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EXCLUSIVE: Comcast Wants NBCU Deal Done … So I've read The Hollywood Reporter's annual list of highest earning actresses and about some in the Top 10 all I can say is: ON WHAT PLANET? Here are my reasons:
1. Nicole Kidman, makes $16 mil-$17 mil. What she should be earning: -$1 mil. That's right, I'm saying that Nicole should be paying film companies to hire her, not the other way around. That's because she's poison at the box office, the female equivalent of Sean Penn. Women dislike her, men don't think she's sexy, and those Chanel ads induce nausea. My guess is Nicole's rate dates back to Sony Pictures overpaying her for that bomb Bewitched. Since then, she's been doing smaller films, but is signing for studio projects right now. Note to majors: save your $$$ and hire Reese or Angelina.
2. Reese Witherspoon, $15 mil. What she should be earning: $25 mil. Reese can do no wrong. Women love her, men love her, the camera loves her. And she's smart: when she was looking for a new agency, she lamented not owning her Legally Blonde character because it'll be Broadway bound. Which doesn't mean all her films are great, but she's always great in them. She opens a movie. 'Nuff said.
3. Renee Zellweger, $15 mil. What she should be earning: $5 mil. Renee doesn't open movies, unless the material is Bridget Jones-cloned. She's fine as the wife or girlfriend, but then her price needs to be cut by a third. Worse, audiences are getting sick of her changing hair color whenever she changes parts. That's a dye job, not an acting job. Sadly, she's lost her once winning girl-next-door quality; now she's trying to be a fashion diva. Ugh.
4. Drew Barrymore, $15 mil. What she should be asking: $3 mil. Drew has never been able to open a movie, and she never will. That doesn't mean she isn't sweet onscreen, but lately her roles have been too saccharine. If only she'd bring back that Poison Ivy edginess she once had. Women like her but they don't want to be her (or even briefly married to Tom Green), whereas men don't think she's hot anymore. Drew's price should go up when she grows up.
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Beyoncé, Kate Hudson, Hugh Grant -- all have left CAA within days. True, Jim Carrey recently 
column, 
"An interesting side note is how well some of the New York based scribblers are doing. Tony Gilroy, David Koepp, John Hamburg, Richard LaGravenese, the team of Brian Koppelman and David Levien, are all among the highest paid, constantly working writers. Don't know why it is, if somehow their lack of proximity makes them more desirable."
"Every year, one of the major Hollywood talent agencies conducts a running tally of all studio jobs snagged by screenwriters. In 2005, there were 10 percent fewer hires than the year before. So far for 2006, there are 15 percent fewer. That’s a big drop in two years. 'These jobs,' said the admittedly depressed literary agent, 'just disappeared.' A manager joins the pity party and describes a litany of givebacks by his scribbling clients: free treatments, free rewrites, free polishes and/or free script-doctoring — all done with the hollow hope that the studio will give schmucks with Underwoods a paying gig sooner rather than never. As for those sparse scribes offered real pay for projects, they’re buckling under studio demands by cutting their usual and customary by 30 percent. 'It’s the bewildering nature of the business right now that nobody has a quote. It’s a quote-free system,' an agent describes. In a word, it stinks out there for screenwriters, worse even than the fetid stench of the usual shit flung at them in previous years. These aren’t wannabes, either. These are some of the top names in the biz. 'I am fucking terrified,' a major scribe tells me about his year of not getting any work. 'I can’t believe my career is ending like this.' Laments a manager: 'I have a giant screenwriter who’s doing everything on spec. Everybody is doing this. They’ve got to get into this mindset.' This is the reality of the screenwriting trade right now, the antithesis of the ridiculously rosy picture that the Los Angeles Times paints week after week in its 'Scriptland' column... 
Here's what interests me -- well, more like confuses me -- about the Pam Anderson/Kid Rock Borat bust-up: This happened at Ron Meyer's home? Whaaaat? (By the way, Page Six says it took place at the Universal COO's house in Beverly Hills. Everyone else knows he lives in Malibu.) My question is this: Why in the world were those two losers included among the 20 VIPs on what's supposed to be a triple-A screening list? The explanation is rather ordinary: Anderson is a friend of a Meyer neighbor, who asked the studio mogul if Pam and Kid Rock could come over for the screening because new hubby hadn't seen new bride in Borat yet. The way Page Six made it sound, there was a screaming match in the middle of Meyer's screening room. Wrong. None of the guests knew anything happened -- just that the couple left before the movie ended. 
007 so far is doing Da Vinci Code-like biz in all 50 countries where it's opened No. 1 (except the U.S. where it opened No. 2). There were 18 new international debuts for Casino Royale (in Paris theater, at left) this week - all #1, including France, Germany, Spain and Scandinavia. So far, that's an overseas total of $66.2 mil from this weekend's haul -- the 6th biggest international weekend of 2006. Last week, the spy pic was #1 in all 27 countries where it opened, earning $42.2 mil from the UK, Russia, India and small territories in the Mideast and Asia. (Last week, it scored the #9 all-time UK opening, and the biggest Bond opening ever in the UK by 46%.) Right before the debut weekend, Sony Pictures was lowering expectations for Casino Royale in the U.S. and counting more on foreign sales. The studio was right: the pic now looks like the biggest Bond ever worldwide, moving up from $82.8 mil last weekend to easily passing $224.5 mil this weekend (including the $128.2 mil foreign and $94.2 mil U.S. cume) with many major foreign territories still to go, including Japan, Korea, Italy and Australia. 
Box office gurus say Daniel Craig will easily blow past the biggest grosser in the Pierce Brosnan series, 2002's Die Another Day, and its $432 mil global take. Estimate is for Casino Royale to make as much as $575 mil globally. 007 is still #1 its second week out in at least 40 of the 50 territories where it's in play. The $40.4 mil it generated from new openings beat the combined openings of Die Another Day in the same territories ($28 mil) by 44%. It held in the UK with $16.6 mil, just -24% off its launch the week before. Most of the new openings were the biggest for Bond ever. 
Germany opened to $12 mil, France $8.4 mil, Spain $4 mil, Switzerland $3 mil, Denmark $2.5 mil, Sweden $2.1 mil, Holland $1.8 mil, Austria $1.6 mil, Norway $1.5 mil, Belgium $1.5 mil. All-time opening rankings include Switzerland #3, Denmark #7, Norway and Finland #8, Sweden #10, Holland #12, Belgium #14. But Happy Feet is about to make major inroads. I hear that in Singapore, where Warner's pengiun pic opened this weekend, holdover Bond moved down to ... 
SUNDAY AM: Happy T-Bird weekend, and get out of the way for the mall stampede as shoppers try to score one of the hottest toys this holiday season: Happy Feet's Baby Mumbles, on sale for $29.99, which tap dances to any type of music playing. Ah, the commercialism of Xmas! A big moviegoing weekend it has been -- with the top 3 films estimated to do $160 million from Friday through Sunday, and $220 mil from Wednesday through Sunday. (But that's still -5% from last year because of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.) Welcome to déjà vu at the box office. On Thanksgiving Day, Bond traded places with the birds to become America's #1 movie after the penguins triumphed on the T-Bird weekend opener. It was a replay of last weekend on Friday, however: Happy Feet waddling past Casino Royale to be the No. 1 movie thanks to huge kiddie matinees. 
(That is, if you can even hear the movie above the din of all that whining, "I wanna Baby Mumbles!") Screening in 3,804 theaters, those Warner penguins made another $7.3 million Wed, $6 mil Thurs, $15.7 Fri, $14.3 mil Sat, for what was a $38.1 mil three-day weekend and a $51.5 mil five-day holiday and a cume over $100.7 million by Monday. Sony/MGM's 007 flick in 3,443 playdates raked in $6.5 mil Wed, $7.5 mil Thurs, $13.1 mil Fri, $11.8 mil Sat, and had a $31 mil three-day weekend and a $45.1 mil five-day holiday and a new cume of $94.2 mil. Still, the 007 pic won Week One in the U.S. and is doing Da Vinci Code-like biz in all 50 countries where it opened No. 1. There were 18 new international debuts this week - all #1 including France, Germany, Spain, and Scandinavia -- earning $66.2 mil foreign. Casino Royale looks like the biggest Bond ever worldwide, passing $224.5 mil this weekend ($128.2 overseas + $94.2 U.S. cume) with many major foreign territories still to go, including Japan, Korea, Italy and Australia. Box office gurus say Daniel Craig will easily blow past Pierce Brosnan's Die Another Day and its $432 mil previous biggest global take. 
I'm about to give all the Hollywood moguls indigestion before they've even taken a bite of their Thanksgiving meal. That's because I'm told that Akiva Goldsman, who adapted Dan Brown's worldwide bestseller into a $755.6 mil hit pic, is receiving $4 million for the Da Vinci Code sequel in the works by both Imagine Entertainment and Sony Pictures. Not only is that major moola, but agents are telling me this represents a new $$$ high for hiring a screenwriter (not buying a spec script) -- and not even an original screenplay, but an adaptation of a book. And, no, Goldsman isn't getting a producer credit, so this is for straight scribbling. "That would be a lot for a pure writer's credit," one agent gushed. "It puts Akiva in the absolute top of his profession." (Actually, the first rumor I heard was an astounding $6 mil, but the truth is $2 mil less than that. As for whether the deal also includes gross points, dunno.) Anyway, this is great news for Hollywood screenwriters, who continue to get screwed left and right in the moviemaking process, notwithstanding the WGA's supposedly best but also glacial efforts to prevent that. The terrible news is that it's sad these bucks are going for the sequel to a movie which the critics roundly panned. Generally, the most in-demand screenwriters these days are getting between $2 mil and $2.5 mil per project. And Sony historically has been known to open its wallets a little wider for writers than most studios. 
"Bob Osher talks a tough game, but when Amy Pascal really wants something, she gets it," one source told me. The reason for the big score is that the studio wants the 2008-slotted sequel, like, yesterday, not only because the first movie did so well, but also because of the expected studio-WGA confrontations next year. Fortunately for Goldsman, when DVC came out, Sony already owned the rights to the Robert Langdon character. Not only is the Harvard symbologist the protagonist in Brown's Angels and Demons, but also featured in a new book the author is penning as we speak that takes off where Da Vinci Code leaves off. In A&D, Goldsman must make sense of a plot crammed with Vatican intrigue and high-tech drama: it thrusts Langdon together with an ancient and shadowy secret ... 
What a shock that Broadcasting & Cable's business editor John M. Higgins is gone at the age of 45 (Monday night, of a heart attack). Like most good journalists, he had a way of establishing an instant and easy intimacy with people, and that extended to colleagues in the scribbling biz. What brought us together, so to speak, was 
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