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MAJOR MESSY NBC SHAKEUP AHEAD: Network Wants To Fire Teri Weinberg & Hopes Ben Silverman Quits Very Soon

By Nikki Finke | Category: Best Of, Networks, TV | Sunday August 31, 2008 @ 2:59pm

teri.JPGEXCLUSIVE: After weeks of checking out rumor after rumor, I'm finally able to pin down details of the long-overdue shakeup that's ahead for NBC when this fall's primetime schedule shapes up to be an unmitigated disaster. Someone has to shoulder the responsibility, and both Ben Silverman and the Reveille development exec he brought with him to NBC, Teri Weinberg, now deservedly have big fat targets on their foreheads. Staying in charge will be Marc Graboff and Katherine Pope who both have been trying to keep NBC up and running while Weinberg continually fucks up and Silverman regularly goes AWOL. For instance, last Thursday was Ben's first day in the office all month after attending the Beijing Olympics and guesting aboard Elisabeth Murdoch's yacht. (Elisabeth's Shine Group bought Ben's Reveille productions which put $60+ million directly into his pocket). But a pressing issue has been Silverman's partying ways, especially his excessive off-hours drinking and drug-taking, which has not only been visible to but also prompted complaints from Hollywood's TV community. "When he's around, he is totally engaged and focused and not in an altered state of consciousness. But that's when he's around. Literally, he has not been around from August 1st until August 28th, and you can't run a network programming group and not be around for the month of August," an insider tells me. So NBC is faced with two personnel problems simultaneously: Weinberg and Silverman.

zucker2.jpgBack in May 2007, I broke the story that NBC Universal boss Jeff Zucker was unceremoniously firing NBC Entertainment president Kevin Reilly, and surprisingly hiring Silverman to be partnered with Graboff as co-chairman of NBC Entertainment and NBC Universal Television Studio. It was a very risky move by Zucker, not helped by his cluelessness about Silverman's drug and alcohol habits until it became a real question whether Ben could pass the mandatory corporate drug test for prospectve employees. But TV circles were just as confounded a week later when I scooped that Ben had hired his Reveille gal Teri Weinberg to be the new EVP of NBC Entertainment. She had been his glorified gofer until just a few years ago, then his Reveille development exec (and held other titles, like his co-exec producer on Ugly Betty). Now she was in charge of comedy, drama and everything below Silverman and Graboff at NBC Entertainment. At the time, Weinberg's appointment ... Read More »

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'Dark Knight': $500M In Record 45 Days

By Nikki Finke | Category: Directors, Scandal | Sunday August 31, 2008 @ 11:53am

 

So The Dark Knight posts still another best-ever. Media By Numbers is reporting that Warner Bros' latest Batman installment crossing the $500 million domestic gross milestone today after only 45 days in release. It's already the second-highest grossing pic of all time behind only the $600.8 million domestic haul of Titanic which took 91 days to pass $500M. The projected domestic cume for Dark Knight is $502,421,000 after this weekend. Interestingly, Wednesday, August 27th (its 41st day of release) was the first single day that the film earned below $1 million. In all, Dark Knight has set 14 major movie records since its release July 18th:

MEDIA BY NUMBERS: DARK KNIGHT SELECTED RECORDS THUS FAR (IN ORDER OF OCCURRENCE):

1. LARGEST NUMBER OF OPENING THEATRES WITH 4,366 (MORE THAN THE 4,362 DEBUT THEATRES OF PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: AT WORLD'S END IN 2007).

2. BIGGEST MIDNIGHT PREVIEW GROSS WITH $18.489 MILLION IN 3,040 THEATRES (THIS BEATS STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH AT $16.9 MILLION IN 2,915 THEATRES IN 2005).

3. BIGGEST IMAX MIDNIGHT PREVIEWS SET AN NEW RECORD WITH $640,000 (THIS AMOUNT WAS APPROPRIATELY INCLUDED IN THE $18.489 MILLION PREVIEW NUMBER).

4. BIGGEST SINGLE-DAY GROSS IN BOX-OFFICE HISTORY WITH $67,165,092 (THIS BEATS THE $59,841,919 SET BY SPIDER-MAN 3 IN 2007).
 
5. BIGGEST OPENING WEEKEND GROSS IN BOX-OFFICE HISTORY WITH $158,411,483 MILLION (THIS BEATS THE $151,116,516 SET BY SPIDER-MAN 3 IN 2007).
 
6. BIGGEST OPENING WEEKEND GROSS FOR AN IMAX RELEASE IN BOX-OFFICE HISTORY WITH $6,214,061 MILLION IN 94 THEATRES ($66,107 PER-THEATRE!) (THIS BEATS THE $4.7 MILLION SET BY SPIDER-MAN 3 IN 2007) - IMAX SHOWING AT FULL CAPACITY $1.9 MILLION ON SATURDAY ALONE.
 
7. BIGGEST SINGLE-DAY SUNDAY GROSS WITH $43,596,151 (THIS BEATS THE $39,937,865 SET BY SPIDER-MAN 3 ON ITS DEBUT WEEKEND).
 
8. FASTEST SPRINT TO $200 MILLION DOMESTICALLY IN JUST FIVE DAYS (BEATING PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST, SPIDER-MAN 2, AND STAR WARS EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH WHICH EACH TOOK 8 DAYS TO REACH $200 MILLION).
 
9. POSTS THE BEST SECOND WEEKEND GROSS EVER AT $75,166,446 (BEATING SHREK 2 AND ITS $72,170,363 SECOND WEEKEND GROSS).
 
10. CROSSES THE $300 MILLION MARK IN JUST 10 DAYS (BEATING 2006's PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN'S CHEST WHICH TOOK 16 DAYS).
 
11. THE FILM IN IMAX WORLDWIDE CROSSED THE $20 MILLION MARK IN JUST 11 DAYS (BEATING HARRY POTTER 5 WHICH TOOK 16 DAYS).
 
12. THE FILM CROSSED THE $400 MILLION MARK IN JUST 18 DAYS (BEATS SHREK 2 WHICH TOOK 43 DAYS TO DO IT)
 
13. BECAME THE SECOND-HIGHEST ... Read More »

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UPDATE: AFTRA Set To Negotiate Interactive Contract Separately From SAG

By Nikki Finke | Category: Books | Sunday August 31, 2008 @ 10:44am

MONDAY: Now AFTRA has officially weighed in on the Interactive Contract and confirmed what SAG Interactive Committee chair Michael Bell told me -- that AFTRA is starting informal negotiations on its own. Wheras in 2005 both AFTRA and SAG bargained the Interactive Contract jointly. See AFTRA's statement below Bell's...

SUNDAY: The Chair of the SAG Interactive Committee, Michael Bell, tells me that AFTRA is about to break with SAG on yet another previously jointly negotiated contract -- this time the Interactive Contract affecting voice-overs. "This has been disclosed to me by staff and discussed on Thursday by my committee. This particular email [below] is not SAG endorsed, however SAG will be sending out an email of their own regarding AFTRA's meetings with the Interactive Producers and their obvious interest in negotiating without SAG. As a result, a notice from the guild will be going out to all its members (albeit targeting the voice-over community that works this contract), alerting them to a voice-over caucus on the subject. All will be welcomed to attend." I haven't heard back yet from AFTRA. Here's the email which Bell has distributed:

ALERT TO THE VOICE-OVER COMMUNITY
"PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO EVERY VOICE-OVER ACTOR YOU KNOW"
 
It has come to the attention of the S.A.G. Interactive Committee, that AFTRA is about to negotiate the Interactive contract without the participation of S.A.G.
 
As you probably know, AFTRA and S.A.G. jointly bargained the Interactive Contract three years ago. Although the joint committees both agreed that RESIDUALS were the number one priority of the negotiations, the AFTRA committee members ultimately agreed to a contract with NO residuals.  As a result, the S.A.G. committee members were left no choice but to accept  the same terms.
 
In the three years since those negotiations, the Interactive industry has grown from $9 Billion dollars per year to $27 Billion dollars per year.
 
Also during that time, your S.A.G. Interactive Committee has been successful in organizing efforts that  have turned a long time major non-union employer into a S.A.G. signatory with two huge projects in production.

We have been informed that AFTRA claims to be holding Wages and Working Conditions meetings with Interactive actors in preparation for their negotiations (which are said to be imminent.)
 
We know for a fact that a majority of the top Interactive actors (those who record numerous games each year) know nothing about AFTRA’s present W&W meetings or AFTRA's  plans to go it alone in the upcoming

... Read More »

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LABOR DAY LEADERS: Ben Stiller's 'Tropic Thunder' Ousts Vin Diesel's 'Babylon A.D.' As #1; 'Dark Knight' Passes $500M Today

By Nikki Finke | Category: Box Office, Movies, Tracking | Saturday August 30, 2008 @ 8:42am

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MONDAY AM UPDATE: Here is the tentative summer total through today's holiday -- $4.12 billion, compared to Hollywood's best-ever $4.16 billion for summer 2007 or just 1.3% behind. The summer box office may have run up near-record numbers, but it crawled to a close this Labor Day weekend with some very uneven films. After 20th Century Fox's Vin Diesel sci-fi starrer Babylon A.D. (3,390 theaters) opened No. 1 Friday with a narrow margin of victory, holdover DreamWorks/Paramount's moviemaking spoof Tropic Thunder (3,473) finished the 3-day weekend and 4-day holiday on top for the third straight week. The Ben Stiller comedy made $3 million Friday and $4.2 million Saturday for an $11.5M weekend and $14.3M holiday for a $86.6M cume. No. 2 Babylon A.D. took in $3.1M Friday and $3.3M Saturday for a $9.5M weekend and $12M holiday. Coming in 3rd place was Warner Bros' The Dark Knight (2,750) which on Sunday will pass the $500 million mark domestically in record time. It's already the second-highest grossing pic of all time behind only Titanic's $600.8 million domestically. It took the latest Batman installment only 6 weeks and 3 days, whereas it took Titanic 13 weeks, to hit $500M. Don Cheadle's star turn in Overture's political thriller Traitor (2,054) stirred some interest when it debuted Wednesday to $792K from 2,054 venues, but managed to come in only 5th on Friday. Lionsgate's ill-timed and badly done spoof Disaster Movie (2,642), savaged by New Orleans film critics for opening on the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, managed only 7th place. Element/MGM's imbecilic R-rated laffer College (2,123) was roundly rejected for only a 15th place opening Friday. And Focus Features' well-cast laugher Hamlet 2 (1,597) opened Wednesday with a disappointing $245K in 1,530 theaters and managed just No. 17th Friday. Meanwhile, Universal released its Mamma Mia! sing-along prints at 299 out of a total 1,968 theaters across the country, and they delivered 20% of the total gross for the 3-day weekend.

Top 10 Movies -- Fri & Sat Totals, 3-Day Wkd Rankings, 4-Day Holiday Ests:
1. Tropic Thunder (DWorks/Paramount), $3M Fri, $4.2M Sat, $11.5M wkd, $14.2 holiday
2. Babylon A.D. (20th Century Fox), $3.1M Fri, $3.3M Sat, $9.7M wkd, $12M holiday
3. The Dark Knight (Warner Bros), $2.1M Fri, $3.2M Sat, $8.6M wkd, $11M holiday
4. The House Bunny (Sony), $2.5M Fri, $3M Sat, $8.3M wkd, $10.2M holiday
5. Traitor (Overture), $2.2M Fri, $2.9M Sat, $7.8M wkd, $10M holiday
6. Death Race (Universal), $1.7M ... Read More »

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SHOWBIZ LEGAL EAGLE GOES DOWN! Christensen Found Guilty On All Counts; Pellicano Also Convicted For 2nd Time

By Nikki Finke | Category: Courts, Law, Pellicano | Friday August 29, 2008 @ 11:19am

terrychristensen2.jpgapellicano.jpgkerkorian.JPG

UPDATE: Sentencing will take place November 17th.

Maybe Terry Christensen should have hired a real criminal attorney and not his entertainment law partner Patty Glaser who clearly got out of testifying against him by becoming his counsel. Being found guilty on one count of wiretapping and one count of criminal conspiracy means that Christensen could be jailed for as long as 10 years. This verdict is sure to shake up the entertainment legal landscape because Christensen was the managing partner at the powerhouse law firm of Christensen, Glaser, Fink, Jacobs, Weil & Shapiro.

Of course there'll be an appeal, especially after the federal judge took the rare step yesterday of dismissing a juror who apparently lied about making biased statements. (Like how the defendants should be allowed to wiretap because the U.S. government does, and "this case is a joke case" because "no one died.") The jury foreman had asked that juror No. 7 be replaced because his mind was made up when deliberations began and he refused to take part in them. The juror himself claimed the others were angry with him because he disagreed with the majority.

Christensen and the Hollywood private eye he hired, Anthony Pellicano, were convicted of hatching a plot to intercept the telephone calls of Lisa Bonder, the ex-wife of billionaire Christensen client Kerk Kerkorian when both were in the midst of a bitter child support dispute. This was Pellicano's second wiretapping trial: he was convicted of racketeering and other federal crimes related to his illegal information-gathering operation in May.

After six weeks of trial, this jury came back with a verdict remarkably quickly except for the No. 7 contretemps. Pellicano, who again represented himself, and Christensen's legal team argued against removing the juror and called for a mistrial. "It's clear that this jury came in hell bent for a quick verdict and they have exerted incredible pressure on this dissenting view by this particular juror," defense attorney Terree A. Bowers was quoted in the press as saying. "We just think this whole process has totally invalidated and tainted this jury."

The conspiracy and wiretapping case against Pellicano and Christensen hinged on the contents of their 34 recorded conversations. Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Saunders argued ... Read More »

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Why Do NBC Anchors Love Aaron Sorkin?

By Nikki Finke | Category: Finance, LA Weekly, Ratings | Friday August 29, 2008 @ 9:08am

asorkin4.JPG 

Few people in Hollywood actually like Aaron Sorkin, least of all his fellow Writer's Guild scribes who recently learned about his attempts to undermine the guild's solidarity behind the writers strike. But NBC political anchors really really like him. Last night, NBC's Brian Williams and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann had an on-air bromance over, of all things, Aaron Sorkin's writing. Both men, twice on the telecast, compared Barack Obama's Democratic National Convention acceptance speech to a scene in Sorkin's pic The American President where President Andrew Shepherd rails against his political opponent. (See YouTube below...) Here's the thing: film reviewers found the weakest part of that Sorkin movie was its naive view of politics. As the Los Angeles Times' movie critic Kenny Turan wrote, the pic is filled with "fantasies [and] pipe dreams about the American political system and where it could theoretically be headed". I don't know which is more humiliating for Williams and Olbermann: that they couldn't compare Obama's speech to something real, like nomination acceptance speeches from the past ... or they tried to praise Obama's speech and wound up unwittingly dissing it... or that they think Aaron Sorkin is so quotable. 

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Anti-Membership First Flyer Sighted...

By Nikki Finke | Category: Finance, Internet | Thursday August 28, 2008 @ 5:50pm

My photographer Jim Stevenson spotted this anti-Membership First poster visible near a film production in Los Feliz today. Is this savvy or slimey? You be the judge. UPDATE: Opposing slate leader Ned Vaughn emails me: "Unite for Strength had nothing to do with this anti-Membership First flyer and I don’t know who’s behind it."

mf-poster.jpg

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More Bitterness: SAG Hollywood vs NY

By Nikki Finke | Category: Agents, Finance, Internet | Thursday August 28, 2008 @ 5:26pm

Anti-Membership First Flyer Sighted... 

It was inevitable in this bitter SAG election between Membership First and Unite For Strength that both slates would find red meat in the just-as-bitter relationship between SAG Hollywood and the NY Division. At issue now are remarks made by SAG national president Alan Rosenberg at two Membership First campaign events -- August 23rd (a fundraiser at Nancy Sinatra's house) and 24th (an informal meet and greet) as reported by Back Stage. (I've noted Back Stage has a very obvious anti-SAG leadership bias, not surprising since it's a sister Nielsen Business Media publication of the equally biased Hollywood Reporter. Nevertheless, I'll assume Rosenberg was quoted accurately.) 

BACK STAGE: "In his address to the approximately 95 guests at the fundraiser, Rosenberg called the current board elections "the most important elections in the history of the Screen Actors Guild." He said of UFS's slate of candidates, "To elect people who have never been near this union, never served on a committee, know nothing about negotiations, and to replace valuable people…it would be absolutely a tragedy." ... "Unite for Strength is a hypocrisy; we all know that," said Rosenberg, who later referred to the party as "Divide for Weakness." "These are people who say they want to unite something, then come in and take away people's right to vote on contracts... They say they want strength, yet they want to merge with a union, AFTRA, which just ratified a contract that's going to kill actors… They don't want to unite this place, and they don't want us to be strong." He continued, "MembershipFirst takes that title very seriously. They really stand up for the members, each and every time on each on every issue.... The other people want to turn this into an organization that only represents the top 2% of the wage earners in this business. [They] are forced to lie, they're forced to misrepresent, they're forced to launch character assassinations…. They really talk about qualified voting. They really talk about giving away residuals…. In order to get elected, if that's your agenda, you have to lie."

"... The national president also criticized national board members from the New York and regional branch divisions, who abstained from voting on a referendum to reject the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers' 'final' contract offer during a meeting Aug. 21. The motion

... Read More »

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Lionsgate, A Studio With No Conscience

By Nikki Finke | Category: Scandal, Sopranos, Vegas | Thursday August 28, 2008 @ 12:59pm

 

The Pulitzer-prize winning New Orleans local newspaper thinks it's an outrage that Lionsgate is releasing Disaster Movie on the 3rd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The studio that has hawked torture porn for years has now decided to make a buck off the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people, and on the eve of another terrible storm about to strike the Gulf states. "Around these Katrina-scarred parts, Aug. 29 is still -- and will be for some time -- a black-armband kind of day," criticized Mike Scott, the movie writer for the local newspaper The Times-Picayune. "For Lionsgate studios, however, Aug. 29 isn't quite as sacred. For them, the third anniversary of the day the levees were breached and New Orleans slipped under is something on the order of perfect timing: a ripped-from-the-headlines release date." Lionsgate is quick to point out that the pic's disaster isn't meteorological; it's an incoming meteor and claims the opening date is an unfortunate coincidence. "The film does not depict or parody any actual natural disaster, and the release date of 'Disaster Movie' is in no way a reference to or joke about the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina," read a studio statement prepared for The Times-Picayune. As the newspaper noted, "That's a hard line to swallow. Tasteless humor and B-movie comedies have their place. But this confluence of dates isn't just a cheap laugh. It's a cheap shot to an entire region still digging out from an all-too-real disaster."

Especially when the film was shot in Shreveport, "the place that started siphoning film business from New Orleans within weeks of the storm," Scott wrote. "Neither Friedberg nor Seltzer can credibly plead ignorance to the significance of Aug. 29 or its continued impact on this part of the country. They shot their previous spoof, Meet the Spartans, in New Orleans last year during the July and August lead-up to the second anniversary of Katrina. Surely they ventured far enough from the coziness of their hotel rooms to witness the lingering devastation of one of the worst natural disasters in American history." Oh and irony of ironies, the film's box office will be impacted this weekend by another bad storm. So most Gulf Coast state residents will be too busy making evacuation plans for Gustav which is heading their way now. "Lionsgate might find that funny. ... Read More »

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URGENT! Actors Guilds And Advertisers Agree To 6-Month Contract Extension

By Nikki Finke | Category: AFTRA, Actors, Advertising | Wednesday August 27, 2008 @ 2:06pm

I just received the following announcement:

New York and Los Angeles (August 27, 2008) – Screen Actors Guild (SAG), the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) and the advertising industry’s ANA/AAAA Joint Policy Committee on Broadcast Talent Union Relations (JPC) today jointly announced an agreement to extend, through March 31, 2009, the terms of their Commercials Contracts. The extension adds six months to the previous two-year extension the parties agreed to, which covered the period from 2006 to 2008.  That extension was set to expire on October 29, 2008.

The news at least delays whether or not SAG and AFTRA will negotiate the next contract jointly or separately.

More Back & Forth Between SAG/AFTRA

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TOLDJA! Alli Shearmur Joining Lionsgate

By Nikki Finke | Category: Music, Sopranos | Wednesday August 27, 2008 @ 1:45pm

I was out of the office yesterday but DHD readers already knew what Joe Drake finally announced: that Lionsgate hired Alli Shearmur to head a new production arm as part of the studio's expansion. See my previous from July 18th: Major Expansion At Lionsgate

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TheDeal.com Also Says MGM Is For Sale...

By Nikki Finke | Category: Horror, Sopranos | Wednesday August 27, 2008 @ 12:04pm

So my sources, BusinessWeek's sources, and now TheDeal.com's sources all report that MGM is for sale despite the studio's denials. Last night, the well-known financial website (whose articles require a subscription) noted that MGM doesn't need Goldman Sachs because it already has relationships in place to, quoting from a statement it released Monday, "explore enhancements to MGM's long-term capital structure." The website cited in particular existing MGM arrangements with J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Royal Bank of Scotland Group plc. "Veteran film financier John Miller of J.P. Morgan, which with Credit Suisse Group committed $4.25 billion in debt financing for MGM's acquisition by a consortium in April 2005, was described by one source as the go-to guy should MGM wish 'to rework the credit facility.' RBS, meanwhile, has been trying to raise a $500 million credit line for the studio for six months."

So, asked TheDeal.com, what's left for Goldman to do? "Something it does really well, sources speculated, which is investigate M&A opportunities."

Sources told TheDeal.com that Goldman Sachs may help MGM take on additional equity partners as well as holding a sale of the company."

TheDeal.com adds more detail to what I've noted previously -- Goldman Sachs' long history with selling MGM. Kirk Kerkorian retained the investment bank in the spring of 2004 to co-run its auction of the studio with Latham & Watkins LLP. In addition, Goldman provided the fairness opinion advising MGM's public shareholders to accept the $12 per share offer that allowed it to go private and led to the studio's $5 billion sale to a consortium consisting of Sony Corp. and Comcast Corp. as strategic investors, as well as Providence Equity Partners Inc., TPG Capital, DLJ Merchant Banking Partners and Quadrangle Group LLC as financial sponsors.

The Deal.com also counted three shifts in the business model employed by MGM: monetizing its 4,000-title library, offering itself as a distribution platform to others, and attempting to return to major-studio status with a full production slate. "That no model has yet panned out explains why MGM's $3.7 billion in debt is trading around 75 cents on the dollar in an increasingly tough credit environment. " 

As for MGM's denial that it's on the block, TheDeal.com notes that "MGM's financial sponsors have little risk in testing the market. Unlike their strategic partners, who have already written down their investments in the Lion, the consortium's
private equity members can defer mark-to-market revisions until they ... Read More »

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