I confess: I am at SXSW wishing I had time to watch the DVDs for The Pacific that HBO delivered the day I left town. At $200 million (more than Rome), the ten-part series is the most expensive HBO has ever made, and earned Tom Hanks the cover of Time (like HBO, a Time Warner company). It’s the flip side to Hanks and Spielberg’s brilliant and harrowing World War II series Band of Brothers, which broke out Damian Lewis.
Here’s an extended trailer. A featurette is on the jump.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Steven Spielberg, Headliners, Tom Hanks, TV, HBO on March 13, 2010 at 4:21am PST | Permalink | Comments (1)
It looks like DreamWorks and Steven Spielberg are heating up on Doug Wright’s script for a planned biopic of composer George Gershwin. Several biopics—including Tony Kushner’s Lincoln and a still-in-development look at the life of Martin Luther King—are in the works, and there’s also the ten-part family adventure The 39 Clues, written by Jeff Nathanson, which Spielberg could decide to take on. But clearly, the DreamWorks filmmaker is excited about Gershwin. The script is set in the 30s during the period when the songwriter, hugely popular, stretched himself by turning to more serious Broadway musicals.
Mike Fleming reports that Spielberg has even chosen his Gershwin: Zachary Quinto, hot off TV’s Heroes and the Star Trek reboot and ready to step up to the next level as an actor.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Steven Spielberg, Genres, Biopics on January 31, 2010 at 5:06pm PST | Permalink | Comments (2)
It’s deja vu all over again. A studio in management upheaval. A new studio head recruited from TV being directed to reinvent the wheel by a boss who is a film biz outsider.
It took Paramount’s Brad Grey several years to recover from his steep learning curve and early mistakes. He was bailed out by a canny business deal to buy DreamWorks, which eventually left the Paramount fold. But the studio still benefits from that deal, as many projects contain DreamWorks DNA, including Michael Bay’s fast-tracked Transformers 3, which Bay admits he was urged to prep for 2011 release.
As Disney acquisition Marvel will take time to ramp up its production, Disney’s new studio chief Rich Ross will need to rely on key supplier DreamWorks to buttress his slim release slate going forward. Fortunately, unlike Grey, Ross has forged a cordial relationship with DreamWorks partners Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider. For all their sakes, let’s hope it continues that way.
Ross continues to reshape the motion picture division. Inevitably, 20-year Disney vet Oren Aviv has resigned his post as production president.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Steven Spielberg, Genres, Biopics, Sci-fi, Independents, DreamWorks, Studios, Disney/Miramax on January 12, 2010 at 4:22pm PST | Permalink | Comments (0)
James Cameron basked in the glow as Avatar, his latest industry-changing event-film, earned a standing ovation at the Mann Chinese Wednesday night. At the after party Cameron beamed as he stood between two tall women, wife Suzy Amis and ex-wife Kathryn Bigelow. “You’re on a roll!” he said to the Hurt Locker director. “You raised the bar,” she said to Cameron.
“I told you,” Bigelow said to me. It looks like Cameron vs. Bigelow will be the story at the Oscars.
Cameron and I talked about how much Steven Spielberg likes the movie: he calls it “an epic spectacle. Cameron creates Oz, and then destroys it.” Cameron showed it to him the first time he screened it all the way through in 3-D, with some of the cast members. Spielberg can’t wait to get his hands on the face-capture technology. Spielberg spent some weeks on the Avatar set, and used Weta performance capture for 3-D Tin Tin, but that film was already shot by the time the real break-throughs occurred at the end of the Avatar production, and Tin-Tin is not photo-real anyway, Cameron pointed out. It’s stylized. UPDATE: (Spielberg has an official quote: “The most evocative and amazing science-fiction movie since Star Wars.”)
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Box Office, Winter, Directors, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, Franchises, Avatar, Genres, Sci-fi, Reviews, Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, Writers, Critics on December 17, 2009 at 8:49am PST | Permalink | Comments (8)
DreamWorks Studios has acquired the rights to the World War I adventure novel War Horse for Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall and Revel Guest to produce. Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) is writing the script.
Written by children’s author Michael Morpurgo and first published in 1982, War Horse tells the story from a boy’s POV of being separated from his horse. The sentimental play, staged with puppet horses, has been a huge sellout family hit in London for the past two years. Spielberg believes the story has universal appeal.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Steven Spielberg, Independents, DreamWorks on December 16, 2009 at 12:07pm PST | Permalink | Comments (1)
1. The Governors Awards will not be televised. At the orange Grand Ballroom at Hollywood and Highland Saturday night, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave out four honorary Oscars at a new annual event on the awards calendar. Academy executive director Bruce Davis, president Tom Sherak, Oscar show producers Bill Mechanic and Adam Shankman, and Oscar-host-to-be Alec Baldwin all attended this relaxed, celebratory black-tie cocktail and dinner party. The ceremony awarding four honorary Oscars to actress Lauren Bacall, producers John Calley and Roger Corman and cinematographer Gordon Willis, punctuated by repeated standing ovations, lasted three hours and 18 minutes, to be exact.
2. The awards circuit always draws would-be Oscar contenders. Glad-handing were Morgan Freeman (Invictus), Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire), Abbie Cornish in lavender Dior (Bright Star) and Christoph Waltz and Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), who met director Julie Taymor for the first time. New World alumnus James Cameron (Piranha II), who was supposed to attend, was stuck in the Avatar editing room, said Sherak.
3. Avatar production and marketing costs will not reach $500 million. Producer Jon Landau insists the final costs of the movie will come nowhere near that. (The LAT reports a $310 million budget tally without P & A.) Cameron and Vince Pace’s special 3-D camera rigs, for example, are rented like any other cameras. Weta Digital made a bid for how much the visual effects would cost. The actors were not expensive. There isn’t all that much live-action shooting in the movie, which filmed in soundstages in Playa Vista and in New Zealand. OK…
4. If director Clint Eastwood delivers yet again on Invictus, the movie could be the one to beat for Best Picture. When I told Freeman how much I admired the Invictus script, adapted from John Carlin’s book by Anthony Peckham, Freeman said, “I guarantee you, we did not mess it up.” Freeman plays Nelson Mandela opposite Matt Damon as rugby captain Francois Pienaar. In order to unite South Africa, the two men push to win the 1995 World Cup.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Directors, Clint Eastwood, James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Hollywood, Video on November 15, 2009 at 12:13pm PST | Permalink | Comments (5)
The ten-part HBO mini-series The Pacific is a follow-up to Band of Brothers from World War II-obsessed exec producers Tom Hanks, Gary Goetzman and Steven Spielberg. It follows a similar m.o.: hire excellent unknown actors to inhabit the characters we follow (Damian Lewis broke out from Band of Brothers). In this featurette, Spielberg describes how the soldiers not only faced a formidable enemy playing by unfamiliar rules, but a hostile natural environment. The series—which boasts a pricetag of more than $200 million, more than double that of 12-parter Rome—is the most expensive in HBO’s history. It launches March 2010.
[Trailers are on the jump]
Read More
by Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Steven Spielberg, Video on November 10, 2009 at 12:14pm PST | Permalink | Comments (1)
I am surprised by the film industry and the media’s continued willingness to give a free pass to entrepreneur Carlos de Abreu’s Hollywood Film Festival, a cannily constructed facade which honors stars, filmmakers and craftspeople and lines the pockets of de Abreu.
He’s created an awards show timed perfectly at the height of the awards season, which he presents inside the context of a film festival. While it is not considered to be a bonafide quality film fest curated by top programmers, like Telluride, Sundance or New York, and its premieres are often less than stellar, Hollywood players participate because it supports the award cause. It gives vying award season contenders yet another opportunity to grab attention. If de Abreu gives an award, why wouldn’t any self-respecting self-promoting player show up for their five minutes of PR? This years award-winners include Hilary Swank (Amelia), Robert DeNiro (Everybody’s Fine) Julianne Moore (A Single Man), Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds) and Relativity mogul Ryan Kavanaugh.
Here’s some background.
[Photo: courtesy Getty Images]
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Golden Globes, Oscars, Directors, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Festivals, Headliners, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, Nic Cage, Tom Cruise on October 19, 2009 at 5:31pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (7)
It looks like GE is in serious talks with Comcast to buy NBC Universal, reports Sharon Waxman. As Vivendi looks to sell its 20 % stake in the company, which has suffered a tough year, Comacast may step into the breach. UPDATE: Here’s the LAT.
More and more, under pressure from the internet, news is being reported before it’s official. Like this LATimes.com story about Robert Downey, Jr. starring in Steven Spielberg’s remake of Harvey. Downey’s a brilliant choice. (On the plane back from NY last night I was watching The Soloist without sound and remembering how good Downey was in an overwrought, inauthentic, misguided movie.)
Alcon Entertainment sent out a press release that Antoine Fuqua is in “final negotiations” to direct Prisoners for Warner Bros.:
Antoine Fuqua (“Training Day,” “King Arthur”) is in final negotiations to helm Warner Bros-based Alcon Entertainment’s “PRISONERS,” it was announced by Alcon co-founders and co-CEO’s Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson.
Written by newcomer Aaron Guzikowski, PRISONERS centers on a small-town carpenter whose young daughter and best friend are kidnapped. After the cops fail to find them, the man takes the law into his own hands, but in the process runs up against the big city detective assigned to the case.
Kosove and Johnson are producing, along with 8:38’s Kira Davis and Madhouse Entertainment’s Adam Kolbrenner. Robyn Meisinger and Edward McDonnell will executive produce. The filmmakers are currently meeting with potential lead actors.
Navigating when where and how to release such info will be Lisa Fung, the new LATimes.com entertainment czar, although the reality of how the print and online editions coordinate is still to be determined. On the other hand, Calendar and Business are working together more felicitously now under entertainment editor Sally Hofmeister, so anything’s possible. But until now, print and online have been polarized.
How many times have you heard that same phone ring in a movie? Check out the top ten movie sound cliches.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Steven Spielberg, Genres, Remake, Headliners, Robert Downey, Jr. , Studios, Universal/Focus Features on September 30, 2009 at 5:17pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (0)
The one year that I covered the Hollywood side of the Vanity Fair New Establishment List, I found that the final list reflected less accurate reporting than who was a possible cover subject or socialized with editor Graydon Carter. This year the nasty economy allowed VF to trim some familiar names while the Hall of Fame protects some Carter cronies.
This year Silicon Valley comes on stronger than ever.
As for Hollywood, I’m not sure why Steven Spielberg goes up. DreamWorks did raise some money, but less than was expected, and it took longer. But for the moment, Spielberg does have it. And he got much of it from Anil Ambani, his Reliance backer, who goes down on the list from 67 to 97. Go figure. NBC Universal chief Jeff Zucker is up? Because of Hulu? CAA’s Bryan Lourd is back, well ahead of Ari Emanuel, who had to be on the list. But the entry makes no mention of how he pushed out Jim Wiatt and came out on top in the William Morris/Endeavor merger. The beleaguered Weinsteins are still on the list, down four points to 91. Imagine’s Ron Howard and Brian Grazer are down just two after success d’estime Frost/Nixon and Angels and Demons, which made up its domestic losses abroad.
Pixar is up dramatically: right call. Star Trek‘s J.J. Abrams enters at 27. Judd Apatow is up after his movie Funny People disappointed. Movie star Meryl Steep enters the list behind Pitt, Jolie, Clooney and Hanks, who are lauded more for their political clout than their movie stardom. DeNiro is on because of Tribeca, not What Just Happened? or Righteous Kill.
New entries include Tyler Perry, Ryan Kavanaugh, Michael Bay, TMZ’s Harvey Levin, Todd Phillips (The Hangover) and NBC Universal’s Lauren Zalaznick, one of the few women on the list.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Steven Spielberg, Headliners, Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Independents, Weinsteins, Moguls, Studios on September 3, 2009 at 1:16am PDT | Permalink | Comments (1)
Anne Thompson does more than just break news; she provides an insider’s clear-eyed analysis of a business that defines culture at home and abroad.
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