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This is why the entertainment biz is so deliciously cruel. One year, you're the heir apparent. A few years later, you're the has-been. So it is with HBO's Colin Callender. I've been reporting here that the next shoe to drop as the pay channel starts to clean house should be the overrated legend-in-his-own-mind who recently rejected an offer from Walden Media to develop a new production slate and team. And every day there's a rumbling that Callender is looking at this job or that one. Now what's happened to him is worse than when he was stripped of HBO Films. I'm told that, even though Callender's contract isn't up for a few more years, HBO brass Richard Plepler and Mike Lombardo had a so-called "strategy meeting" 
with Colin where he was told, "If you want to be here... be here. If you want to go... go.. But you don't need to be snooping around surreptitiously for another job. If you find a better thing somewhere else, talk to us about it like a grownup." Maybe more people would be sympathetic to Callender's plight if only he hadn't been such an arrogant prick prone to hissy fits all those years. Anyway, I love that this is Hollywood's latest version of "Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out..."
HBO Brass Give Bad News To Job Hunting Colin Callender: "If You Want To Go... Go"
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I guess one could say that when someone offers you a job in Hollywood, you take it, before your own butt gets canned from the job you have.
Ouch.
They need to kick him OUT.. Showtime is kicking HBO’s butt.. Their shows SUCK ASS. Their marketing campaigns are a JOKE…And they spend Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars on Creative Print alone. HBO needs to just show rereleased movies for a year while they fire EVERYONE from Production to Marketing on.. start over.. They have had a very mighty and public fall. yet everyone who works there is still so arrogant like they are still the old Sex and the City/Sopranos/Six Feet Under HBO..
HBO.. your time is OVAH..
He is such a “PUTZ”
Pretty funny. But not as funny as Men’s Vogue, in last month’s profile of Colin, referring to him as a mensch.
Callender out – Frank Rich in. HBO had an incredible run on original content, but it looks like those days are gone. I’m still baffled why they hired Rich. I don’t know about the inner workings of HBO, but clearly the brain trust is gone.
Obviously people inside HBO want this guy gone. First they take away his movies, and now his pride. My question is, why didn’t he take that job at Walden? Why stay at a company that doesn’t value your worth?
I’ve heard he’s an egotistical maniac who struts and frets his last hour upon the stage. But I’ve also heard he’s talented. Maybe if he goes to a place that embraces his talent rather than leaks information about him, he won’t have so many temper tantrums, and make so many enemies.
Colin, sometimes you have to leave home. And when you don’t get the message, sometimes mom and dad have to kick you out.
Nikki – why don’t you like Colin Callender? Yes, he’s pretentios, and he thinks he’s way more talented than he is. And yes he treats everyone else like they aren’t good enough to work with him, but compared to some of the other characters in hollywood, he’s a sweetheart who at least has taste.
I do laugh when you describe him as a legend in his own mind. But I can think of a lot more worthy people to dislike who are tiny tyrants. Start with Jeff Robonov. He has an inflated opinion of himself that’s worthy of your pen. Let poor Colin stay by the side of the curb and lick his wounds.
I happen to think that Colin Calender is a genius. And one of the smartest executives in all of Hollywood.
@ ManagerS: And the one show they have left to brag about…Entourage…even that started to suck after Season 2.
I think Colin Callender is fabulous. Look at his body of work…he is a genius, in the truest sense of the word. There is no one else in this business who has the track record he has. And, what’s the matter with everyone? When did you all become such pussies that you can’t deal with a complicated, smart, creative man?
Colin Callender is not the series guy — he’s responsible for movies and limited series — and area where HBO continues to be absolutely unmatched. We’re talking about FROM EARTH TO THE MOON, BAND OF BROTHERS, JOHN ADAMS, RECOUNT and GENERATION KILL to name a few. There’s nowhere else in town that could get these projects made. Give the man his due. The achievements speak for themselves.
Well, I worked for Colin for many years and he is pretty much trying to survive in a very, very dysfunctional corporate environment. Time Warner is one of the most dysfunctional corporations in the entertainment business and it tends to bring out the worst in a lot of people who work there. Because HBO is not hobbled by the results of direct boxoffice the effects of this dysfunction are not as apparent as in some other corporations where executives live and die by boxoffice.
The changes that need to be made in order to foster an environment where people can create and explore cutting edge material are at a much higher level.
I think what is amazing is that Colin has been able to remain anywhere near civil and insightful given the barracudas he’s been dealing with. Anyway, whatever job he ends up in, he’s going to be laughing all the way to the bank. When you get to that level, even if they kick you out on your rump, its a certainty that you will land on a very fluffy pillow made of greenbacks.
Colin has coasted on a reputation he did not earn. Before “The Sopranos” HBO was making excellent cable films and struggling to attract talent because no one wanted to work on a cable film. When the films started winning awards and “The Sopranos” (something Colin had nothing to do with) turned HBO into the Tiffany of cable networks talent started getting interested. A lot of Colin’s projects were inherited from the previous regimes, as is the case at any studio. And “From the Earth to the Moon” and “Band of Brothers” are crap examples because those were Tom Hanks’ vanity projects that any schmo would have signed on for. It’s fine and dandy to heap praise on little Colin’s oily head when other people did the legwork to earn the reputation he enjoys. And really, who are Pleplar and Lombardo to ask anyone to behave like a grownup? Watching Lombardo and Caroline Strauss hang out in each other’s offices all day long was like watching emo kids cutting 10th grade chem class to smoke behind the gym and rag on all the popular kids who picked on them.
Colin, or “Collander,” as I have always called him, is a world-class tool. My day just got a little bit brighter.
sounds like your ax is grinding, chuck.
For the record, Colin Callender had nothing to do with FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON or BAND OF BROTHERS. He wasn’t involved in limited series at the time. Those projects were greenlit by Albrecht and developed by HBO Original Programming (Albrecht, Strauss, Anne Thomopolous) not HBO Films.
The way HBO is set up one group handles the series, another group the films, a third the documentaries. This would mean Callender didn’t have anything to do with any of the series, good or bad, or the docs, (which are really incredible). However, there was a year that HBO Films’ projects won both Sundance (”American Splendor”) and the Cannes Film Festival (”Elephant”) — read that again — a US cable films division won Sundance and Cannes in the same year. I believe Callender was in charge of those projects. That event/accomplishment alone speaks volumes about how things are changing in the entertainment industry.
Around that time Callendar’s division did their first mini-series (”Angels in America”) which racked up tons of Emmy’s and great publicity, which is what that all the divisions of HBO are supposed to do. Get cudos and drive subscribers. Without box office it is hard to really gauge success, as HBO is all about managing the “churn” of people canceling their cable subscriptions when they have a bad month and start to feel broke.
HBO seems to be making fewer cable movies, probably because when you wrap a cable movie up in a DVD box and put in on the shelf at Blockbuster for rental or Walmart for sale it has to compete with studio action movies and romantic comedies — and it really can’t. The recent HBO Films mini-series was “John Adams” which seemed to be a success. If they make miniseries they can put a few more DVD’s in the box (at maybe fifty cents a piece?) and sell it for $89 as a high profile special item. Probably a better economic model — because face it – who cares about TV movies?
Anyway, I’d be curious to see what others think of these theories.
No bitter rages, please.
Colin is one of the few talented smart and professional individuals in Hollywood. He has changed TV from a lesser format to one of the desired formats for actors and watchers as well. He should be praised for all of his amazing projects and hard work to move television to a higher level.