Midnight Madness For ‘Breaking Dawn’ DVD 
BAFTA Awards: What ‘Artist’, Dujardin, Streep … 
64th BAFTA Awards Winners: ‘The Artist’, Meryl … 
BAFTA 2012 Preview: Very British Affair Takes On … 
RECORD-BREAKING WEEKEND! 4 Films Open $20+M: ‘The … 
Remembered: Jennifer Hudson To Perform Whitney Houston … 
Live From NY, It’s Jean Dujardin On 
R.I.P. Whitney Houston 
TOLDJA! Indomina-BET Buy Sundance ‘LUV’ 
Saoirse Ronan Bigger Teen Action Queen 
WME Signs Writer-Director Jon Kasdan 
‘Glee’s Jane Lynch Joins Indie Film Comedy 
Universal Revives ‘Dracula Year Zero’ With … 
Jodie Foster Sending Mel Gibson Film ‘The … 
‘Roseanne’ Reunion: John Goodman To Co-Star In … 
UPDATE: Closing Arguments Conclude In Golden Globes Trial; … 
Series Adaptation Of ‘Legion’ With … 
Lionsgate Calms Investors With Talk About Charlie Sheen, … 
Ridley Scott Commits To Next Direct McCarthy’s … 
Marvel Studio’s Tim Connors Defects To Legendary As … 
UPDATE: Warner Bros Lawyers Dig In Garbage Over ‘The … 
CAA has signed Aline Brosh McKenna, the prolific screenwriter of The Devil Wears Prada, 27 Dresses, and the recently wrapped Paramount comedy Morning Glory. She had been repped by Hohman Maybank Lieb but I heard she took agency meetings recently before signing with CAA. Brosh has numerous scripts percolating — The Undomestic Goddess, which Andy Fickman will direct, and the Fox comedy We Bought A Zoo.
Marketplace
-
-
-
News/Opinion Poll
Loading ...Box Office Poll
Loading ...
- The Vow (THVOW) forecast at $41.7M up $5.0M
- Safe House (SAFEH) forecast at $39.3M up $5.3M
- Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (MYSTR) forecast at $27.6M up $6.6M
- Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace 3D (SW13D) forecast at $23.0M unchanged
- Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance (GHST2) forecast at $31.4M up $2.6M
- Artist, Meryl Streep Win Big at BAFTA Awards
- Berlinale Dispatch: The Taviani Brothers — Who? — Return with a Great Shakespeare-in-Prison Movie
- Berlinale Dispatch: Greetings from the Baked Potato of Film Festivals, 62nd Edition!
- Summit and Lionsgate Hoping for Sixth Twilight Movie, Of Course
- REVIEW: Star Wars: Ep. I - The Phantom Menace Adds Stunning Third Dimension of Meh
How amazingly disloyal! Devra Lieb and the rest of HML have helped her become the largest writer in her genre so of course the she fires them…such a shitty business
PEOPLE! PEOPLE! PEOPLE! Please…PRETTY please…don’t make comments like this if you stepped off the bus last week and now you think you know “the biz” because you had a 42 second conversation with the DOD of Whatever Prods. while waiting for the Venti Mocha Frappe you heard was cool to order.
WELCOME TO THE EFFING BUSINESS!!!
Geez!! It BLOWS MY MIND to see posts like this! My only comforting thought is that all the haters here are with HML.
For the record…I do not know, nor have I ever had any dealings with McKenna. I have never had any dealings with HML either. But, having no knowledge of either party, I can tell you with absolute certainty two things: 1) If I was her agent or anyone at HML I would be furious with her for her unimaginable disloyalty (I’ve been there. I know how much it frickin’ sucks!); 2) If I was her I would have made this move a while ago.
Do you haters REALLY think it wise to not take advantage of opportunity? I mean, really? Clients leave agents and move on to (hopefully) better agents. Deal with it. Agents stop servicing clients because clients stop churning out decent product or what have you. Deal with it.
Is anyone here ignorant enough to believe HML and CAA have the same packaging potential? Somehow I think CAA’s director roster just might be a little more promising. “But she’s hot! The work is coming to HER!” Anyone who might think that has never been a or worked for a top level agency before.
No…I do not work for, have never worked for, nor ever been represented by CAA. Just get REALLY irritated at these posts.
Welcome to the “BUSINESS”! Loyalty…HA!! Go home now…
Ok, let me get this straight, you DON’T know Aline, you DON’T know HML, you never worked for or were repp’d by CAA but you have the right to criticize all the postings of people who at least DO have knowledge of at least 2 of those 3 things? What’s your point? Are you even IN this business? Or just some wannabe who has to chime in and disagree with people who actually DO KNOW all the people involved here. Seriously dude, sit this one out, because you DON’T know what you’re talking about.
Amen.
Umm…hate to disagree realitygurl, but you know nothing about Marshall McLuhan (don’t get the reference, look it up). Writers leave agents all the time, agents drop writers all the time. That’s the way the industry works. As they say “It’s business, not personal.” Your post begs the question: “Are you even IN this business?” Get a clue.
I’m being candid, A-Game. I spent 6 years as an MPLit agent at one of the big 5 (1 of the big 3 if you asked me when I had my desk) and know…yes, actually KNOW…many of the guys in MPLit at CAA.
“Don’t know what I’m talking about.” You’re funny little girl. Get off the computer, your boss needs coffee.
PS – When I use the word “know” I am referring to a relationship, business or otherwise, of any kind. I wouldn’t say “know” Jeff Robinov because I had lunch with the guy 10 years ago.
You’re an idiot. And I’m an even bigger one for responding to your nonsense.
Ingrid’s “point” was pretty clear to me and is 100% spot on. If it wasn’t clear to you than you have never worked at an agency (or, at least, a big one). I, for one, am a big girl at a major. Us big boys and girls all know how it works. I have a dear friend down the street who had a writer depart 4 months after he was in his agent’s wedding. Grotesque, yes. The guy was being serviced properly by what was and still is a phenomenal agent. The business, yes. And by the way, I don’t think that the fact that this Ingrid person doesn’t know one little agency or one particular writer has anything to do with what his/her views are re: the agency biz especially if they were an agent at the level they claimed to be.
Looks to me like YOU are the one that might need to “sit this one out”.
Believe it or not, being at CAA does not guarantee a great career. There are plenty of writers/directors/actors who left smaller agents to go with CAA, only to discover that there are a lot of other fish in the same pond, and they end up leaving. CAA runs a numbers business whereas the smaller agencies can often give their clients a lot more attention. Sure, CAA has its benefits, but HML has gotten Aileen a ton of jobs already, including great star packages (Meryl Streep). What more does she want? They can’t, however, make her a better writer, which is probably what she ultimately needs. Frankel deserves 90% of the credit for PRADA!
Lieb is rude. And ABM was right to leave. According to all these comments (typed by Lieb I suspect because of their emotional tone) ABM should stay and not direct and not get higher pay days? Not start a TV production company cause Lieb got her work. She’s an AGENT. That is her job.
All this whining over a business decision? Guys do it all the time. They go for the gold when they have the chance. No one beats them up. ABM is SMART. Now she’s working with Cameron Crowe and selling pitches for well over a million. Lieb is nice to buyers but I have friends who have dealt with her as writers and say she was needlessly cruel. I don’t understand all this Mother Theresa stuff being written here. I think Lieb doth protest too much. Her fingers must be tired.
What a bitch. HML did a great job for her over the many years they repped her. What more could she want? She works constantly. I guarantee she will get lost at CAA and be begging to go back to her old agents soon.
Disgusting that someone could be that ungrateful and leave their agent after close to 20 years. Hohman Maybank Lieb made her career and she leaves for what?
Let me ask you a question Hollywoodie: If you were a writer (maybe you are, who knows) and after a certain amount of time with a smaller agency you had the opportunity to move to a larger agency with much better talent connections and better paydays for your efforts, what would do? Obviously there is a reason she is leaving. Think about it. Would you work the rest of life for minimum wage because your employer is a “really nice guy.” I doubt it.
Everyone knows that Aline Brosh McKenna is a pain in the ass who has tanked more than she’s ever gotten right. She largely kept getting job after job because of HML and this is how she repays them? Now everyone gets to see her for the horrible human being she really is.
Hohman Maybank Lieb is a good small agency, but it was only a matter of time before a talent like McKenna moved on. I’m not sure how any small agency can compete for talent with the likes of CAA particularly as jobs become more scarce.
What a shame! H/M/L is my favorite group in town. They worked their butts off for her.
All HML did was find her, launch her career and book her into 3 movies that got made….as she fires them. Sad. Fire your agent for doing a bad job, dont fire your agent for the grass being greener. All Devra did was read every submission sent to her, regardless if it was set up or not, and have an opinion on it, which is why she was booked into jobs that got made. Will be interesting to see when she asks her agent what they think of a script or adaptation and her agent has never read it. A large part of Arleene’s success was that she was not at an agency that had music, actors, reality TV, branding….it was an agency that focused on repping writers and they do as good of a job if not better of a job at that than anybody in town. This town sucks.
This is disgusting. HML made her a million dollar writer. Does she really think she’s going to do better at CAA where she will be 4th on any list of high end female writers. This business disgusts me. Caa disgusts me. And Aline disgusts me. On principle alone, I will not hire her. So much for loyalty and respect for hard work.
HML didn’t make her a million dollar writer. She made herself a million dollar writer. Her agent took some phone calls. If agents could “make” million dollar writers, we’d have a lot more of them.
Friggin’ A!!!! I THOUGHT your comment would simply be common sense but, unfortunately, the people here need to be edumacated on the realities of life and this business.
Amen! The naivete of some of these posts is astounding.
Have dealt with Bayard Maybank on a couple of occasions. Great guy. Super smart.
Why shouldn’t a writer be able to switch agents if he/she wants to? It’s just business, right? Obviously Aline felt her career would be better served by going to go to a larger agency with more resources and industry clout. Now the onus is on CAA to take her career to the next level. And everyone will be watching so they’d better not fail.
I am stunned by this. ABM has been singing Dev’s praises to me for years, as recently as a few months ago. Devra is a superb agent and just as superb a human being. Even if AMB really thinks CAA will do a better job (which they won’t) how much work and money does she need?
All of it. And you don’t?
If this were community theater or film school that would be one thing. She should make as much as she can WHILE she can. Would YOU want to be the writer 20 years from now after the monies been spent wishing you had gone for a stronger team or would you be comfortable with your SS $ and royalties claiming “Well, at least I was loyal?” in between spoonfuls of state-provided apple sauce?
I mean no disrespect as I don’t know who you are. My belief is that CAA will do a better job at first and if she doesn’t yield the commissions right away she’ll slip faster than she would at HML. In the end, CAA may or may not do a better job BUT they will provide her better opportunities. They all get the same OWAs, CAA will have the packaging power. Amazing what an A-list director attachment can do to a spec sale.
1) Aline probably does not write specs at this point in her life. And any spec she wrote would presumably attract attention on its own. Attachments don’t always mean that much to studios. They are perfectly capable of packaging on their own.
2) CAA giveth and CAA taketh away. By signing with them you might gain access to their list, but you lose access to other competing packaging agencies (WME, etc). HML has good relationships with all the big agencies, so they arguably have a broader reach.
3) As a movie writer, no matter what you earn, your commissions mean relatively little to CAA. You exist in their minds to “feed” their stars and directors. Not vice versa. Your interests will always come second, if not third. And God forbid your interests conflict with those of one of those actor/director clients…
4) I don’t know why Aline left, and neither do you. So shut up already. She’s a good writer, and they’re good agents. Good luck to both of them.
Oh, and by the way? If she needs Social Security and “royalties” (sic) twenty years from now, she’s clearly made a much bigger mistake than firing her agents…
She’ll be better served at CAA? That’s a big joke. Devra and HML did an amazing job for Aline, above and way beyond the what most agents would or could do. She’ll come crawling back soon, that’s for sure.
OK, come on people. This is Hollywood. Is it really that SHOCKING that someone doing perfectly fine at a place like HML would ditch them for the magical allure of the death star?? If I’m not mistaken this happens often, it’s animal magnetism; think bugs at night hurling themselves into the deadly beacon of your porch light.
These comments are truly idiotic. I’m guess aline wants to expand into producing and the boutique agencies just can’t service that business.
I’ll bet that this is the closest to the truth. Everyone in the business knows that H/M/L is a great agency and that Dev is wonderful and smart. She and they are most likely getting screwed by facilitating Aline’s most recently reported deal — the one with a little company known as Bad Robot. Now, ABM is very wrong that she can become even 1/10th of JJ’s company, but once they’ve got stars (and prospective multiple executives under their genius tutelage) there’s little you can do to get them back.
That all said, she IS disloyal and deserves all that she’s getting here.
This is ridiculous…Aline has every right to change agencies. She stayed with Devra after having success but clearly felt it was time for a change…a chaneg that can package!
A ‘bitch?’ ‘Disgusting?’ What is this? She made a calculated decision to further her career. Producers, studio execs do it every day. But for a writer, it’s ‘how dare you. We let you into the club, and you repay us like this?’ You think HML wouldn’t drop her if she wasn’t making money for them? This loyalty stuff makes me laugh.
As someone who has been in the biz for a little over a decade, and has been an agent a little less than that. I can honestly say this move is BS.
HML is one of those agencies we generally leave alone when it comes to clients. 1) They are really good at what they do; 2) They are respectful human beings, and have a douchebag factor of about 0, and 3) this town needs agencies like HML (they are the last of their kind) to keep this town honest.
Boo to you ABM, what could possibly be not working in your career??
While the siren song of a big agency is clear…”we’ll package your movieeeees…we’ll leverage our other clients to get you better deaaaals…we’ll get your face on a breakfast cereal boxxxxx…” it’s a huge disappointment that this happens. H/M/L is one of the, if not the, classiest, smartest boutique agency in town and they DO THE WORK, they HAVE A SMART, CONSIDERED OPINION ON MATERIAL and they are STRATEGIC IN THEIR LONG-TERM CAREER THINKING FOR THEIR CLIENTS. It will be curious to see how ABM likes being a fish in a pond where there are a lot of bigger fish and a lot more conflicting agendas than just furthering her career in the most loyal way possible.
But her career is at the next level.
Did something happen between her and Devra? Now she’s going to an agency that has Audrey Wells, Susannah Grant, etc. who are in the same genre and have a stronger body of work.
These writers are delusional if they think a bigger agency is going to do more or pay more attention to them with a hundreds of other clients higher on the list and bigger agendas. CAA is just a big collector of names with only the top tier clients working.
I’m sure she’s just looking out for herself but McKenna may find that sneaky Mr. Kharma may be having a bit of fun with her in the future.
I’m trying to figure out why Brosh left Hohman – and the only explanation is there must have been something she thinks they can’t do that she figures CAA can. Except – by the looks of it – there appears to be NOTHING Hohman can’t do. You want your original script sold and produced? Hey, no problem. Hohman did it with ’27 Dresses’ and ‘Morning Glory’. You want an adaptation? Hohman did that with ‘Devil Wears Prada’. So what exactly is Brosh expecting CAA to do for her that Hohman didn’t? Because, by the looks of it, Hohman did it all.
What? Is CAA going to give Brosh her own parking or maybe they’ll pick up the tab at more expensive restaurants? What?
All this talk about how agents “found her”, “got her work”, “made her career” “booked her into movies” is such typical agency horse shit. She wrote the scripts. She did the pitches and meetings that got her booked. The most any agency ever does is send out material, pitch their clients, and answer the phone when buyers call… Most agents barely do even that.
Agencies let go of clients all the time if they’re not earning enough. Clients who feel they can better their career/income by moving to another shop are idiots if they are sucked in by the “loyalty” plea.
HML is one of the few agencies that doesn’t “let go of clients when they aren’t earning enough.” They are a class act and stick by their writers through ups AND downs. Reality Check is starting to sound an awful lot like a “certain writer” trying to defend herself. Good luck at CAA.
This is true. I know someone who is repped by HML and he went through a rough patch and earned nothing for a couple of years and HML stood by him. I don’t know them personally but their reputation is wonderful. That said, this character assassination of McKenna by people clearly aligned with HML is classless and must be raising a few eyebrows.
It’s ironic how people have the confidence to write comments that express such hard and fast opinions but the don’t have the integrity to write their own name.
I am sad for Devra and the guys at HML. These guys are the best of the best and in many ways, I want to emulate how they do business and how they represent their clients.
The idiots on here who think, “it’s business, it’s not personal,” clearly are not reps and clearly haven’t been at the Hollywood game for years. How much passion does it take to be in someone corner year after year after year — to do it in good times and to do it in bad times? If it wasn’t personal, if you didn’t do it out of a place of respect for the client, a love for the craft and passion for making great movies, you couldn’t survive in this business. I would argue instead that all of it, everything in Hollywood, is personal.
That is why this woman leaving these reps is sad. People may act out of what they may view as their self-interest, that doesn’t mean that it should be respected or valued. More important than self-interest is self-respect and relationships and, dare I say, loyalty. Long term thinking often forces the smart ones among us to put aside our self interest in view of the bigger picture, a picture that we can be proud of.
You can get rich in this town and you can also do it in ways that help you sleep better at night.
JKR
To all: Jewerl Ross is a smart, great guy.
To Jewerl: I understand everything you are saying, but as great as it sounds, I’m confused. My boss is at one of the big 4. You’ve steered clients to him/her before from smaller agency’s. Doesn’t this totally contradict your statement?
To all: I don’t have the “integrity” to post my real name because I don’t want to pack up my things when my boss gets back from lunch and spend the w/e getting drunk.
To most here: Aline made her move. Most people commenting here have no idea what they are talking about or are not in the business or are even affiliated with any parties involved or are just plain dumb. HML did a great job. Aline did some great writing (regardless of what the naysayers would like to think). They made some money. Good for all.
She’s not the first to cut bait on the HML after they handed her a career on a silver platter. And I’m afraid she won’t be the last. Not having a TV department, not being able to offer packaging with actors and directors, it’s challenging for HML to compete with the likes of CAA, et al. Maybe HML needs to re-think the business plan … snag a few youngies from the TV and Talent divisions at the big agencies who are ready to soar but aren’t being promoted.
HML “handed her a career on a silver platter”? What are you talking about? How does an agent hand a writer a career on a silver platter? You have ZERO insight into how money is actually made and a writer’s career built. Zero.
HML signed McKenna because they saw she had talent and thought she could make some money for them. McKenna then sat in front of a computer writing her ass off. People liked what she wrote, bought the scripts, generating huge commissions. The only person who had anything handed to them on a silver platter were her agents. 10% of every dollar.
Maybe she wants to direct and HML can’t put together anything for her.