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CBS Films In Deal For Martin McDonagh’s ‘Seven Psychopaths’ With Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell And Chris Walken

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Friday September 30, 2011 @ 11:39am PDTTags: Amy Baer, CBS Films, Christopher Walken, Colin Farrell, Graham Broadbent, Martin McDonagh, Peter Czernin, Sam Rockwell, Scott Shooman, Tessa Ross, Wolfgang Hammer
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: CBS Films is negotiating to co-finance Seven Psychopaths, the next film by In Bruges writer/director Martin McDonagh. CBS Films will distribute the film in the United States. The film reunites McDonagh with his In Bruges star Colin Farrell, who plays a screenwriter who struggles to find the handle on his script, called Seven Psychopaths. He gets drawn into the dognapping escapades of his friends (played by Rockwell and Walken). Once the beloved Shih Tzu owned by a psychopathic gangster goes missing, the screenwriter finds himself fueled with all the drama he needs for his screenplay, if he can stay alive long enough to write it all down. The film’s produced by Graham Broadbent and Peter Czernin, with Tessa Ross set as executive producer. CBS Films executive vice president Scott Shooman will oversee it when it shoots in Los Angeles this fall.

CBS Films, whose president/CEO Amy Baer just finalized her exit to produce for the company starting in late October, has made a strong effort under COO Wolfgang Hammer to supplement its home grown pictures with films that are acquired either finished or at script stage. CBS Films began its acquisitions uptick with The Mechanic, and recently made the big deal of the 2011 Toronto Film Festival acquiring Salmon Fishing in the Yemen for north of $5 million. CBS Films also made a script stage acquisition of the Colin Firth-Cameron Diaz-starrer Gambit, which Michael Hoffman directed from a script by Joel and Ethan Coen.

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CBS Films’ Amy Baer Exiting As President And CEO As Focus Shifts To Acquisitions

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday September 29, 2011 @ 2:57pm PDTTags: Amy Baer, CBS Films, Last Vegas, Leslie Moonves, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, Scott Shooman, Wolfgang Hammer
Mike Fleming

UPDATE: Les Moonves has just released a statement on the exit of Amy Baer from CBS Films: “We thank Amy for her important role in building CBS Films. Going forward, we remain fully committed to the division’s focus on a targeted slate of smart acquisitions and quality homegrown productions in all genres. CBS Films is small in the overall size and scope of our company, but continues to fit nicely with the Corporation’s premium content strategy. We’re excited about its future and to start its next chapter.”

EXCLUSIVE, 2:57 PM: Amy Baer will transition out of the post of president and CEO of CBS Films, ending her four-year tenure at the start-up production/distribution company in late October. Baer will immediately join Laurence Mark as producer of the Jon Turteltaub-directed Last Vegas, CBS Films’ Dan Fogelman-scripted comedy that revolves around four best friends in their late 60s who decide to escape retirement and throw a Las Vegas bachelor party for the only one of them who stayed single. Read More »

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CBS Films Taps Scott Shooman For Acquisition Post

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday July 28, 2011 @ 10:42am PDTTags: Amy Baer, Cameron Diaz, CBS Films, Colin Firth, Daniel Radcliffe, Scott Shooman, Wolfgang Hammer
Mike Fleming

CBS Films, which has supplemented its homegrown slate with acquisitions of finished films, has hired Scott Shooman to be EVP Acquisitions. CBS Films president and CEO Amy Baer made the appointment. Shooman, who spent a decade at Sony Pictures and … Read More »

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CBS Films Targets ‘American Assassin’ To Launch Mitch Rapp Franchise, Sets Ed Zwick To Direct

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Wednesday June 8, 2011 @ 6:11am PDTTags: Amy Baer, Antoine Fuqua, Ben Foster, Cameron Diaz, CBS Films, Chris Pine, Colin Farrell, Colin Firth, Ed Zwick, Gerard Butler, Jason Statham, John Hillcoat, Less Moonves, Marshall Herskovitz, Matthew Fox, Nick Wechsler, Vince Flynn, Wolfgang Hammer
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: CBS Films has redrawn its plans to launch a film franchise based on the Vince Flynn novel series about CIA agent  and Mitch Rapp. Ed Zwick has come aboard to direct an adaptation of American Assassin, a bestseller published … Read More »

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In Book Deals: New Regency Taps Swedish Crime Series ‘Three Seconds’, Struggling CBS Films Makes Stephen King’s ‘Stand’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Tuesday February 1, 2011 @ 7:40am PSTTags: Amy Baer, Anonymous Content, CBS Films, Colin Farrell, Gerard Butler, Les Moonves, Matthew Fox, New Regency, Shine, Stephen King, Vince Flynn, Warner Bros
Mike Fleming

The book-to-movie business is kicking back into gear. Hoping for another Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, New Regency has just acquired Three Seconds, part of a bestselling Swedish crime novel series by Anders Roslund & Borge Hellstrom. Shine will produce and they will set a writer quickly. In Three Seconds, an ex-con who works undercover for the Stockholm police is charged with breaking the Polish mob’s stranglehold on amphetamine dealing in Sweden prisons. The ex-con gets himself arrested so he can infiltrate the mob in a maximum security prison. Beyond the fact his wife is unaware he’s working undercover, the operative’s challenge is to crack the ring and get out before he’s exposed. The book is the fifth novel in the series, was named Sweden’s top crime novel of 2009. The author team is intriguing, considering one’s a former journalist, the other an ex-criminal.The book was published by Silver Oak.  Shine’s Sue Swift brought the book to Regency’s Michelle Kroes to get the deal started and Dan Wilson will oversee for Regency.

In other deals, a film option deal was made for Cutting For Stone, the Abraham Verghese novel optioned by Anonymous Content for its production company.

And Warner Bros and CBS Films will try to turn Stephen King’s celebrated novel The Stand into a feature. Given the spectacularly restrictive budgets that have forced CBS Films to rely on forgettable films like The Back-Up Plan and Extraordinary Measures, it seems likely Warner Bros will have to put up the dough for this to get off the ground. Even then, King’s apocalyptic epic will be very difficult to compress into a feature film, which is why it previously was turned into a 1994 TV miniseries. Each time I write about CBS Films, the question lingers: why did Les Moonves bother to form a feature division in the first place and hire away a capable exec like Amy Baer from Sony only to hobble her by not taking any big swings? Baer has a franchise percolating in Vince Flynn’s Consent to Kill, which focuses on ruthless government operative Mitch Rapp. It’s a Jack Ryan waiting to happen, but though CBS Films last year had discussions with Gerard Butler, Colin Farrell and Lost‘s Matthew Fox for the Rapp role, it still hasn’t happened. A lot has to do with the need to secure a partner. Hey, Les? In the movie business, it’s no guts, no glory. Deadline has heard that a “reconfiguring” is coming to the still struggling movie unit. CBS Films will make more acquisitions to fill the pipeline. Read More »

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Shakeups Inside CBS Films And Lionsgate

By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Wednesday December 1, 2010 @ 8:40pm PSTTags: Amy Baer, CBS Films, Faster, Lionsgate, Movies, Wolfgang Hammer

It has been so busy tonight that tips on this news have been sitting in my email account since 3 PM: Lionsgate EVP of the Motion Picture Group Wolfgang Hammer is headed to CBS Films as the new COO to work for … Read More »

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Great Role For 30-Ish Actress (Who Hasn’t Adopted In A Third World Country)

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Monday July 19, 2010 @ 2:16pm PDTTags: Amy Baer, CBS Films, It Takes a Village, Sony Pictures, Todd Garner, UTA
Mike Fleming

12037.gifEXCLUSIVE: CBS Films and Sony Pictures are teaming to acquire It Takes A Village, a comedy pitch that Keenen Ivory Wayans will write and direct about a 30-something white single career-obsessed woman who decides on a whim to adopt a child from … Read More »

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