Editing is at an all time low at the LA Times during the holidays; Leonardo DiCaprio does not want you to keep calm and party on; don't feel bad about stealing Netflix from your ex-girlfriend; and Ty Burrell is taking a page out of the Wilson-Vaughn playbook.
Fully-grown human Bill Simmons has the fervency of a small child when he really, really wants something (see: his impassioned pleas back in 2009 to become the general manager of the Timberwolves; see also: the Timberwolves bad cop refusal to indulge this). Good cop Disney has now given in to their adorable son's relentless demands, and made him producer on a Deadspin commenter's upcoming movie.
Jeff Zucker, former NBCUniversal head turned CNN Worldwide president is best known for architechting Jay Leno's astronomical rise to the most hated talk show host in America. But now Zucker has an inspired new idea: bring Leno—the guy he fucked over—to CNN. What could go wrong?
It's easy to overlook Harvey Weinstein huffing and puffing and threatening legal action, because it's hard to deny an old man his simple pleasures, but his latest litigious tussle with Warner Brothers over The Hobbit profit participation may not just be Weinstein's audition tape to play Gollum in the final Hobbit film.
Hollywood's favorite drunk aunt Sharon Waxman, editor of TheWrap, appeared on Piers Morgan last night to lend her industry expertise on the recent deaths of Paul Walker and Nelson Mandela. Surprising to no one is the fact that Waxman offered little to no expertise whatsoever, other than touting her own unfounded conspiracy theories.
In a tale of life imitating art where no one is Nathan Lane or Matthew Broderick, NBC's Bob Greenblatt is one step closer to turning his tenure as entertainment chairman of the struggling network into a real-life version of The Producers. (It stands to reason that fluffy NBC president Jen Salke envisions herself as ulti-beard Sarah Jessica Parker, because, you know, shoes.)
Sony Pictures financial troubles have been widely public this year: after summer box-office failures After Earth and White House Down, Sony investor Daniel Loeb publicly slammed the company's overspending on weak projects. Just last week, the company hired Bain & Company to help cut over $100 million in costs. One of the first to go? Co-chairman Amy Pascal's assistant, who earns over a quarter of a million per year.
NBA's biggest douchebag with the dumbest self-appointed nickname can finally rest easy, knowing that his year-long campaign to turn his memoir into a TV show has finally come true. ESPN reports that Fox has purchased Three The Hard Way, based on Dwyane Wade's "memoir," A Father First: How My Life Became Bigger Than Basketball.
Terrence Howard showed up on the wacky funhouse that exists only in Andy Cohen's mind, and in true Howard fashion, managed to turn what was a playful interview with the lovely Nia Long into a foreshadowing of doom.
Mistakes happen. In the age of the internet, these mistakes can live on a lot longer than normal, but regardless, the proper way to deal with them is almost always a gracious apology, a swift repair or repayment caused by damages, and a healthy dose of contrition. That's the best way. Then there's the Spike Lee way.
You know that drunk uncle that shows up at Thanksgiving, sloppy, covered in snow, and while once cool, is now a general embarrassment to everyone? That's Brian Grazer. Except that the Thanksgiving dinner is Ron Howard's, the snow is "snow" (because this is Los Angeles and it's still 80 degrees even in November), and actually, no one ever thought Brian Grazer was cool, except for Brian Grazer.
In a speech delivered at Israel's Innovative TV conference, organized by Israeli mega-producers The Keshet Group, NBC's head-goatee Bob Greenblatt decided to shank his former NBC overlords, despite the fact that in his tenure at the trouble network, he hasn't delivered a single breakout new program.
In the one-sided battle for agency superiority, Hollywood's best agencies made Halloween their bloody battleground yesterday. So whose Halloween-themed hallowed halls were the most frighteningly fantastic?
It's hard being the child of a Hollywood dealmaker—on one hand you get to have all those cool celebrities pop in at your bat mitzvahs, but on the other, Ari Emanuel just made daddy get rid of his second assistant, so now who's going to make your scale model of the solar system for the Harvard-Westlake science fair? Luckily, the top talent agencies have all united in their quest to make the lives of poor little rich kids significantly more enriching, if only for this spookiest of days.
William Morris Endeavor—run by Ari Emanuel, the real-life inspiration for Jeremy Piven's twitchy Ari Gold on Entourage—empirically speaking, is a very good agency. So good, in fact, that their work speaks for itself: WME is a fairly well-known acronym, even outside the industry. So why is WME spending all their time bashing CAA, instead of just doing their damn jobs?
This morning, Variety released its annual "New Leaders list"—a who's who of Hollywood's rising executives that's really just a testament to the power of a good in-house corporate communications specialist. But something seems to be missing. They have six legal and finance executives, 12 agents, another six digital developers, three film execs, six television suits, two managers, and ten rising assistants. Yet out of 45 featured people, only two are black.
