ITV Pays $30M For Controlling Stake In ‘Hatfields … 
Hot Trailer: ‘Anchorman 2′ 
2ND UPDATE: Charlie Sheen Fired Selma Blair From … 
Time Warner Cable Sued For Passing Lakers-Dodgers Costs On … 
Jonah Hill Signs For Management With LBI 
TOLDJA! ‘Dumb And Dumber To’ Proves No-Brainer … 
Salma Hayek’s Animated Passion Project ‘The … 
Relativity Moves Scott Cooper’s ‘Out Of The … 
Hot Trailer: ‘The Lego Movie’ 
Comedy ‘I Didn’t Do It’ Gets Series Order … 
Liv Tyler To Co-Star In Damon Lindelof’s HBO Pilot … 
DreamWorks Animation Launches Effort To Re-Position Itself … 
‘Pacific Rim’ Sequel In Planning Stages, … 
Legendary “Down To Handful” Of Studio Suitors: … 
UPDATE: Dan Harmon Apologizes For Comments Slamming … 
Deadline Expands: Hires Washington Post Journalist Lisa De … 
MGM & BermanBraun Sign TV Production Deal, First-Look … 
EMMYS: ‘Big Bang Theory’s Science 
‘Client List’ Season 3 Pickup In Limbo Over … 
Amazon Orders Cop Drama Pilot Based On Michael … 
Lionsgate Acquires Pulitzer Prize Winner ‘Devil In … 
2ND UPDATE: ‘Hero Complex’ blogger Geoff Boucher tonight finally acknowledged he is leaving the Los Angeles Times. He said on Twitter:
@geoffboucher: Interviewed Clint Eastwood over on the Warner Bros lot today…great way to go out.
@MYGEEKTIME: ”going out”? are u leaving LA TIMES?
@geoffboucher: Yes after 21 years.
UPDATE 5:30 PM: Back on August 23rd I scooped the news from a reliable Hollywood source that Geoff Boucher was moving on from his position as the Los Angeles Times ‘Hero Complex’ blogger for reasons unclear. 
To date there has been no announcement from Boucher or the paper. (Although at one point Boucher was checking to see if his company Twitter account was still working…) Today I’ve obtained an internal email not for public consumption from a top LA Times entertainment editor that confirms in the subject line, “No maybe about it: Geoff is leaving.” I said it last month and I’ll repeat it now: this is a huge loss for the paper and it follows on the heels of longtime movie columnist Patrick Goldstein taking a buyout instead of working for the new editorial leadership. According to my sources, the new editorial leadership is hell-bent on pushing out those LA Times writers with the biggest salaries and/or the strongest opinions. I know of at least four other big-ticket columnists/reporters who are under pressure.
‘Hero Complex’ is a great blog, Boucher is an expert in all things comics, and I truly envy his extensive knowledge about Marvel and DC Comics and such. Boucher came to the LAT in 1991 and, after years covering crime and local politics, he switched to the Hollywood beat covering film and music and then became the paper’s go-to geek. Boucher’s exit follows Editor Davan Maharaj’s arrival and then a new entertainment editorial team announced June 20th. Again allow me to repeat myself: it’s like moving deck chairs on the Titanic given that the newspaper has become lazy and irrelevant and its showbiz ads have fallen 25% every year as studio and theater chains abandon the publication. Seriously, no Boucher & no Goldstein = no showbiz readers.
Related: Source: ‘Hero Complex’ Blogger Geoff Boucher Exiting LA Times
LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein Writes Last Column: Takes Buyout
New LAT Calendar Team: Biz Editor Becomes Entertainment News Czar
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
Loading ...
I said it before (when you posted the scoop) and I will say it again, another reason not to read that rag. What a bunch of idiots over there. They should just put the closed sign up now and not wait until January.
Boucher will find a better gig.
“not wait until January” – please elaborate
Boucher saw the future and branded himself within an established paper as well as anyone in the blogger age has to date. If the LA Times really did push him out, their judgment is seriously in question.
no Goldstein, no Boucher, no edge, no reporting who in the world is reading this late to the party
paper! Thank you Nikki for getting it first and getting it right.
As I said when you originally posted on the subject, the LA Times is being run by idiots. In losing Goldstein and Boucher, they’re just making so easy for me to stop reading the paper.
I’m sure Boucher will turn up in another venue, and I’ll be adding that to my must-read list.
Geoffry Boucher is one of the good guys – hell, great guys. Knows the comic universe better than anyone and a solid reporter. Very sorry to see him go and have big hopes he’ll land somewhere worthy of his talent.
Um Boucher may be popular but because his blog relied so much on exclusive access it’s almost impossible to recall a time where he wasn’t towing the studio party line on all those big comic book blockbusters. However, he did in a very Charlie Rose kind of way give folks like Chris Nolan and Bryan Singer a lot of freedom to discuss their personal work on those movies. But I always wished “Hero Complex” had a little more edge. Comics and comics culture are a lot more thematically rich than just the superhero genre on its own. Boucher was not a champion of independent voices in the comic book-to-film genre and he certainly never once turned me on to something (movie, tv show, etc) I wasn’t already aware of as part of a huge studio campaign. But he was a true success and how many newspaper columnists in this day and age can support an eponymous film festival?
As GEEKER myself…Boucher has his shit together, because he knows what we all like…as much as he does. LAT is digging its own grave thinking that by getting rid of highly talented, highly paid (justifiably so, if you’ve ever written in the media, especially on deadline and do much of your own research) and highly opinionated writers / reporters / content creators…they will still have a profit-making marketplace. Present and much of future audience markets are not those of the “old days and old ways”. Sorry. Just looking at the growing and diversifying demos. Just the facts and numbers. We’re with you BOUCHER. Hell with LAT.
Make him an offer Nikki. He would be a valuable asset to the Deadline team. With his coverage, which he would need to expand to indie comics as mentioned above, this place would become the hard news about the comic biz destination because there isn’t a definitive one to my knowledge.
Snatch him up for Deadline, he’ll get 1000 times as many readers!
Boucher is a “true fan” of cinema and his stories were for consumers not industry. He never commented on box office or business. Geoff wrote his features for “the audience” with great incite into filmmakers and even better prose. Geoff is irreplaceable and the LA Times has no idea how much access to top notch filmmakers they just lost.
Now there is no reason to continue to read the times. With all the resignations, there is nothing in the times that isn’t available elsewhere.
Canceled my subscription, and won’t miss a single news item.
It baffles me. Los Angeles is arguably the Media Hub of the Universe; if it’s on TV, radio, internet, on screen at the cineplex or in your living room, it’s connected to LA. How is it possible that a city so entrenched in media would be so bad at it for themselves? Radio in LA is a desert of identical corporate-packaged stations, local TV news is a joke not far removed from TMZ, and the city can barely support one newspaper, which goes out of its way to hobble itself at every opportunity.
Truly, the shoemaker’s children go barefoot.