Today's statements from SAG and AFTRA about this weekend's split. (Splitsville Over TV Soap: Why AFTRA Now Refuses To Jointly Negotiate With SAG):
From: SAG President Alan Rosenberg
Date: March 30, 2008 8:08:40 PM PDT
To: SAG Members
Subject: AFTRA ENDED JOINT BARGAINING RELATIONSHIP WITH SAG
Dear Screen Actors Guild members,
You will hear many things over the next few days about AFTRA’s decision to effectively terminate our Phase One joint bargaining relationship. We have been jointly bargaining several contracts with AFTRA since 1981 and the AFTRA board voted yesterday to end that relationship (under the Phase One Agreement) and forge ahead without SAG.
AFTRA HAS THREE TELEVISION SHOWS UNDER THIS CONTRACT AND THEY DON’T COVER MOTION PICTURES.
As your President, I feel it is important that you have the facts.
AFTRA leaders claim…That SAG attempted to “raid” its jurisdiction and to “campaign” to help The Bold & The Beautiful daytime drama actors decertify from AFTRA.
FACT: Actors from the show, who are also SAG members, asked to meet with us. We heard their complaints of extreme dissatisfaction with AFTRA, AND DIRECTED THEM TO TALK WITH AFTRA. We did not have a campaign of any kind.
AFTRA leaders claim… The Bold & The Beautiful incident was “the last straw,” but waited more than two weeks to raise the issue. Instead, the day before the joint SAG/AFTRA board meeting, they alerted the press (not SAG) and accused us of poaching. Two days earlier, they had participated in our two-day national joint Wages & Working conditions meeting where members of both unions VOTED UNANIMOUSLY to approve the proposal package. Didn’t the “last straw” matter then?
AFTRA never has stated how it plans to come to the aid of the B &B actors. They are too busy blaming us for the problem. Institution first, members last.
FACT: SAG IS NOT INVOLVED IN ANY WAY IN ORGANIZING DAYTIME DRAMA ACTORS. While we have great respect for daytime actors, this is AFTRA’s area. In fact, the SAG national board passed a motion Saturday morning to assure AFTRA (as AFTRA requested) that SAG will abide by the AFL CIO rules regulating raiding.
FACT: Despite this expression of good faith and reassurance from SAG, AFTRA leaders voted to “suspend” Phase One and go it alone. They marched into our board meeting, said they would not be bargaining jointly, and left. The joint board meeting
... Read More »
UPDATE: Tonight I received the news that AFTRA national president Roberta Reardon and officers 
including Susan Boyd Joyce, Denny Delk, Bob Edwards, Matt Kimbrough, Shelby Scott held their national meeting and approved a formal rift with their stepsister actors union SAG. They then went to SAG's national board meeting and declared that AFTRA won't negotiate jointly with the Screen Actors Guild on the new primetime TV contract. This, in spite of a long-time agreement by AFTRA to bargain jointly with SAG and not undercut rates. So basically those "make nice" pronouncements of recent days are out the window. And all because of a blown-way-out-proportion incident involving AFTRA, SAG and the soap opera The Bold And The Beautiful. Now AFTRA has taken such an extreme position that not even the AFL-CIO may be able to rein it in.
The AFTRA maneuver is disingenuous, bordering on slightly dishonest, because I'm told the union has known about the B&B incident for weeks and done nothing until this weekend. Then there's the curious and convenient timing of an obviously planted story in the Los Angeles Times Saturday, designed to give Reardon some protective cover. So it now looks like tonight's announcement was a carefully planned 11th hour ploy by her to get out of joint bargaining and justify AFTRA's going it alone. My sources assure me that AFTRA has false concerns because SAG has no interest in organizing daytime. If anything, the concern is justified the other way around because AFTRA is already treading on SAG's scripted TV turf by repping, for example, both Damage and Dirt.
It was hardly a secret, much less a scoop, that the Emmy-winning star of The Bold And The Beautiful, Susan Flannery, has for some time now circulated a petition to decertify AFTRA as the union representing the actors on the long-running soap. But, suddenly, the LA Times was exaggerating a minor matter whereby SAG's national executive director Doug Allen was approached by two B&B actors for a meeting. 
When the duo launched into a litany of complaints about AFTRA's representation, witnesses tell me that Allen properly turned them aside and sent them back to AFTRA. But it took the LAT until the 11th paragraph to convey that salient point. And the paper never bothered to mention that these two B&B cast members were also SAG members since there ... Read More »
SUNDAY AM: This weekend's movie gross showed that Hollywood couldn't revive the slumping box office during spring break even though 30% of students are out of school. No. 1 is Sony Pictures's PG-rated based-on-a-true-story 21, which opened to a solid $8.6 million Friday and $9.6 million Saturday from 2,648 theaters. With Sunday estimates, that makes a better than expected $23.7M for the moderately budgeted pic (sources tell me it cost $35M). The casino card-counting caper suddenly came on strong tracking-wise these past two weeks to surprise everyone but the studio execs. A shocker was how weak the reviews were: only 22% positive among top critics on Rotten Tomatoes. But audiences craved the escapism. As a rival marketer gushed to me, "It is wish fulfilment in the truest sense of the phrase, this notion of a real person being able to beat the system, get the girl and live the life. The pic tapped into that really nicely." I'm told the audience was broad based, drawing from all 4 quadrants -- older and younger men and women, with 53% male and 47% female with 53% under the age of 25.
In its 3rd weekend in release, Fox's Horton Hears A Who! continued playing strong in 3,826 dates for $5.2 million Friday and $7.3 million thanks to Saturday kiddie matinees to surge well past the all-important $100 million mark. It's new cume is $117.2M after this weekend's extra $17.4M because there was little else at the cineplex aimed at tots.
In 3rd place is The Weinstein Co's Dimension/MGM spoof Superhero Movie which was a superdud. Despite playing wide in 2,960 venues, the newcomer finished Friday virtually stillborn with only $3.4 million and Saturday with $3.8 million. That meant a $9.5 million weekend which is 33% less than its studios were hoping and the experts were predicting. Frankly, it's unthinkable since this pic had a big 75% awareness equally divided among males and females. Gee, Bob Weinstein's Dimension banner used to be the best at making this genre of light satires when it was based at Disney. But maybe audiences are tired of seeing the same old shtick. However, some analysts astutely foresaw a problem with Superhero going after the same PG-13 audience as 21. A Superhero insider told me over the weekend: "We played young because of Drake Bell. 
We were doing well during the day but fell off ... Read More »
I don't understand why the Warner Bros lot wasn't draped in black starting the middle of this week. Because the studio should be mourning the imminent loss of a shitload of Superman dollars. I've finally got my hands on the entire 72-page ruling Wednesday of U.S. District Court Judge Stephen G. Larson who concluded: "After 70 years, Jerome Siegel’s heirs regain what he granted so long ago — the copyright in the Superman material that was published in Action Comics, Vol. 1. What remains is an apportionment of profits, guided in some measure by the rulings contained in this Order, and a trial on whether to include the profits generated by DC Comics’ corporate sibling’s exploitation of the Superman."
Think about it: Siegel sold the rights to the action hero he created with Joseph Shuster to Detective Comics for $130, and his heirs got back ownership of the character in 1999 and can possibly lay claim to $50+ million of Warner Bros' and/or its DC Comics' cash. The Shusters look to clean up before too long, too. If you want all the Superman lawsuit's juicy background, Portfolio's Amy Wallace did a detailed article here.
For instance, Joanne Siegel (who'd been the sketch model for Lois Lane) wrote a 3-page letter back in 2002 to then Time Warner CEO Dick Parsons calling the company “greedy” and “heartless” and acting “just like the Gestapo ... your company wants to strip us naked of our legal rights… Is that the reputation you want?” The answer is a resounding yes. Because for years Warner tied with Disney for its aggressive unwillingness to settle these kinds of legal disputes and its absurd eagerness to risk going to court. Its corporate counsel would hire litigation piranhas hungry for billable hours who pledge to make each case go away by exhausting the patience and resources of the creators or rightsholders. It's a thoroughly effective but completely disgusting way of doing business.
Yet it's interesting that, especially lately, Warner has lost or settled some very pricey lawsuits, especially those pursued by that Malibu Robin Hood of a litigator, Marc Toberoff, who has taken on Big Media on behalf of creators and their heirs for Superman and Superboy, The Dukes of Hazzard (read about it here), The Wild Wild West, It's Alive, and so on. The majors both fear him and hate him, with good reason: he's a relentless opportunist, which is exactly what's needed.
Finally, lest any rabid ... Read More »
So I was told this today by an insider about that recent Sumner Redstone-Tom Cruise rapprochement meal at the very public Polo Lounge: "Jews like to break bread before Passover! If the economics are right, Paramount is interested in working with its old friend." But here's the breaking news: I've been forewarned about a big Paramount-Tom Cruise announcement soon. (Redstone's Viacom owns owns the movie studio.) Will wonders never cease? Sure, when the price is right.
CAA has shown me the Pellicano trial transcript from Wednesday's testimony by partner 
Kevin Huvane which serves to clarify why he used the old CAA building as the residential address for his driver's license. (See my previous, Pellicano Trial: CAA Partners Say Nothing.) So, in the interest of fairness and accuracy, I'm printing this info where Huvane elaborates. Here, Huvane was shown Exhibit 161, the printout of a law enforcement database search made about him with info about his DMV license:
Q. Underneath that it says, "Residence address as of 1-31-1996". Is that your residential address?
Huvane: That's the address that we used for all mailing purposes.
Q. And what address is that?
Huvane: That's the old CAA building address.
Q. Okay. Why did you use the old CAA building as your DMV address?
Huvane: because you never want to give your home address. You know, we have clients who have problems with security, with people looking up who their agents are, things coming inappropriate;ly to your house, so we wanted everything to be straight to the office.
Q. So for security purposes, even on your license, you used your business address?
Huvane: Yes.
UPDATE: A big meeting went down today inside Warner Bros theatrical marketing where staff learned their fates with "the blending" of domestic and international marketing. (Needless to say, people were throwing stares at the Glass Building where marketing and distribution are housed.) Sources tell me, "There were some promotions and some reshuffling but no layoffs whatsoever. We're expecting to make announcements next week on those promoted. But we haven't even started writing the press releases yet." The moves made today are by worldwide marketing czarina Sue Kroll as she handpicks her staff after her boss, Warner Bros Pictures Group prez Jeff Robinov, squeezed out Dawn Taubin.
The biggest news is that Blair Rich is promoted to EVP of worldwide marketing. (She just got upped last year to SVP of international marketing, so this is a huge boost. She started as Sue Kroll's assistant and is said to be popular with filmmakers but not vendors. She's also the daughter of legendary Hollywood TV producer Lee Rich, whose Lorimar was purchased by Warner's.) Gene Garlock upped to SVP for worldwide promotions. (He gets additional domestic duties from previous post as SVP for international promotions). Julie Goodwin will co-head worldwide publicity with Lance Volland (who previously oversaw international publicity). This all follows Debi Miller's departure for CBS's new film division after serving as EVP of domestic theatrical marketing. (She was unhappy for the past six months...) But this blending is just the beginning because it doesn't include the eventual integration of New Line and/or Picturehouse.
Kroll at the end of the day issued this statement: “We have begun integrating our domestic and international theatrical marketing departments into a worldwide organization. We expect this process to be ongoing and evolve over the next six months to 12 months. This time frame will allow us to both concentrate on our primary task, which is our films and filmmakers, while providing as much time as necessary to determine the most effective structure for our group.”
Meanwhile, staff under Kroll are already chattering about her work ethic. As a result, there's a serious culture shock going on. I'm told by an insider: "Certain executives who used to leave every day at 3 PM are now being required to attend meetings that start at 6 PM." I'm told that 8:30 PM is now the normal quitting time.
News reports say the Delaware court has ruled against Liberty Media's John Malone in his effort to block Barry Diller from splitting InterActiveCorp into multiple companies. Well, at least Malone managed to land some down 'n' dirty jabs at Barry during this month's court proceeding. The only problem now is for shareholders who will continue to watch Barry run IAC just like he did Hollywood studios years before: any damn way he wants to. (See my previous, Diller vs Malone: Sumo Wrestling In Court)
The complaint was filed today in Los Angeles Superior Court. This really sounds like one of the worst cases of phony-baloney studio accounting, not to mention sheer arrogance, in Hollywood history. Geez, when is Big Media going to stop this larceny? For instance, according to the lawsuit, NBC Uni is claiming that, as of the end of fiscal year 2006, Quincy M.E. has accumulated over $66 million in net losses -- this after we all know that the 1976-1983 series is a classic shown all over the world even to this day. Through his Beverly Hills attorneys Johnson & Johnson [UPDATE: This firm and another are representing me in a class action lawsuit related to a personal matter. I forgot to disclose that when I wrote this post on a busy news day. I apologize for the omission.]
Klugman just gave this statement to me: "I don’t want their money. I want my money. I can’t believe they’ve collected over $250 million dollars and they say they are still in the hole. I have 28% of the net and they won’t even give me a copy of my contract. I worked for them for almost 8 years. I got up at 4 o’clock in the morning. I would rewrite. I did a ton of work. It’s on every day. I haven’t gotten a penny for years."
Worse, the lawsuit claims that when Klugman asked to see his paperwork with NBC Uni, the network and studio "have refused to give Plaintiffs a copy of the contract". So on June 21, 2007, Klugman’s attorney wrote a letter to NBC Uni requesting "a copy of any and all contracts pertaining to Klugman and Quincy M.E." On September 26, 2007, NBC Uni responded that it's “unable to comply with your request … because it is NBC Universal’s policy not to provide copies of talent contracts or other confidential documents.” The lawsuit notes that, under the terms of the NBC Uni contract, Klugman and his company Sweater Productions are entitled to a “Participant Share” of 25% of all “net profits” attributable to Quincy M.E. But NBC is required to "properly account" for the net profits to Sweater/Klugman which has a right to audit the records of NBC Uni if a dispute arises. On March 5, 2008, Klugman’s attorney gave notice to NBC Uni of Klugman’s intent to audit the ... Read More »
David E. Kelley left WMA this week for Endeavor. Topher Grace exited Morris also for Endeavor recently. Comedy feature writer Ed Solomon recently departed Morris to go to CAA (as did WMA's director Jim Mangold three months ago...).
Sony's 21 should do in the neighborhood of $21+ million for the weekend.
While Michael Ovitz's name keeps coming up repeatedly in the ongoing Pellicano trial (though he's charged with no wrongdoing), he's also been the subject of an ongoing multimillion dollar lawsuit brought by his one-time Internet partner, billionaire investor Ron Burkle. But yesterday Ovitz scored a big victory when that lawsuit by Burkle alleging that the co-founder of CAA and fired Walt Disney Co. president broke a business agreement was dismissed yesterday by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Soussan Bruguera. She decided that the men never had a formal partnership and, if anything, had more of a "friendship that soured" than a business relationship, and that terms of their oral agreement were too vague to enforce. Burkle's attorney said he will appeal Bruguera's decision to grant Ovitz's motion. Meanwhile, Ovitz's counter-suit against Burkle is still on, and a trial date has been set for April 28. Nevertheless, Burkle managed through the long and winding lawsuit to muddy Ovitz's reputation, already tarnished by his many business failures. Burkle filed the complaint back in February 2005, claiming the two made a verbal agreement in the 1990s to jointly combine "their skill, money and knowledge" on investments but alleging that Ovitz breached their oral pact repeatedly. There's now a long list of Ovitz's former business partners from Hollywood, Broadway, Wall Street, Madison Avenue and sports (to name just a few areas) who despise him now.
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