Line Cinema and incorporate it into the WB studio apparatus, cutting hundreds of jobs at the company. "With New Line now a key part of Warner Bros., we're able to handle films across the entire spectrum of genres and budgets without overlapping production, marketing and distribution infrastructures," Horn said, continuing, "We're confident that the spirit of independent filmmaking and the opportunity to find and give a voice to new talent will continue to have a presence at Warner Bros." [Eugene Hernandez]

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The complete press release is available below:

Citing "a March malaise," Variety reports today on the post-strike vibe in Hollywood, noting, "There are significantly fewer TV pilots, budgets for series are being cut back, feature films are being put on hold in fear of a SAG walkout, and the shifts in the TV and film skeds have meant either accelerated workloads or prolonged unemployment. And all this is occurring as everyone is feeling the pinch of an overall economy that’s in or heading into recession."

Announced on Monday, the list of premieres debuting at New York's Film Forum from early May through late August, 2008.

(complete press release available below)

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences President Sid Ganis said late Tuesday night in a statement, "I am relieved that the men and women of the entertainment industry are going back to work and I am ecstatic that the 80th Academy Awards presentation can now proceed full steam ahead with talented writers working on the show, a fantastic array of presenters and performers and, most importantly, the ability for all of our honored nominees to attend without hesitation or discomfort." A press conference is set for Thursday to talk about the details of the upcoming Oscar show.

With word of a pending WGA strike settelment on the horizon, leading New York independent production companies GreeneStreet Films, Killer Films, Open City Films, and This is that corporation have secured interm agreements with the guilds, allowing them to get back to work immediately. Meanwhile, numerous media outlets have reported this weekend that a broader settlement to the strike is imminent. [Eugene Hernandez]

Additional details and quotes are available at indieWIRE.com.

The striking Hollywood writers guild likely will bar its members from working on next month's Grammys telecast, a union spokesman said Tuesday. Solvej Schou reports for Associated Press.

Harvey Weinstein is preparing to announce his company's pact with striking WGA writers, saying -- in the New York Times -- "We need to get people back to work."

Surveying a day of striking, the Hollywood Reporter weighs in with coverage of "bring your star to the picket line," including Sarah Silverman boasting an "AMPTP: I Really Hate You Right Now" sign. Also, word that California's governor Schwarzenegger is trying to negotiate a deal between the studios and the writers.

In Variety, a report that a small number of writers for "The Young and the Restless" have decided to cross the picket line as the strike enters its 9th day.

As the Writers Guild Strike enters its fifth day, Variety asks, in a lead article, "Will producers turn to U.K. writers?"

This afternoon in Los Angeles, the Writers Guild of America announced a strike against the studios and networks that comprise the AMPTP. The industry trades -- Variety and Hollywood Reporter -- indicated that the strike will begin on Monday. The announcement came on the heels of last night's standing room-only meeting of 3,000 Guild members where the negotiating committee recommended the walk out. [Eugene Hernandez]

More at indieWIRE.com.

"The Writers Guild of America is going on strike as early as Monday," reports Variety. "In a lively meeting of 3,000 guild members Thursday night, the WGA's negotiating committee announced its unanimous strike recommendation, a pronouncement that generated an enthusiastic response from the SRO crowd at the Los Angeles Convention Center. The decision also is sure to cause ripple effects within the Directors Guild and the Screen Actors Guild as they negotiate their contracts within coming months."

PRESS RELEASE: The Board of Governors of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has approved rule changes for the 81st Academy Awards that eliminate the multi-city theatrical rollout requirements for feature and short documentaries. These and other changes were recommended to the Board by the Documentary Branch Executive Committee, chaired by Michael Apted.

Maximum Films Distribution chairman Robert Lantos has a announced a three-year Canadian distribution deal with Cinetic Media founder John Sloss, the companies announced Monday night. Under the terms of the pact, Maximum will handle the Candian distribution of films repped by Cinetic.

Additional details are available in indieWIRE's Buzz section.

Variety reports on the departure of Dimension Films president Richard Saperstein: "Ending a drama that took most of the summer to unfold, Richard Saperstein has officially left his post as president of Dimension Films. After two months of emphatic denials that Saperstein had been relieved of his duties by co-chairman Bob Weinstein, Dimension has acknowledged that it has reached the end of the road with the exec."

Magnolia Pictures is launching Magnet, a new label for its genre film productions and acquisitions, distinguising horror, action, comedy and Asian cinema titles from the independent and documentary films released under the Magnolia label. First up under the new banner will be Jeremy Saulnier's "Murder Party," on DVD next month, followed by a new slate of theatrical and DVD releases that will include Hitoshi Matsumoto's "Big Man Japan," Tony Stone's "Severed Ways," Ringo Tam, Johnnie To, and Tsui Hark's "Triangle," Olivier Assayas' "Boarding Gate," and Mark Hartley's "Not Quite Hollywood. [Eugene Hernandez]

More at indieWIRE.com.

In Variety, Michael Fleming reports, "In a $2 million deal, producer Scott Rudin has acquired screen rights to the Robert Graves historical novel 'I, Claudius'. It's expected that 'The Departed' tandem of Leonardo DiCaprio and Oscar-winning scribe William Monahan will become attached; they were part of a rival bid made by Warner Bros."

At Box Office Mojo, a list of theater counts for the upcoming weekend:

Halloween (2007) (MGM (Weinstein)) / 3,472
Balls of Fury (Rogue Pictures) / 3,052
Death Sentence (Fox) / 1,822
Ladron Que Roba A Ladron (Lionsgate) / 340
Self-Medicated (ThinkFilm) / 16
The Nines (Newmarket) / 2
Exiled (Magnolia) / 1
Freshman Orientation (Regent Releasing) / 1

At Box Office Mojo, a list of theater counts for the upcoming weekend:

Superbad (Sony / Columbia) / 2,948
The Invasion (Warner Bros.) / 2,776
The Last Legion (Weinstein Company) / 2,002
Death at a Funeral (MGM) / 260
7 Dias (Xenon Pictures) / 8
The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (Picturehouse) / 5
The 11th Hour (Warner Independent) / 4

In the Hollywood Reporter tonight, a report on financing for Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner's revitalized United Artists, "Completing a long-gestating deal, United Artists has secured $500 million in financing through Merrill Lynch to produce 15-18 films over the next five years."

Veteran agent Ed Limato, who recently left ICM, will join William Morris, according to Variety, which reports today, "In a move that significantly bolsters its talent roster, the William Morris Agency is finalizing a three-year deal that brings Ed Limato and most of his clients to the agency. Limato, who’ll join WMA as an agent, and not in a management role, had been expected to land there since he was stripped of his co-president’s title last month by ICM, and had his lawyers set an Aug. 1 arbitration date to end a 32-year association with the agency. On Monday, an arbitrator freed him from an ICM contract that ran through 2010."

Variety tonight is calling the summer of '07 "one of the best on the books," noting that, "The total number of summer admissions (May 4-Aug. 12) is 526.5 million, up 6% over the same frame last summer." Adding, "All of this is helping to boost year-to-date numbers at the box office, with 2007 running 7% over 2006 and 6% over 2004, the previous record-holder."

Less than a year ago, IFC Entertainment publicly touted a strategic change within the company, saying that IFC Films' preemptive acquisition of John Dahl's "You Kill Me" in Toronto marked a move to release bigger-budget movies. Now, the company is calling that move an experiment and instead pushing a different segment of their business. It has all but abandoned plans to acquire and distribute bigger movies. A theatrical release of Mark Palansky's "Penelope," the Toronto '06 premiere starring Reese Witherspoon which had been scheduled to open this Friday, was recently dropped. With no larger- budget releases on its longterm slate, IFC is instead focusing on its emerging IFC First Take label that simultaneously releases independent and foreign language films in theaters and via cable TV video-on-demand services. [Eugene Hernandez]

Read the full story at indieWIRE.com.

Exiting ICM agent Ed Limato can take his clients with him and set up shop at another agency, Variety reports this evening, citing the ruling of an arbitrator. "The decision ends Limato's 32-year run at the agency, and permits him to find a new place to work as a talent agent," says the Hollywood trade paper, "He will be able to take signature clients Denzel Washington, Mel Gibson, Richard Gere, Steve Martin, Billy Crystal and Liam Neeson with him."

>> Lionsgate Announces Roadside Deal

Lionsgate has announced a passive, minority stake in Roadside Attractions, giving the mini-major rights to Roadside's releases in home entertainment and all ancillary markets. [Eugene Hernandez]

Read more at indieWIRE.com.

Sundance Channel announced today the acquisition of the pay television rights to 12 films (features, documentaries, and shorts) from the 2005 Sundance Film Festival: Gregg Araki's "Mysterious Skin"; Adrienne Weiss' "Love, Ludlow"; Mercedes Moncada Rodríguez' "El Immortal"; Vicente Ferraz's "I am Cuba, the Siberian Mammoth"; David Redmon's "Mardi Gras: Made in China"; Jun Ichikawa's "Toni Takitani"; Stephen Marshall's "This Revolution"; Tim Kirkman's "Loggerheads"; Simone Bitton's "Wall"; plus the short films Susan Kraker and Pi Ware's "The Act" and Miguel Arteta's "Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?". The films are scheduled to premiere on Sundance Channel in 2006. For more information, visit the Sundance Channel website.

The main reason for the box office slump is the quality of the movies themselves, according to a survey of moviegoers' opinions found in Internet chat rooms and posted on message boards. Paul Bond reports in the Hollywood Reporter.

Movie studios typically advertise on television and in newspapers in search of the biggest possible opening-weekend audience. For a new film, "The Constant Gardener," Focus Features is intent on building its audience in a different way: by taking aim at readers of niche Web sites and blogs. Joel Topcik reports in the New York Times (free subscription required to view full article).

Danny Retz has been a Hollywood film editor for nearly three decades. His 50 features include "RoboCop," "Cutthroat Island" and "Collateral Damage." For the last several years, though, steady work has proven elusive. For an increasing number of people working in the movie industry, some of the best jobs no longer carry the "Made in California" label. Over the last two decades, scores of movies have left town in search of the cheapest labor, weakest currencies and best financial incentives. At first, producers fled to Canada. Then they set off for more distant lands, such as Australia, England and, more recently, Eastern Europe. John Horn reports in the Los Angeles Times.

A bumpy ride at the summer box office and signs that booming DVD sales may be slowing have Hollywood studios looking for new ways to win fans as the movie industry faces increased competition. But studio executives say the key to recapturing audiences is to make better films -- an age-old answer in Hollywood -- and industry watchers are divided over whether film and DVD markets truly are weakening. Bob Tourtellotte reports for Reuters.

eff Kwatinetz and his talent management company, the Firm, had set themselves on the road to empire. Lately the question has been: are they marching in circles? Over the last year the Firm, based in Beverly Hills, has seen a string of senior executives depart to strike out on their own or join the ranks of rivals. Jeff Leeds and James Ulmer report in the New York Times (free subscription required to view full article).

One week before the new Picturehouse marketing team will unveil a fall preview of company projects, company president Bob Berney has unveiled the names of key execs in the department. As was announced in Cannes earlier this year, Marian Koltai-Levine and Dennis O’Connor are Executive Vice Presidents of Marketing.

Among other key execs, Nina Baron is SVP of National Publicity while Jennifer Stott is SVP of Publicity and Promotions. Mary Ann Hult has been promoted to VP of National Publicity, Molly Albright has joined as VP of Creative Advertising and Veronica Bufalini is moving to LA to serve as Director of West Coast Publicity. Also on the team are Courtney Tauber and Elizabeth Brambilla, both Managers of Field Operations and Promotions, and Stefan Zorich, Manager of Creative Services.

Struggling under an onslaught of Bollywood movies on black market DVDs, the owners of Pakistan's empty cinema halls are imploring their government to lift a ban on India's wildly popular masala flicks. Movie houses that once saw audiences queue for Pakistan's home-grown 'Lollywood' productions now say they need to screen films made by their once bitter rivals in glitzy Mumbai, the former Bombay, in order to survive. Agence France Presse reports.

Sony Pictures Entertainment must pay $1.5 million to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing the studio of citing a fake movie critic in ads for several films.
Moviegoers who saw the films "Vertical Limit," "A Knight's Tale," "The Animal," "Hollow Man" or "The Patriot" during their original theater runs must file a claim to be eligible for a $5 per ticket reimbursement, lawyer Norman Blumenthal said Tuesday. He represented a group of filmgoers who sued Sony Pictures in 2001. Alex Veiga reports for A.P.

The figures made gloomy reading for movie executives. Even the penguins couldn't cheer them up. Last weekend, like almost every weekend this year, box office income was down on the same period last year. The strong showing of "The March of the Penguins," a documentary about the annual trek made by Emperor penguins in search of mates, now No 10 in the US box office charts, did little to raise the gloom. Dan Glaister reports in The Guardian.

Stylishly shot, brooding, ambiguous and Russian to the core, the 2004 fantasy-action film "Night Watch" has helped ignite a cinema renaissance that is reviving the nation's legendary film production facilities and challenging Hollywood's supremacy in the Russian movie market. Kim Murphy reports in the Los Angeles Times.

Focus International has been expanded with Alison Thompson named president of the division and will be based in the U.K., Focus Features co-presidents David Linde and James Schamus announced Monday night. She is joining the company from Pathé Pictures International. Key execs in the division Allison Silver (VP, international physical production), Tim Spencer (VP of international sales), and Heta Paarte (VP of international marketing), have all added duties as part of the expansion.

Thompson will oversee all international sales, distribution, and publicity activities. She joined Focus from Miramax in 2002. Silver, Spencer and Paarte will all report to her and are based in NYC. The announcement noted that Thompson will work closely with key Focus execs John Lyons (president of production), Jason Resnick (SVP of acquisitions), and Lee Magiday (VP of acquisitions and productions) on all facets of European production and acquisitions.

"We've got a hit on our hands," proclaimed a rep for distributor ThinkFilm, reporting opening weekend box office estimates for the racy new documentary "The Aristocrats". Indeed. The film made a whopping $260,000 on just four screens this weekend in New York and Los Angeles, according to a ThinkFilm estimate reported to indieWIRE a few minutes ago. That's an estimated average of $65,000. (Final numbers will be available tomorrow.)

The unrated film, about a graphic inside joke told among comedians since the Vaudeville days, will expand to 8 - 10 screens in NY and LA this coming Friday and then screen in the top 15 markets in the country beginning August 12th.

In the past year, the highest per screen opening was Fox Searchlight's "I Heart Huckabees" which made more than $100,000 per screen on 4 screens last October, while this summer "March of the Penguins" from Warner Independent made $55,000 per screen on 4 screens in late June. - Eugene Hernandez

At the Cannes Film Festival in May, many U.S. distributors walked away empty-handed, griping all the way home about the overwhelming number of challenging, arty movies that had no chance of making it in the U.S. market. Not everyone agreed—especially not U.K.-based distributor Tartan Films. Matthew Ross takes a look at Tartan Films in the Village Voice.

DreamWorks SKG, the live-action entertainment company co-founded by the director Steven Spielberg, is in talks to be acquired by its longtime partner, NBC Universal, according to two people with knowledge of the negotiations. The news is the latest in a series of twists for DreamWorks, a company co-founded in 1994 by Mr. Spielberg, the music mogul David Geffen and the film executive Jeffrey Katzenberg. More than a decade after opening its doors, DreamWorks has not turned out to be the media giant the founders had hoped it would be. Laura M. Holson reports in the New York Times (free subscription required to view).

Concerns about piracy and a maturing DVD sell-through market dominated the opening session of the 24th annual Video Software Dealers Assn. convention Tuesday. In his state of the industry address, VSDA president Bo Andersen took aim at the growing threat of movie piracy and called on the industry to attack piracy through public education. Erik Gruenwedel reports in Reuters.

indieWIRE Alert: As widely expected within industry circles, Walt Disney Studios has tapped Daniel Battsek, their own Buena Vista International exec, as the new President of Miramax. The move will take effect October 1st following the departure of company founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein.

indieWIRE will publish more on this story in Tuesday's edition.

Miramax veterans Bob and Harvey Weinstein have teamed up with IFC Films to acquire North American rights to the thriller "Unknown." Reuters reports.

Fox Searchlight says it has secured the rights to a film about slain rapper Notorious B.I.G. that is to be produced by the artist's mother and his former managers. The studio is in negotiations with Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day") to direct the biopic. Cheo Hodari Coker, who wrote the biography "Unbelievable: The Life, Death, and Afterlife of the Notorious B.I.G., " has been tapped to write the script, Fox Searchlight announced Tuesday. A.P. reports.

THINKFilm has acquired all North American rights to James Marsh’s Un Certain Regard ’05 world premiere feature “The King” starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Oscar-winner William Hurt. THINKFilm is planning a release in the first quarter of 2006.

Daylight streams through the windows of George Lucas's gleaming new $350 million headquarters, situated conveniently - and to some degree, surprisingly - in the middle of the Presidio, a former Army post on the edge of this city, where the public can mingle beside the Yoda fountain with company employees. Sharon Waxman reports on the new complex in the New York Times (free subscription required to view).