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EXCLUSIVE: Robert Zemeckis Leaves CAA

By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Saturday April 20, 2013 @ 7:51pm PDTTags: Big Deals Film, Big Deals TV, CAA, Creative Artists Agency, Hollywood agencies, Robert Zemeckis

UPDATE 7:50 PM: I’ve  just been given this exclusive statement from Paul Bloch at Rogers & Cowan: “After a 30-year association with Creative Artists Agency, Robert Zemeckis has decided to take a hiatus with the firm and step back for the time being. Mr. Zemeckis is very appreciative of the work they have accomplished together. He has no immediate plans for representation by a different agency.”

EXCLUSIVE 6:45 PM: My sources tell me the Academy Award-winning director of Forrest Gump exited the agency on Thursday. Robert Zemeckis has been a long-time CAA client dating back to Mike Ovitz when he and Jack Rapke, now Zemeckis’ producing partner, were the director’s agents. In more recent years Zemeckis was repped by Richard Lovett at the head of a team of agents. Zemeckis’ legendary career had cooled in recent years especially because of the uneven reception of his repeated use of motion capture technology. But he was considered back on top with the success of 2012′s Paramount actioner Flight which earned two Academy Award nominations including Best Actor (for Denzel Washington). And Zemeckis accomplished that and its $161M worldwide gross with only a $30 million budget. (Rapke brought Zemeckis the script and told the director that Washington was interested.) Since August 2011, Zemeckis has a two-year first-look producing deal with Universal Studios where he made his worldwide mega-hit Back To The Future threequel. I can tell you that, unlike many such situations involving major Hollywood talent contemplating an agency exit, there was no hint about this in the tenpercentery world where intel is currency. Needless to say, it’s always tough when an agency loses this caliber of prestigious and respected and visionary client (the USC School of Cinematic Arts houses the Robert Zemeckis Center for Digital Arts), and CAA doesn’t lose many – that’s for sure. So expect a feeding frenzy in the future to represent Zemeckis. In fact the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences this month  READ MORE »

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Academy Celebrates 25th Anniversary Of ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ With Robert Zemeckis And Cast

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Monday March 4, 2013 @ 1:47pm PSTTags: Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, Robert Zemeckis, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

BEVERLY HILLS, CA – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will present a new digital restoration of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” in celebration of the film’s 25th anniversary on Thursday, April 4, at 7:30 p.m. at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. The evening will feature a post-screening onstage discussion with director Robert Zemeckis and members of the cast and crew, including actress Joanna Cassidy, voice actor Charles Fleischer, supervising animator Andreas Deja, screenwriter Peter S. Seaman and associate producers Don Hahn and Steve Starkey. The panel will be moderated by director Rich Moore, who received an Oscar® nomination for Animated Feature Film for “Wreck-It Ralph” this past year.

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OSCARS Q&A: ‘Flight’ Scribe John Gatins

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Saturday December 22, 2012 @ 8:53am PSTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, John Gatins, Oscars, Robert Zemeckis
Mike Fleming

FlightOne of the intriguing parts of the Oscar race for me is watching excellent movies, and then discovering how much adversity, disappointment and years go into them. Whether you’re even nominated, this part of awards season is a validation of the artists’ struggle, offering encouragement to others trying not to give up on their own passion projects. I’m not sure anyone in this race personifies that more than Flight scribe John Gatins. You can look at Flight and marvel at Denzel Washington’s performance or how much movie Robert Zemeckis put onscreen with only a $30 million budget. But the most compelling back story is Gatins, who wrote a script that fit no studio’s template of a make-able movie, particularly with Gatins’ insistence he direct it. Gatins became a successful writer after acting didn’t pan out. His only directing credit, Dreamer, was a family film about a broken race horse, the furthest thing from an R-rated drama about a coke-snorting drunk commercial airline pilot. It was inevitable that a decade of futility would leave Gatins feeling a bit like Ahab chasing the white whale. But here, Gatins bagged his white whale, even if the price was letting someone else be captain.

DEADLINE: Pulling a jet liner out of a dive by flying upside down seems crazy, but there is a knowing voice that informs the substance abuse struggles of Denzel Washington’s pilot. How long did you struggle with that?
GATINS: It was one of those things where you go to college, and get a mulligan for four years to go through stuff and sort things out. If after those four years the party doesn’t end, that’s when it becomes an issue. I was one of those guys who couldn’t leave the party. I moved to Los Angeles after I graduated from Vassar, and tried to sort it out for myself but just never really could. There were a few really dark years there, and some strained relationships with family and friends. I had lots of people worried about me, until I was able to…

DEADLINE: Pull out of the nosedive, so to speak.
GATINS: Yes.

DEADLINE: How did you come up with this movie?
GATINS: I was in Europe, working as a script doctor on Behind Enemy Lines. These naval pilots, very intense guys, told such great stories. Sobriety changed what had been a distaste for flying into a real fear, because I didn’t have a coping mechanism anymore when I was in the air. The Yankees and Mets were playing in the World Series, and I had to get back to see a game. I found myself in this plane sitting next to a pilot who just started telling me all these crazy stories and everything that was going wrong in his life. I’m pretty friendly, but sitting there on this plane, I didn’t want to know that the wife hates you and you’re going through an awful divorce and you’ve got a bad addiction, you’re an alcoholic. And then I had that “wait a second, what if?” moment. Let’s say you had this pilot with an addiction issue, and put him in a plane and there was one of those horrific perfect storm scenarios. Every pilot explained to me that in order for a plane to crash from pilot error, a really crazy series of things would have to happen because they have backup systems for every crisis. I thought, if I can put him in a situation like that, where he has to do some amazing feat of flying, and then later it’s revealed he was loaded, how would we feel about that guy and his heroic act? And what about his own self-appraisal when the media wants to hoist him up as a hero? I wanted to explore the life of this alcoholic faker, trying to convince himself he’s something that’s he’s not. Read More »

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OSCARS: How ‘Flight’ Got Off The Ground

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday December 12, 2012 @ 8:00pm PSTTags: Awardsline, Denzel Washington, Flight, Oscars, Robert Zemeckis

Diane Haithman is an AwardsLine contributor.

One thing’s for certain about Flight: The Robert Zemeckis-directed drama starring Denzel Washington as an alcoholic pilot will never be a popular in-flight film. “After this movie, people are going to be waiting out on the steps for the pilot with a Breathalyzer test,” Washington recently joked in an interview.

Flight screenwriter John Gatins also does not recommend his story for in-flight reading. “I’ve gotten emails from people saying:, ‘Man, I made the mistake of opening your screenplay on a plane’”, Gatins says with a laugh. His fictional concept is not too far from recent fact: In 2009, not one, but two pilots were arrested preflight at London’s Heathrow Airport after failing Breathalyzer tests. Both planes, one American Airlines and one United, were coincidentally headed for Chicago.

Related: OSCARS: Handicapping Lead Actor Race Read More »

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Robert Zemeckis To Receive Director Of The Year Award At Palm Springs Fest

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Wednesday November 28, 2012 @ 9:57am PSTTags: Flight, Palm Springs Film Festival, Robert Zemeckis

Palm Springs, CA (November 28, 2012) – The 24th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival (PSIFF) will present Academy Award® winning director Robert Zemeckis with the Director of the Year Award for Flight. Presented by Cartier, the Awards Gala

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Paramount Taking Box Office Success ‘Flight’ Directly To Academy Voters; Film Is Dedicated To Ed Limato

By PETE HAMMOND | Sunday November 4, 2012 @ 11:54am PSTTags: Big Deals Film, Denzel Washington, Flight, Paramount, Robert Zemeckis
Pete Hammond

EXCLUSIVE: With an estimated $25 million boxoffice haul on only 1900 screens (see Nikki’s boxoffice report) in its opening weekend, Paramount’s gamble on the $30 million adult drama Flight looks like it is paying off. That’s certainly sweet news for star Denzel Washington and director Robert … Read More »

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‘Flight’ Crash Sequence Effects: Video

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Saturday November 3, 2012 @ 5:48pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, Robert Zemeckis

Visual effects supervisor Keith Baillie of Atomic Fiction explains how filmmakers created the Flight crash sequence. The Robert Zemeckis movie starring Denzel Washington as a troubled pilot opened Friday and is expected to bring in an estimated $23.6 million this weekend.

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TNT Developing Runaway Bride Drama Produced By Robert Zemeckis

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Friday November 2, 2012 @ 4:55pm PDTTags: Robert Zemeckis, TNT
Nellie Andreeva

EXCLUSIVE: TNT has put in development Cold Feet, a drama executive produced by Robert Zemeckis. The project, in the vein of It’s A Wonderful Life, centers on … Read More »

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Paramount’s Oscar Hopeful Takes ‘Flight’ With Bi-Coastal Interactive Launch — Minus Denzel Washington

By PETE HAMMOND | Monday October 15, 2012 @ 9:26pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, John Gatins, Paramount Pictures, Robert Zemeckis
Pete Hammond

Paramount, expanding ways to reach awards voters, got interactive Monday with a bi-coastal launch of its Oscar-bait drama Flight, including a special screening and Q&A in New York beamed to four Arclight theaters in the Los Angeles area and another in San Francisco for invited guild members and press. Taking place the day after the film’s world premiere as the closing-night attraction of the 50th New York Film Festival, director Robert Zemeckis, writer John Gatins and several cast members including John Goodman, Don Cheadle, Bruce Greenwood, and Melissa Leo took part in the interactive post-screening Q&A that featured tweeted questions from the California venues and live queries from the NY crowd — many industry-voter types. Paramount clearly found a nice way to expand its Big Apple premiere, and it went off almost without a hitch. Almost.

The only downer for the studio was jettisoning the scheduled appearance of Flight star Denzel Washington, who was in attendance for the premiere Sunday night. He “was taken ill” according to the announcement at the outset of the Q&A, followed by audible groans from the audience. For the money being spent on this, as well as its awards launch, losing Denzel had to be a big disappointment for the studio. Still, the rest of this digital-age awards event went off without a hitch with premium network Epix teaming with Paramount to stage the interactive, multi-city event.

Other companies have begun doing this sort of thing including The Weinstein Company, which staged a couple of live interactive events like this last year with Meryl Streep among others. But the major studios, more bottom-line-oriented and not usually on the front lines of new Oscar campaign techniques, are suddenly jumping on board if recent activity is an indication. Last week, Disney/DreamWorks staged a “Conversation With Steven Spielberg And Daniel Day Lewis” following a nine-city screening of Lincoln at which audience members (mostly students) in those cities were able to text questions to the same AMC Lincoln (appropiate name) Plaza theatre that hosted today’s Flight screening. In the past, most awards-season guild screening Q&As (and they number in the hundreds) were simply for the audience that showed up and not usually even taped. Read More »

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Hot Trailer: ‘Flight’

By THE DEADLINE TEAM | Thursday October 11, 2012 @ 12:07pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, New York Film Festival, Paramount Pictures, Robert Zemeckis

Paramount‘s Flight stars Denzel Washington as a hero airline pilot with a secret and is Robert Zemeckis’ first live-action film in more than a decade. John Goodman, Melissa Leo and Don Cheadle co-star in the movie, written by John Gatins. The studio is positioning this one for an … Read More »

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NYFF Lands Robert Zemeckis’ ‘Flight’ As Closing Night Film

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday August 9, 2012 @ 12:13pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, New York Film Festival, Robert Zemeckis
Mike Fleming

New York, NY, August 8, 2012 – The Film Society of Lincoln Center announced today that Robert Zemeckis’s FLIGHT will make its World Premiere as the Closing Night film for the upcoming 50th New York Film

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Robert Zemeckis Signs Overall Deal With Fox TV Studios

By NELLIE ANDREEVA | Wednesday August 8, 2012 @ 10:00am PDTTags: Big Deals TV, Fox TV Studios, Robert Zemeckis
Nellie Andreeva

Robert Zemeckis is making a major move into television, inking a deal with Fox TV Studios. Under the overall pact, the Back To The Future writer/director Zemeckis and his producing partner Jack Rapke will develop and produce original … Read More »

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Hot Trailer: Robert Zemeckis-Directed ‘Flight’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Wednesday June 6, 2012 @ 6:12pm PDTTags: Denzel Washington, Flight, Robert Zemeckis
Mike Fleming

Here’s an early trailer for Flight, Robert Zemeckis’ return to live-action directing after his foray into performance capture animation. It is nice to see the helmer of movies like Forrest Gump, Cast Away and Back To The Future return to the screen, particularly with Denzel Washington as a troubled pilot … Read More »

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Leslie Zemeckis Making ‘Bound By Flesh’ Docu On Siamese Vaudeville Sisters

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Wednesday April 11, 2012 @ 10:36am PDTTags: Big Deals Film, Robert Zemeckis
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Leslie and Robert Zemeckis are teaming on Bound By Flesh, a documentary she will direct on Daisy and Violet Hilton, Siamese sisters joined at the hip who graduated from wax museums and the carnival sideshow circuit to become the … Read More »

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Universal Buys Novel Manuscript ‘Demonologist’ For ImageMovers

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Wednesday February 22, 2012 @ 4:16pm PSTTags: ImageMovers, Robert Zemeckis, Universal Pictures
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Universal has acquired Demonologist, a novel manuscript by Andrew Pyper. The book will be sold at auction shortly, but most important the film project will be produced by ImageMovers partners Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey. The studio made a preemptive deal for rights to the manuscript. The … Read More »

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‘Back To The Future’ Heading To Broadway?

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Thursday February 2, 2012 @ 9:34am PSTTags: Back to the Future, Michael J. Fox, Robert Zemeckis
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Will Robert Zemeckis’ 1985 classic Back To The Future become the latest film to get a Broadway stage production? I’m told that Zemeckis is in early talks with his co-writer Bob Gale and the film’s composer Alan Silvestri to … Read More »

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Parkes & MacDonald Plan Feature Version Of Jon Robin Baitz’ Play ‘Other Desert Cities’

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Tuesday November 22, 2011 @ 7:48am PSTTags: Denzel Washington, Laurie MacDonald, Robert Zemeckis, Stephen Sondheim, Stockard Channing, Walter Parkes
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Producers Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald have acquired film rights to Other Desert Cities, the Jon Robin Baitz stage play. Parkes/MacDonald used the development fund it launched with Imagenation Abu Dhabi to make the deal. Baitz will write the … Read More »

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Robert Zemeckis Sets Writers For ‘Garden Gnome Attack’ Film

By MIKE FLEMING JR | Monday November 7, 2011 @ 8:34am PSTTags: Alexandra Milchan, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Jack Rapke, Joe Roth, Robert Zemeckis, Sony Pictures Animation, Steve Starkey
Mike Fleming

EXCLUSIVE: Chad Damiani and JP Lavin have just been hired to adapt How To Survive A Garden Gnome Attack for Robert Zemeckis and his Imagemovers banner. The film is a live action film (the garden gnomes will be animated), based … Read More »

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OSCARS: Animation Feature Race Heats Up – But Will Spielberg’s ‘Tintin’ Make The Cut?

By PETE HAMMOND | Wednesday September 28, 2011 @ 7:18pm PDTTags: 84th Academy Awards, Animation, Cars 2, Peter Jackson, Pixar, Robert Zemeckis, Steven Spielberg, The Adventures of Tintin
Pete Hammond

There is always controversy about what is true animation, particularly with the motion capture process which uses real performances by actors and then essentially animates the scenes. I’m told that key members in the Academy Of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences’s … Read More »

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