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UPDATE: I finally put together what happened, and it's a fascinating glimpse behind the scenes of Team De Niro. My sources say when Robert De Niro first came to WME in 2008, he was coming off 2 low budget and low salary and low prestige Avi Lerner pics which CAA claimed at the time was all it could secure for him. But estimates are that the 66-year-old actor made $35M with WME's Ari Emanuel in less than 2 years. That included the big payday for the 3rd Fockers installment which WME put together, the movies Stone with Edward Norton and Machete with Robert Rodriguez, as well as Another Night In Suck City for Focus Features with Paul Weitz directing, a showy role playing Gov George Wallace in Precious director Lee Daniels' next pic about desegregation, plus mid-development on another Midnight Run, and other film projects. Plus 2 to 3 TV series for Bob's Tribeca production company. Plus an advertising deal with American Express. All this ka-ching also included WME securing him one of the lead roles in Edge Of Darkness. But then, my sources claim, "he was fired because he didn't memorize his lines". (Bob's people wouldn't confirm or deny this.) Even so, WME secured his full pay for him. "That bad situation had a good effect on him. He's a great actor, but he lost his way about what's important. And there was his constant need for money, planes, everything," my source noted. "He re-focused himself. And Ari re-established him."
From what I'm hearing, De Niro started to be handled more by Chris Donnelly than Ari personally. That's when De Niro's longtime Tribeca producing partner Jane Rosenthal, despite the big money Bob was making with WME, initiated calls to CAA. She started negotiating the actor's return to that agency. On the phone with me today, Rosenthal took full responsibility for guiding De Niro back to CAA. "It's not about money. I have been friends and still colleagues with CAA and that's what it's about. It becomes about personalities who you end up working best with." But my sources said this was also more about Rosenthal's fears for her own future than De Niro's career.
9:45 AM: Well, this is surprising. I've just been told that Robert De Niro has returned to CAA where he will be represented by a team headed by Richard Lovett, Josh Lieberman and Dan Aloni. De Niro was last represented by CAA in 2008, when the actor jumped to what was then Endeavor. (Robert De Niro Has Fired CAA) It had been a major signing coup for the boutique agency, especially given the word that De Niro was dissatisfied with how CAA had serviced his production companies in film, television, etc. But the very idea of him leaving CAA, where he'd been a client for such a long long time, was astonishing. I remember when Bryan Lourd, Kevin Huvane and Richard Lovett made it a top priority as soon as they took over CAA in 1995 to do everything they could to keep De Niro since he had been tied so closely to departing Michael Ovitz. Then Endeavor's merger with William Morris took place. Now De Niro is gone from WME back to CAA. It's not about money. It's about prestige. This really is a 2-agency war going on.
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CAA better start looking at its roster as it is quickly becoming a retirement home for talent.
Buy the rights to ‘First Deadly Sin’ (originally starring Sinatra/Dunaway) about a detective/chef and remake it already – time for a legend’s third act
mk,
i’m with you and then some. Robert De Niro could star in ANY movie based on a Lawrence Sanders’ novel … and any other film for that matter.
he’s an AMAZING actor who is still presented with more scripts than he can probably read each week. i cringed a bit at the reference to him entering a “third act” simply because i don’t consider him a “has been” in any sense of the word. he currently has three films in post-production and one in pre-production … where did the second act end?
bottom line: here’s to seeing De Niro in a Saunders’ film!
De Niro, Harrison Ford, Pacino, and Nicholson should team up to film “Geritol” the movie.
WME is a mess. CAA is swimming in clients. UTA & ICM will benefit from this in 2010, right? Right?
I bet you’re a real moneymaker for them. I think I just heard your Cup’o'Noodles ding in the microwave.
We know where you’re working.
LOL!!!
Deniro can change agencies a million time, but tell me how he or his management team read the script “everybody’s fine” and thought it would do ANYTHING for his career? Maybe its not his agency that needs shaking up!
Based on the last three (more) releases for RDN, who cares where the representation lies , it will not help the autumn of the actor.
I would love nothing more than to see a new performance from De Niro that is serious and intense, along the lines of Deer Hunter or Raging Bull. I think he’s got a couple great ones still in him. Bobby, you hear me?
What could possibly be surprising about this to you, Nikki? WME has been on a consistent and steep downward trajectory ever since the merger. Every single thing that’s been written on the wall about them has suggested that.
Well said. This is a one agency fight not two agency war. WME is just bracing and trying to hold on to what they have.
You both need to be listening better on your boss’ calls. This is exactly the type of move that exemplifies why CAA is WORRIED.
HH
De Niro going to CAA exemplifies why CAA is worried?
Huh?
Huh?
If he starts making good movies again, god bless the deal because
De Niro is irrelevant in film these days, and that’s not a very good thing.
The two biggies fighting over PRESTIGE? Oh pleez… And it’s hardly about DeNiro as a ac-TOR. It’s about DeNiro’s prodco actually stepping up, making flix and getting some of that producer backend. One can only imagine what the overhead is on that company, and CAA will package blah blah all his next successful producerial efforts. Right? Right?
Yes, I am certain WME is bummed to be losing Jane Rosenthal and a 70 year old actor. Yes, he’s a legend. But he’s constantly broke, hard to book, and grumbles about everything.
Who got the big commission on FOKKERS?
De Niro is constantly broke? I doubt it. It seems he’ll do anything for a paycheck, like “City By the Sea”. And he made $35 million while at WME and is STILL broke? Nah. The residuals on his films alone have got to bring in 200k a week.But we should all get our money back for “Righteous Kill”.
Everyone is leaving WME. Did they go from hot to not?
You too?
Hopefully, this is a sign that De Niro is ready to being a real actor again.
Everybody’s Fine was so bland, so obvious, so flavorless. Not quite as soul-rapingly bad as Righteous Kill or Showtime, but still a criminally lame choice for a talent like him.
Maybe not about money directly; certainly abot Endeavor promising to elevate its client Amex’s relationship with Tribeca. Chalk up another WME fail.
C.A.A. –> Collecting Aging Actors
Just asking. Which aging CAA agent was told he can have no contact whatsoever with DeNiro or his company? (A condition of his return to the tenpercentry?)
I bet it was Fred Spektor
Everybody’s Fine? Righteous Kill? Fifteen Minutes? Hide and Seek? The only person DeNiro can blame for his career is himself. His agent didnt make him do these movies… It was the payday. DeNiro likes money. A lot. Guys like him over the years acquire BIG overheads. They have to feed it. Look at Nicolas Cage. Learn to live a little leaner… you might not have to dilute your overall value by doing shite.
Endeavor went after DeNiro and obviously wanted him when they took him away from CAA. Now that he is going back to CAA, they are trying to say they don’t care and that he is old- Pa…Leese. WME is trying to save face with DeNiro and Shia… the industry knows better.
Exactly. First WME tried to spin it as De Niro’s old and irrelevant, then they got even more defensive and had to boast they’ve made $35 million for him over the last two years.
$35 million does not sound so irrelevant to me, 66 is not very old and he’s one of the top few legendary actors of cinematic history… And has a successful production company to service and make money off of to boot.
Bad shit going on a WME.
My guess is that Donnelly is overwhelmed. The motion pic lit dept has lost everyone who used to second-string his clients. He’s a great guy but he’s not a talent agent and he has a lot of high maintenance people on his books. I guess he ended up with RDN because of Marty.
Also, yes, WME went from hot to not. There is no way to spin this as anything but a loss to the agency. They wanted to be CAA, but guess what? There already is a CAA.
Donnelly is a buffoon who walks around like he’s too cool for everyone… Nothing cool about him. The whole thing is pretty laughable once you get to know him and why he’s gone as far as he has.
Gee, you could say that about every agent, couldn’t you? And they still make lots of money and fail upward. That’s the way it works.
You can’t say that about every agent. There’s some smart one’s out there… Chris just isn’t one of them.
Everyone on the FOCKERS set knows how terrible a producer Jane Rosenthal was/is.
and that matters. she’s smart, she’s always been smart and political, who cares if she’s a good producer, she’s a player..
Bury the lead why don’t you! ANOTHER MIDNIGHT RUN?! PLEASE!!!!!!!!
Does WME have a feature department anymore?
Good for Bobby! I’m glad he’s listening to Jane!
She was always much smarter than he was, and is really the one who is responsible for his career, the money he has made, and his fame.
He might be a good actor, but he couldn’t have done it without her.
He owes her everything.
Of course CAA wanted her back. She’s the bigger talent among the two them, and the one with the brighter future.
I’ve heard it more than one time, that he is the one who is holding her back!
what a silly post. she’s gotten everywhere leveraging his fame. and he was a star long before he hooked up with her. she is beyond smart when it comes to playing the game and she’s made him count in nyc. they’re good for each other….
Look for Martin Scorsese to do the same. For all the internal bad that came with John Lesher, he was very good to his clients. He was a signer.
Having Donnelly pick up the slack once John left only put a ticking clock on high profile exits like this one. Endeavor was always known for their TV — end of story. The feature side was always a bunch of kids in suits trying to appear older/wiser then they actually are. Ari didn’t just inherit money when he gobbled up WMA — he also got a real feature dept. Too bad it happened too late.
Donnelly is a “great guy?!?!” … interesting.
Donnelly is a nerd but thinks he’s a captain of the football team. No way Deniro would ever like this guy, no surprise DeNiro left. Word of Advice Donnelly, you’re not that guy and stop thinking you are. Stay any from the Talent and stick too the writers, you dont have what it takes.
So please stay in the Band and get off the football field.
Seacrest, DeNiro, Shia… C’mon WME, put some points on the board.
At the rate he’s going, I imagine the next thing we’ll hear is “I’ll take Robert DeNiro as the secret square to block”.
Oh, and as for New York Producer’s comment “He owes her everything”: why thanks for popping in here Jane. Is it any coincidence that apart from A Bronx Tale, EVERYTHING he’s done since their (your?) hookup has pretty much been beneath him?
In all seriousness, Nine might be kind of a stinker, but can anyone imagine Daniel Day Lewis doing “Meet the Fockers”?
Jane is lucky she got him back there. WME hated her with a passion and wanted to get her fired. She loses good movies for Bob all the time. CAA will protect her so Bob’s career will suck
Jane can’t be fired. You all and Nikki are uninformed to suggest it. Or it’s just more WME spin. Jane and Bob are fully, irrevocably partnered financially in Tribeca Films, Tribeca Film Institute, Tribeca Enterprises. Even more she’s on the board of directors at all those entities. Not just Jane but her husband too, who is a wealthy developer and who helps finance the money-losing nonprofit ventures and festival.
I recently signed with WME, and they’ve been nothing but great. Not just to me but to other people I know who are just starting the climb.
CAA wouldn’t give me the time of day, even after my first break—but when they heard I got my first big payday (through WME), that’s when they started calling.
All the defectors from WME to CAA have already peaked—CAA is getting people whose careers are done.
But WME is looking for rising talent—at least that’s what it seems like from where I’m sitting.
Actually, WME claims they only want to handle the top 2% of talent… Really… The WME leaders actually went into a staff mtg. and told all the agents that.
The honeymoon for you will end soon.
So as tough as De Niro is on screen, he is really Rosenthal’s bitch!
The most interesting part of this article is the throwaway line that another Midnight Run – AKA one of the best films of the 1980s and a criminally underrated gem – is in development. Can this be true? I can’t find anything on this on the internets.
Deniro doesn’t exactly do good work anymore though, what happened to him? He isn’t in the same league as Jack Nicholson, maybe he really never was that great of an actor…
For shame! The Godfather II, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Awakenings, Heat, This Boy’s Life, Midnight Run, The Untouchables, The King of Comedy…yes, he’s been phoning it in for a paycheck in the last decade, but to say that he was never great is dead wrong.
I have watched de Niro for years now walk thru roles and collect checks and its tiresome and predictable. I was under the impression that he was more a producer and businessman than actor in this incarnation and after so many years in the business, who can blame him?
When was the last time he played anything that didn’t look at sound like it was born and raised within a 2 mile radius of the Bronx? This is American’s finest? Sorry, thats not really acting, its idolatry.
when Gary Oldhaman can do a 5 second imitation of you on Late Night and nail your range its time to retire.
and Oldman, there’s a real actor who has stayed hungry…onlike Deniro who retired from real acting 15 years ago…Deniro in his present state should be doing detective shows or daytime soaps…sad
“when Gary Oldhaman can do a 5 second imitation of you on Late Night and nail your range its time to retire.”
Ummm. Isn’t Gary Oldman a great actor? Glad he’s getting paid off of two franchises. Doesn’t seem like an insult. But I understand. I haven’t seen a good De Niro movie since Heat.
Would love to see Gary doing Bob.
Where can I see that?
it goes deeper than that. its that moron mark dowley who f-ed up the amex relationship with wme talent. wme needs to decide who is more important to them, their corporate clients or their clients.
WME already made this decision. The reason why it didn’t take much to get all of Besser, Levine and Weinstein’s clients to go with them to Verve.
bob has become such as embarrassment . . .
to go from work in raging bull, the deerhunter . . .
to fokkers, righteous kill, etc.
it’s really so horrible to watch . . .
why?
he needs the money . . .
as others suggested, it’s not about the agency . . .
bob has done this to himself . . .
gruesome.
The comment from “NewYorkProducer” is without doubt the most (unintentionally) entertaining thing I’ve ever read on this site…
I know, right?! It almost reads like brilliant parody it’s so ridiculous. My vote it’s some bubble headed intern at Tribeca Films trying to be a loyal foot soldier.
Bob fired the wrong people. New York Producer is wildly delusional.
there is such a great reservoir of love for dinero out here we will forgive just about anything.
a remake of the great george burns/ art carney bank robbery movie.
jane producing, bring in hal linden and dustin.
add recession and downsizing and voila!
A client call a day keeps CAA away.
Correct, and that is at the heart of this.
Seriously? Is that all it takes?
No, but it would be a start.
There is a type of agent who believes, however absurd it might seem, that to ignore clients or give them attitude is the way to be valued by the client. It goes back to high school when they yearned to be the rejecter not the rejected. There should be a book written for the film industry titled, “Everything I Needed to Know about Life I Learned in High School”.
Chris Donnelly?! Ha, ha, ha. That twerp was brought in to deal with Bob? He could not work at the DMV without an army of people telling him how to do his job.
CD is really the last remaining Strickler protoge at WME so I like him for that. I feel for him as he was badly beaten up by Lesher who tried to get him fired. CD has his issues but none of them are terminal and his taste is very good. I don’t know how he survives at WME. I suspect he stands or falls by Scorses right now.
why did Lesher try to get him fired?
CAA’s diversified far beyond film into music, sports, and so on. My bet’s with the Death Star. No matter who reps Bobby D., his time has past. In short–he blows.
If de Niro is such a great actor as his publicists would have the world beleive, how come he has never attempted Shakespeare, by far and away the greatest dramatist in history? He has avoided all British characters in fact because he lacks the range and technique necessary to play them. That represents no small vacuum in an actor’s repetoire.
And so what if many of his great characters are brooding,angry and violent? Beginning level actors learn quickly that those qualities in most male actors are very close to the surface and easily accessible. The sad truth always has been that around the film business supporting actors,wannabes,competing actors and real talent never do anything but gloat in public over those at the top of the heap. Its a system based in extreme fear and insulation.
Broad range is not required to be considered a great actor. That’s a very naive drama-school belief not proven in the professional world. It’s the mark of humility and pragmatism for an actor not to attempt what is not his or her forte. I don’t WANT to see De Niro doing Shakespeare. How can you even picture that?
Sorry but great range is one of the true marks of being a great actor. Real transformation is the alchemy of acting. People more often than not confuse star acting with acting. Its not. Its a different animal all together and it can be very compelling, but its never great acting. There is a huge difference between Meryl Streep and de Niro. Marlon Brando had terrific range and power but lacked the desire to act. Laurence Olivier,Anthony Hopkins,Albert Finney, – just more examples of superb range and terrific acting.
Quite honestly I sense that at some point in the 70s the media hype machine was kidnapped by the cult of de Niro and it has not freely expressed itself since.
I miss Heath Ledger and I hope that Gary Oldham has a big resurgence.
De Niro is rather prolific in the art of producing flops. Not to worry, he can always team up with Joe Pesci and shoot yet another mob movie to pay the bills.
De Niro really was the best actor of the 70’s and the 1st part of the 80’s but he lost interest in making good movies and wanted to be a movie star making movie star dollars. Sounds like he wants it both ways now but I wonder if he really has it in him to give a great, new, memorable performance again. I think he’s too spoiled and rich to put in the effort that he used to.
Another Midnight Run? Sad.
Gee, why can’t Bobby do the same roles he did at 30? That’s a real tough one, my friend. Maybe because in 3 short years he’ll be 70.
Wow, I can hardly wait to see stuff like Fockers 3 – “Fock You And Fock Everybody”. Or Analyze 3 – “Analyze The Other Thing.”
Or those great remakes of old movies that will always be 100 times better than their crappy copies. Ya, sequels and remakes, real smart way to go, Bobby – NOT.
Well now, I agree in part, to almost all of the posts above, however, Robert Deniro is one of the best actors off all time. You can call him “spoiled”, “difficult”, etc., but to say anything negative about his acting and influence is totally off base and very cruel and wrong. He has done some terrible films, so has Al Pacino, and Marlon Brando. Bad movie choices does not make any of these actors “bad” actors. I dont believe Deniro knowingly signs onto a crappy film. Im sure that he “hopes” that the film is received positively when it is released, while also getting a pay cheque. Deniro can do terrible films from now on, but I dont think anyone will come and take away his Oscar anytime soon. None of his bad movies have diminished some of the amazing roles that he brought to life in the past. Im sure the right role will present itself in the future, hopefully all of the agent CAA/WME crap will lead to better scripts actually getting to Deniro. Until then, it is not a crime for Deniro to make money off of some not so good films. Bad films yes, his acting is still amazing. Have you all forgotton his role in the movie “The Fan”?. In closing, how he conducts himself with his agent or agency, is his business. Dont you wish you could be in his position to have had these agencies fighting over you?? Either way, no matter what he chooses to do, he is still one of the greatest actors of all time. Give the guy the credit he deserves.
Thank you George. Well stated.
Hey “Grateful”, Im just being honest. Im an aspiring actor and even Iam sometimes “misunderstood”. I am so “unknown” that even my own agent has a hard time remembering who I am and at the same time, even I have to put up with the trials of being in this industry. I find it is so easy for people to forget the past accomplishments of actors like Deniro who not only influenced the way acting is done, but Deniro has also contributed to “pop” culture sipmly by “how” he portrayed his long list of legendary charactors. I just cant believe how hard people are on Deniro, regardless of some poor movie choices and his “on set” atitude, which I might add, has nothing to do with anyone. People should just enjoy his work. Bad script??- blame the writer. Bad Film? -blame the director, the D.O.P, etc. Simply enjoy Deniros work, appreciate it for what it is and leave the rest of the crap to the agents and tabloids.
He’s gonna be awesome in STONE. Simple and riveting.