Marvel Still Looking For Captain America 
'Sopranos' Creator To Film Rock Drama 
LIVE-SNARKING THE 82ND OSCARS... 
'ALICE' IS A MONSTER! $116.3M Blows Past … 
Oscar Not-So-Thriller: Diller Mogul Picnic 
'Precious' Sweeps 25th Indie Spirit Awards 
Howard Stern Won't Be Next 'Idol' Judge 
Justin Theroux Readying 'Zoolander 2' For … 
Mickey Rourke Wooed For Two Big Roles, … 
CBS Reups Les Moonves Through 2015 
EXCLUSIVE: Who Will Be Captain America? 
Matt Damon To Star In New RFK Biopic 
Claire Danes Leaves ICM For WME; Also, ICM's … 
EXCLUSIVE: Jennifer Lopez And Sony Music … 
TAYLOR LAUTNER UPDATE: Universal Pays Him … "He doesn't like to pay commission," an insider let me know.
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WME Signs Archie Comics From CAA; WME Repping 'The Terminator' Rights
EXCLUSIVE: I've learned that WME just took away client Archie Comics from CAA. ("This is like Hasbro. CAA had Hasbro, and did nothing. And then CAA lost Hasbro to WME," an insider tells me.) WME now also is representing the rights to The Terminator franchise on behalf of Santa Barbara-based hedge fund Pacifor LLC which had the winning $29.5 million bid, and a commitment of $5 million for each of three produced films. That deal was approved by the Los Angeles Bankruptcy judge.
Ex-ITV Chief Joins TV Management Firm
From Deadline|London editor Tim Adler: Michael Grade, ITV’s former executive chairman, has become non-executive chairman of UK management agency James Grant Group. The agency represents TV presenters, including ITV mainstays Ant & Dec, America’s Got Talent judge Piers Morgan and radio DJ Fearne Cotton. Holly Pye, the highly-regarded ex-WME reality television agent, joined James Grant last month.
Halle Berry Lands At CAA
Halle Berry, who left ICM two weeks ago, is back for the 2nd time with CAA. She left there to join WME and then moved to ICM. Berry continues to be managed by longtime rep Vince Cirrincione.
WME Has Signed MSNBC's Chris Matthews
This is the Hardball host who commented, after President Obama's first State of the Union Address, "You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour."
Claire Danes Leaves ICM For WME; Also, ICM's Rosario Dawson Taking Meetings; ICM's Billy Ray Jumps To CAA
UPDATE 2:25 PM: Claire Danes has signed with WME.
EXCLUSIVE - 10:45 AM: ICM has just lost Claire Danes and may be about to lose Rosario Dawson. I'm told Danes, who'd been Carol Bodie's client, was spotted at WME the other day and is taking agency meetings. Dawson is still at the agency but also is "taking meetings" -- and believed heading for CAA.
Also, writer/director Billy Ray has fired his longtime Broder/ICM agent Bruce Kaufman to sign with CAA. Kaufman helped him become an in-demand screenwriter and then a writer/director. It's "a display of shocking ingratitude," one source outside ICM told me. "Evidently, Ray has to blame someone besides himself for why no one will finance his uncommercial dramas. What makes it even more ironic is that Ray's father was an agent, so you'd think he would have taught his son something about loyalty." Harsh.
Spec Script Sale To Montecito/Paramount
The spec script market continues to show green shoots in 2010. ICM just told me that writers Sonny Lee and Patrick Walsh, who left CAA for ICM last week, preemptively sold a spec script to Paramount with Montecito and Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg producing. Sonny and Pat have spent the last three years on It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia and have sold pilots to FBC and ABC. This is the duo’s first spec script. Based on an idea by Hurwitz and Schlossberg, 21 Shots centers around a guy who, on his 21st birthday, loses his I.D. and needs to track it down over over the course of one day. Montecito bought the spec preemptively through their Paramount discretionary fund. Hurwitz & Schlossberg are managed by Paul Young and repped by CAA.
Judge Moves Ferriter v WME To Arbitration
So much for Jon Ferriter's pledge of a big, ugly, public scandal. Now his $25M lawsuit, which had no shocking revelations against WME, is dead, and arbitrations are private. Expect a settlement shortly.
UTA Gets Back Wes Anderson From WME
UPDATES UTA Loses Helmer Wes Anderson To WME
Just a few weeks ago, WME trumpeted its signing of Wes Anderson away from his longtime rep, UTA chairman Jim Berkus, and also agent Rich Klubeck. Now the Fantastic Mr Fox director has left WME and returned to UTA. "There's no question that Wes has been loyal to Berkus..." an insider tells me. UPDATE: Anderson initially blamed UTA for the underperformance of Fantastic Mr. Fox and then decided his "several assumptions" had been wrong, so went back.
Doug Liman To Produce & Direct 'Attica'
For many moviegoers, Attica is best known as the crowd rallying cry by Al Pacino's character in Dog Day Afternoon. But CAA announced today that The Bourne Identity's Doug Liman will direct an insider’s view of the 1971 Attica state prison rebellion from a script by Academy Award nominee Geoffrey Fletcher (Precious). The film purports to explore the bloodiest prison confrontation in U.S. history and the firestorm of controversy that followed the 4-day standoff. Attica will be produced by Liman and David Bartis under their Hypnotic production banner, along with Elliot Abbott who is also financing the project’s development and Avrum Ludwig, a longtime Liman collaborator dating back to Swingers. The project is described as "a deeply personal one" for Liman. His father, high powered NYC attorney Arthur Liman, served as chief counsel to the New York State Special Commission on Attica Prison and co-authored the Commission’s searing report. It chastised then-Governor Nelson Rockefeller and prison authorities for their role in the riot, in which 32 inmates and 10 hostages were killed, 39 of them in an assault by state police officers. "My father’s report literally reads like a page turner," said Liman in the CAA statement. “It is filled with stories of guards and prisoners from vastly different backgrounds learning to trust each other in the face of real human tragedy.” CAA, which represents Liman, Bartis, Fletcher and Abbott, said it is handling the film’s domestic distribution rights.
Kevin Costner Moves From CAA To WME
Oscar-winner Kevin Costner has moved to WME, where he signed with co-CEO and board member Patrick Whitesell. The Dances With Wolves director/star had been represented by CAA, and continues to be managed by One Talent Management’s J.J. Harris. Costner isn’t the average client who needs an agent to find him an acting job. He’s a self-generator whose need for an agency is to package and get funding for passion projects he writes, directs and stars in. And in the case of his last film, Swing Vote, self-finances. (That pic sank like a stone, as has several others. I feel Costner suffers from Warren Beatty syndrome: both have the potential to be celebrated actors again if only they would give up control to an expert director who knows how to get a great performance out of them in good material that audiences might pay to see.)
I'm told WME will jump right into Costner’s quest to get funding so that he can next star in Learning Italian, a comedy with director Kevin Reynolds. Costner will play a CIA agent who has been stationed in an idyllic coastal town in Italy to keep an eye on a KGB agent there -- until both secret agencies order the two spies to return to their respective countries and cook up a pseudo-threat to justify their continued stays in Italy. Costner hasn’t worked with Reynolds since they clashed infamously on Waterworld, but they’ve remained friendly.
Costner, who last directed 2003's Open Range, also wants to ... Read More »
3RD UPDATE: Signings, Hirings, Firings
2ND UPDATE: My colleague Mike Fleming just posted Kevin Costner Moves From CAA To WME
UPDATE: Oscar-winner Halle Berry has left ICM. She was represented by Toni Howard. No word about where she's headed -- but she has been at CAA, and then WME, and then ICM. I hear it was an emotional departure. She still is managed by Vince Cirrincione who has handled her since the start of her career.
CAA has signed actor Penn Badgley of The Stepfather and Gossip Girl from WME.
WME is now repping director Vadim Perelman whose first film House Of Sand And Fog was nominated for three Oscars. He is attached to Poltergeist and Song Of Names. The helmer comes to WME from CAA.
Fox Fringe star Josh Jackson has left UTA. 3RD UPDATE: Jackson also fired his longtime manager Mike Bircumshaw.
Geordie E. Frey of GEF Entertainment management has signed, along with Bob Gersh, Alex Yarosh, and David DeCamillo at The Gersh Agency, Ugly Betty co-star Ana Ortiz to represent in all areas.
Channing Tatum Title Arrives In Berlin
Channing Tatum’s weekend success in Dear John comes at an auspicious time, as Nu Image takes over world sales agent duties in Berlin on what it says is his Son Of No One. Though UTA says there's no deal yet with its client, Channing is the draw in a drama that reunites him with writer/director Dito Montiel, with whom he made Fighting and A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints. The Montiel-scripted thriller is about a young cop who is at odds with his superiors and fellow officers over a murder cover-up. NuImage says Tatum's co-stars would be Katie Holmes, Terrence Howard, Ray Liotta and Al Pacino. Shooting begins April in New York. Hannibal Pictures put the pic together, with Millennium Films as producer.
Studios Battle Over Taylor Lautner Project (Yes, Another One!)
EXCLUSIVE: The sluggish spec script marketplace will get a jolt today as Hollywood majors battle over a drama that has Hollywood's highest paid and hardest working teen Taylor Lautner attached to star. I've learned the new lit agency Verve sent out the script by its client Shawn Christensen last night -- and already two studios are ready to bid when the auction gets going at 9 AM PT today. Called Abduction, WME client Lautner plays a teen who has long felt disconnected from his parents, and figures out why. That unleashes a chain of violent events and enters Bourne territory. Considering he just got on the Hollywood radar because of the Twilight Saga (imagine, he was almost recast before New Moon) and just days ago blew out the candles on his 18th birthday cake, Lautner with his 8-pack abs is the newest and youngest action star in a dizzying volume of movie deals made over recent weeks. He's already the lead in two major studio superhero franchises -- Universal's Stretch Armstrong and Paramount's Max Steel -- and was paid $7.5 million for the John Moore-directed Skydance Top Gun-esque thrill ride Northern Lights. Meanwhile, Abduction is the first big spec deal for Verve, whose principals came up at Endeavor and then recently left WME. Since Lautner is repped by WME (and Management 360), it looks like Ari Emanuel and company are playing nice with the upstart tenpercentery.
UTA Expands Ad & Consumer Brands Depts
Voiceover and commercial agent Brittany Balbo has left WME to join UTA. Balbo was an Endeavor employee prior to the merger and had been with the agency for 5 years. She'll be working in UTA’s commercial department run by partner Lisa Jacobson, who also oversees UTA’s licensing practice. These are becoming increasingly important areas to the major agencies as they continue to diversify: in this contracting Hollywood landscape, tenpercenteries need to find more earning opportunities for their clients. I’m also told that UTA’s joint venture company United Entertainment Group, which services consumer brands such as Procter & Gamble and Frito-Lay, recently hired branded entertainment expert Jamie Elden away from Alloy Media & Marketing, the parent company to Gossip Girl producer Alloy Entertainment.
Helmer Joe Carnahan Leaves WME for CAA
Narc Director Joe Carnahan had been a client for 10 years of Endeavor's Phil Raskind who sequed to WME. The agency most recently got him The A-Team directing gig. CAA has its work cut out for it: Carnahan has long had a reputation as a hothead. He walked off the Mission Impossible 3 pre-production after getting into it with Cruise. And blew up White Jazz after a similar situation, this time with George Clooney. I'll forever remember when he started bashing the Writers Guild on his blog and then had to apologize. (See my previous, Joe Carnahan Retracts Recent Blog Post)
Paradigm's Andrew Rogers Joins ICM
UPDATE: Yes, the rumors are true: Andrew Rogers has joined ICM as an agent in the motion picture talent department. 
This follows his departure as head of Paradigm’s motion picture talent group. ICM expects most of his clients to follow, including Michael Cera, Laz Alonso, Eugene Levy, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Russell Hornsby, Regina Hall, Gavin Weisen, Zack Pearlman. But Paradigm tells me that Rogers' clients Shailene Woodley, Melissa George, Blair Underwood, Asher Book, Lucas Neff and Nicole Behaire have confirmed that they are staying.
Paradigm Comings and Goings
TV lit agent Jill Gillett has left Paradigm. But talent agent Carlos Carreras has left UTA and joined the agency in the talent department, effective immediately. He's said to have very strong ties to the burgeoning Latin talent market.
UTA Signs Gabourey Sidibe Of 'Precious'
EXCLUSIVE: Newcomer Gabourey Sidibe has been fielding calls non-stop from agencies since her debut in director Lee Daniels’ Precious, which landed Sidibe a Best Actress Oscar nomination this past Tuesday not to mention a current BAFTA Best Actress nomination. She also earned Best Actress nominations for Golden Globes and SAG, and won the National Board of Review’s Female Breakout Award. I’m told she will be repped by a team led by UTA Board member Tracey Jacobs who met her for the first time two weeks ago. “They spent a couple hours talking and totally hit it off,” says a source. Prior to Precious, Sidibe’s acting experience had been limited to some college theatre and no formal training. A friend suggested she to go to the open call where she met casting directors Billy Hopkins and Jessica Kelly. Two days later, Hopkins and Kelly introduced her to Daniels who cast her in the title role after one meeting. Sidibe will continue to be repped by manager Jill Kaplan at Principal Entertainment.
CAA Now Involved In Schmattah Business
EXCLUSIVE: I've learned that the upstart private equity firm Star Avenue Capital is buying a majority stake in J Brand, a denim apparel brand whose signature lines of skintight jeans are a favorite of celebrities with impossibly small waists and thin thighs. But what's interesting here is that Star Avenue Capital is a partnership between CAA and Irving Place Capital, making the talent agency an equity owner in the blue jeans company. I hear SAC, led by Mark Genender, is looking for other consumer brands with growth potential.
When I first heard about this jeans deal which hasn't been announced yet, my sources said that CAA would put money in the venture but have no operational role. *UPDATE: One of Nikki Finke's sources looked at this deal back in November and says the stake being discussed at that time was in the $80M range -- a "big bet on niche premium denim". On the other hand, she hears Irving Place Capital bought Seven Jeans years ago and sold it for "a boatload of a profit".*
What the agency brings to the table, supposedly, are the services of its lifestyle, marketing, trend forecasting, market research, and licensing divisions to grow the brand. It is the first time I can remember that any talent agency has held a stake in a consumer apparel brand. (Though management company The Firm once held a majority stake in the Pony shoe brand.)
The presumption is that CAA clients will ... Read More »
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