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MONDAY AM: Sony pickup District 9 hit $100M domestic Sunday, the 5th Wingnut Film production in a row from Peter Jackson's company to do that. It also opened #1 in the UK this weekend. And, on Saturday, Transformers 2: Revenge Of The Fallen, passed $400M domestic.
Labor Day weekend is traditionally a slow moviegoing holiday. So Friday's and Saturday's numbers were only so-so. But Warner Bros' horror holdover The Final Destination 3-D ended the weekend a clear winner with $3.57M (-67%) Friday and $4.4M Saturday from 3,121 theaters. It's 3-day weekend was $12.3M, and its 4-day holiday was $15.4M for a new cume of $50.5M. On Friday, it narowly edged out Fox's romantic comedy All About Steve which opened to $3.50M Friday, and $3.9M Saturday in 2,251 venues. The Sandra Bullock (she also produced) and Bradley Cooper laffer did better than expected because it had one of the lowest Rotten Tomatoes scores I've ever seen: 6% positive reviews. It also had the bigger per screen average. But the pic couldn't begin to match those actors' big summer hits (The Proposal, The Hangover) as the season comes to a close. But by today, All About Steve fell to No. 3 behind Quentin Tarantino's holdover Inglourious Basterds from The Weinstein Company and Universal which moved up to No. 2. All About Steve ended up with $11.2M for the 3-day weekend and $13.9M for the 4-day ... Read More »
This is a huge new deal extending the co-financing partnership between Ryan Kavanaugh's L.A.-based Relativity Media LLC and Universal Pictures for most of the studio's movies. So the previous cut-off through 2011 is now through 2015. And it follows Relativity just reeling in another $1 billion from NY-based $13B hedge fund Elliott Associates which has doubled its investment in Kavanaugh's firm. 
In September, Elliott and Relativity announced Relativity Capital Holdings, which acts as the financing entity for Relativity Media. Since that time the company has built a multi-billion dollar balance sheet and is in the business of financing and acquiring media assets. The investment comes on the heels of the very profitable summer slate of Beverly 2, that partnership between Universal Pictures and Relativity, where Relativity Capital Holdings is co-financing approximately 75% of Universal's slate through 2011. My sources tell me that, under the new agreement, Relativity will use between $2 billion and $3 billion to cover 75% of Universal's slate through 2015, or about 18 films per year. 
Even though Relativity also has financing deals with Sony Pictures, this new fund is exclusive to Universal, insiders say. The first overall agreement with Universal was something of a milestone for Relativity in that it acted as the principal and retained the Mezzanine and Equity as well. Relativity Capital -- a wholly owned subsidiary of Relativity and Elliott -- underwrote the capital structure of the deal, and did not use an ... 
UPDATE: All the media stocks were buffetted during the stock market's up-and-down performance Tuesday which fell sharply during the last hour of trading. The Dow index alone dropped 4.2% over the last two days. Most infotainment stocks are at or near their lows. Today, lawmakers questioned the Bush administration's massive bailout for financial institutions and argued for Main Street as well as Wall Street. One idea: no golden parachutes for affected CEOs. Don't expect any relief until after there's a Congressional yea or nay.
began looking for a $350 million revolving line of credit fund and completed the deal Friday. I'm told it was over-subscribed by the top 10 entertainment bankers. Stepping up to the plate were lead bankers Comerica and JP Morgan Chase, the latter of which also secured $700 million in credit to complete the DreamWorks-Reliance $1.2 billion partnership. MRC's big bucks will be used for financing films, TV, the works. Here's hoping that Paramount can get acceptable terms for its 
His role from start to finish (he even arranged for Reliance to approve the final press release) also highlights the increasingly vital role that a Hollywood agency's indie division, often referred to as the “packaging” or “financing” department, plays these days. They’re not only there to help the tenpercentery’s clients get passion projects made; they increasingly serve as gateways for the ongoing influx of financiers looking to invest in movies. As a member of CAA's 16-year-old department, Nuñez is accustomed to finding funding and distribution for individual films and even companies. But this was certainly the biggest indie deal of his career. 
Months ago, when DreamWorks decided to exit owner Paramount, the company founded by Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, and Jeffrey Katzenberg was expected to pact with Universal. But that's when Nuñez phoned up DreamWorks and said he had "someone who's interested in putting up money. He then facilitated the meeting," sources inform me. That "someone" turned out to be India's Anil Ambani, chairman of Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and one of the world's richest men. And the rest is, well, history. Now DreamWorks is the best funded indie with $1.2 billion. And CAA pockets what insiders tell me is $2.5 million for its part. (I'm ... 
UPDATE: Infotainment companies breathed a sigh of relief today as their stocks rallied when market indexes finished Thursday way, way up (Dow +410, S&P +50, NASDAQ +100). Now let's see if it's sustainable and if CBS, Disney, Viacom, News Corp and others dependent on advertising revenue can start worrying less. Today's jump was aided by the SEC rules on naked short-selling that went into effect today and a similar crackdown announced in London. Investors also gave a big thumbs-up to a prpoposal being floated by the federal government to create a Resolution Trust Corp-type entity to take all that toxic debt off financial balance sheets. If implemented, this would ease the current credit crisis and affect Big Media in a very positive way, especially pure-play movie studios. Film financing to help them minimize risk might be reborn. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's take this one day at a time.
One bright spot? The SEC is finally getting tough on naked short-selling. (See below.) Many eyes are on General Electric, the parent company of NBC Universal: its stock keeps falling because of naked short-selling after being lumped in with the embattled financials (due to GE Capital) even though this is a diversified conglomerate. Here's why this matters: big and small investors from Main Street to Wall Street all have GE in their portfolios. I doubt there's a pension fund that doesn't have at least a 2% position. But as much as Jeff Immelt is pretending to carry on with business as usual, the vultures are starting to circle. I've said it before and I'll say it again: unless and until the SEC cracks down on aggressive ... 
UPDATE: This was 
By 3 AM PT, when I went to sleep, the Dow Jones futures were already down 340 points, the S&P 500 futures down 40 points, and the NASDAQ futures down 50 points. That's butt ugly. So many studio and network types have seen their stock options stay underwater for years, rendering that past perk all but meaningless, that they've depended on their personal holdings as much as on their salary and bonus to build net worth. Ergo today's certain ... 
So my 
EXCLUSIVE: It's not officially announced yet, but I'm told that Marvel Studios and Iron Man director Jon Favreau have reached a deal for him to helm the sequel, due out in 2010. (Robert Downey Jr had a sequel clause in his contract so he's on board.) Marvel Studios boss David Maisel was 
The 26th annual Allen & Co investor conference for monied moguls in Sun Valley, Idaho, hosted by Herbert Allen Jr really kept an unprecedented lid on the identities of the speakers and panelists this year. No doubt that was because of security reasons since I've found out that Jordan's King Abdullah II will speak to the confab. As for Hollywood, Jeff Katzenberg of DreamWorks Animation and Intel's Paul Otellini will make a joint presentation inside the Opera House (so expect a sophisticated dog-and-pony show about the much heralded 4D technology...). Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, round out the list of presenters. There also are several panels (see below). 
Meanwhile, the Screen Actors Guild placed a full-page ad to run Wednesday in the Ketchum-based Idaho Mountain Express newspaper (see below) to send a message from SAG's’s national negotiating committee to the entertainment industry leaders attending Camp Allen. SAG prez Alan Rosenberg explained why in a statement: "This media conference is the place where significant deals get made. We wanted to remind the entertainment media leaders in attendance that there is another important deal to be made. Actors are the creative heart of entertainment business, and our Screen Actors Guild members want to partner with our industry to invest in and share the rewards of our mutual digital future. Let’s keep talking and let’s make a fair deal.” Of course, the ad ... 
FRIDAY UPDATE: I just heard from a knowledgeable source that the Mark Burnett-IMG deal may be as rich as $500 million -- $250M upfront, the rest earned out...
whose Wall Street private equity firm Forstmann Little back in 2004 acquired IMG which was founded by his legendary friend Mark McCormack. Forstmann keeps looking for Tinseltown deals so when the LBO prince was spotted having lunch in as public a venue as NYC's Michael's a month ago, it sparked that rumor about Burnett starting his own network. 
Plus, remember that last September Teddy brought HBO's fired Chris Albrecht to IMG as the president of global media and IMG entertainment, made him a special limited partner in Forstmann Little, and gave him a $250 million fund for showbiz content investments. It'll be interesting to see how much bigger Burnett's deal will be. And here's why IMG considers him so valuable: I'm told that, at a Beverly Hills entertainment conference just ... 
I give TV and movie fans a lot of credit: when they get mad, they scare the crap out of the moguls. That's happening at Lionsgate where the studio's phones and email accounts are jammed with angry fans for the past week. They're making a stink because new Lionsgate topper Joe Drake appears to be dumping all of ex-prez Peter Block's movies. That includes Midnight Meat Train, the adaptation of the Barker short story that's a fan fave. Supposedly the trailer tested higher than any film in Lionsgate history. But when Drake took over, he promptly bumped Midnight Meat Train from its May 16th release date. The result was that Rogue Pictures' The Strangers (which was skedded two weekends later) had zero competition in the hard-R category. And guess who was exec producer of The Strangers? Joe Drake.
The result is a lot of anti-Lionsgate blogging in Horrorville by fans, by self-appointed horror flick experts, and also by Barker himself. "I would passionately encourage everybody who cares about my work ... 
But, as we all know, the pic not only made gobs of money, but Marvel shares shot skyward to an all-time high. And then the stock was recently listed on the S&P's midcap index so it went up another 4%. Now, most men would have given up there and then. Not Bob. He told his friends he was still shorting the stock because he believed Marvel would give it back when The Incredible Hulk failed. That ... 
So now we know with whom David Geffen has been negotiating all these many months. And the newest Hollywood mogul names to put on speed dial are Rajesh Sawhney and Anil Dhirubhai Ambani (one of the world's Top 10 richest men). I can confirm that DreamWorks has secured $500 million to $600 million from India's media and entertainment conglomerate Reliance ADA, specifically its Reliance Big Entertainment, and then will add $500 million to $600 million in debt for what will be a total $1.2 billion financing for its new independent film company. I'm told that DreamWorks 2.0 (yes, the principals get back the name) will make about 6 movies a year when it liberates Steven Spielberg from Viacom Inc's Paramount and all the acrimony of that relationship of the past few years. There's no need for DreamWorks to negotiate a distribution deal for a while, but I'm told that Fox, Universal and Disney would be in the running. Because of Spielberg's long history with Universal and the fact his office never moved off the lot, I've always assumed DreamWorks would return there. But DreamWorks has a lot of ties to Fox, including Geffen's close relationship with Rupert Murdoch and Spielberg's with Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman Tom Rothman.
Meanwhile, DreamWorks and Paramount will battle over Spielberg's exit and all that joint development. Unentangling could really cost Viacom Inc's movie studio. Here's why: Spielberg has the right to terminate his contract as soon as October (because of a key man clause ... 
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