Industry Politics

News coming down the wire last night about a potential buy-out of Summit Entertainment by Lionsgate has sent shockwaves through the online film community this morning. Namely, everyone seems to want to speculate about what the blood-thirsty Execs. over at Lionsgate might do with Summit’s one and only successful property, Twilight.

It’s now a tale of two letters. One is from producer Larry Gordon to US District Court Judge Feess. The other is an open letter written by producer Lloyd Levin on behalf of the film he has worked on for fifteen years.

The Warner Bros. production of Watchmen directed by Zack Synder was supposed to open March 2009. But that plan is now in jeopardy.

Santa left an early present in Warner Bros. stocking on Wednesday… a lump of coal in the form of an early ruling in 20th Century Fox’s Watchmen copyright lawsuit against them.

Our Cole Abaius might be slow on the uptake, but he took some time to mull over Roger Ebert’s recent article about the death of the film critic, and after a few days we find him in the interesting position: disagreeing with Roger Ebert. And disagreeing with most of his colleagues.

By now you’ve probably heard that there won’t be a “next time, baby,” for Terrence Howard in Iron Man 2. Now we know why, a bout over the Benjamins and bad behavior.

Richard Donner addresses the issue of Lethal Weapon 5, saying that its pretty much ‘dead in the water.’ What does that mean for Lethal Weapon fans? Probably nothing…

I have to start by saying that I have great respect for people who work past disabilities and afflictions to lead healthy, rewarding lives. I have nothing against blind people, just ignorant people. So I apologize early if I offend any of our blind readers out there – wait, can blind people read?

A week after Dreamworks made a deal that would finally separate them from Paramount’s power-teat, it looks like another pair of Hollywood studios are going the way of the break up.

After their first poster was denied by the MPAA, they resorted to a much more direct approach.

Filmmakers beware! You now have more to fear than critics reviews. Spielberg and the companies behind ‘Disturbia’ are being sued for unoriginality.

Just when things were starting to look up for Mel Gibson…

Apparently in the world of a hotel heiress, cooperating in the making of a documentary about your life and actually showing it to the public are two different things.

Working, sleeping, eating, and hedonizing (yes, I made that word up) in Hollywood, sometimes I hear things. The talk of the town these days revolves around the “will they, won’t they, but aren’t they already” over the Screen Actors Guild and whether or not they’ll authorize a strike.

Yesterday we reported on the fact that and Islamic-American group is offended by the title of Alan Ball’s new film. Today, Ball, the author of the novel upon which the movie is based and the studio have made their statements.

Matthieu Kassovitz is an unhappy Frenchman. He is unhappy because, as he explains, his upcoming film Babylon A.D. starring Vin Diesel is a big pile of crap, thanks to some bad handling by 20th Century Fox.

After the decision to push back Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to a Summer release, Warner Bros. has a lot of explaining to do. And while they may try, there could be no consoling broken-hearted Potter fans.

It’s not about who will be watching the Watchmen now, its about who will be suing the Watchmen.

Rumors swirl over The Punisher’s rating – but violence junkies rejoice: There Will Be Blood (and an R-Rating).

It seems Warner Bros. no longer believes in the film and feels it has too many films on its hands so has pulled back from a wide distribution of RocknRolla. They appear poised to abandon the film. What a bloody shame…