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Clusters of waiters suddenly appear in front of a single bare table in the wood-paneled Milton Berle Room at the Friars Club, just blocks away from Sony Pictures Classics' Madison [...]

Jane Rosenthal is the shrewd producer of such franchise films as 'Meet the Parents' and the muscle behind most of Robert DeNiro's entertainment ventures. She also happens to be a [...]

It's getting tougher to take issue with Sundance, the behemoth of indie film festivals. When festgoers hissed and hollered about theater space, organizers built the 2,000-seat Eccles Theater. When getting [...]

Just three weeks after the attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center, the Big Apple's film community is doing its best to prove that the show, as it were, is [...]

Timing, tone, rollout help Dimension pic build B.O. Box office competish is intensifying as the holidays approach, but a pie from back in mid-August remains one of the most consistent [...]

TORONTO For one night at least, it seemed like the Toronto Intl. Film Festival was actually an all-Canadian event. 'This is the world's finest film festival,' said Ontario's Minister of [...]

HOLLYWOOD Disney has been working overtime to build a better Mouse Trap. With Peter Schneider's exit last week as chairman of the Walt Disney studio, the company may have to [...]

HOLLYWOOD Cathy Schulman has reupped as president of production at Artists Production Group for three years. She has been with the company since its launch two years ago and has [...]

HOLLYWOOD Producer Jerry Bruckheimer's true-life drama 'Chasing the Dragon: The Veronica Guerin Story' has gotten the greenlight, with the Walt Disney Co. back on track to distribute Cate Blanchett in [...]

HOLLYWOOD Paramount Classics has nabbed domestic distribution rights, as well as rights in the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Latin America, to the Cannes festival's closing-night film 'Les Ames Fortes' [...]

What impact will the defection of Russell Schwartz have on USA Films? The affable prexy of USA decided to jump to New Line Cinema last week because, he tells Variety, [...]

Seated in his hotel room at the Regent Beverly Wilshire in Los Angeles, Steven Bach, in town to promote his new book, 'Dazzler: The Life and Times of Moss Hart' [...]

HOLLYWOOD Revolution Studios has a struck a deal to turn 1960s CBS sitcom 'Hogan's Heroes' into a feature film. The now-defunct Destination Films last held the project's rights, which at [...]

HOLLYWOOD Castle Rock Entertainment has acquired the rights to Richard North Patterson's novel 'Protect and Defend.' Published in hardcover in December, writer's 11th novel focuses on the presidential politics involving [...]

HOLLYWOOD Universal Pictures has enlisted 'You Can Count on Me' scribe-director Kenneth Lonergan to pen an adaptation of Jack Finney's time-travel novel 'Time and Again.' Robert Redford has been developing [...]

NEWYORK 'Let me handle this, Michael! Please ..., 'interrupts Tom Bernard, seated next to his longtime friend and Sony Pictures Classics co-prexy Michael Barker, amid a hectic Hamburger Hamlet on [...]

NEW YORK In a deal to be worth high six figures against $1.5 million, Bill Mechanic's Pandemonium is in final negotiations to take film fights to 'Fire,' a book-in-progress from [...]

NEW YORK The Walt Disney Co. will cough up $1.75 million against roughly $2.25 million for scribe Jonathan Hensleigh ('Armageddon') to reconceive the high-concept project 'Gemini Man.' From an original [...]

Disney's recent decision to cut as many as 250 animation slots at its Burbank studios, and to reduce the salaries of others, raises questions about how the Mouse House will [...]

Toronto tech company itemus will complete a buyout of Gotham-based Shooting Gallery by the end of the month. Itemus will take 100% of Shooting Gallery's equity in return for 71 [...]

NEW YORK Camryn Manheim, co-star of ABC's 'The Practice,' has sold her pitch 'The Extra' to Bill Mechanic's Pandemonium shingle for a deal that includes the thesp committed to star [...]

Strike fears get junket junkies jumping Mal Vincent, film critic for the Virginian-Pilot, has one of the busiest social calendars in showbiz. Over the next few weeks, he will spend [...]

NEW YORK The History Channel has bought the rights to 'Fire on the Mountain,' a nonfiction book about a tragic 1994 forest fire in Colorado that raged for 10 days, [...]

NEW YORK With a little help from seven unidentified private investors, Tony-nominated theater producer Adam Epstein ('Amadeus') is moving into feature film production via his newly formed Bonmark Entertainment shingle. [...]

Partners Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz are the latest in a line of high-profile producers, including Gale Ann Hurd and Barry Levinson, to leave the studio system for the independent [...]

HOLLYWOOD The foremost of Oscar's after-parties March 25 was the Governors Ball where the Academy celebrated the Shrine's last gig with a $1 million-plus affair in Exposition Hall. 'We wanted [...]

HOLLYWOOD Sony Pictures Classics' 'Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' leaped away with best feature, director (Ang Lee) and supporting actress (Zhang Ziyi) nods at IFP/West's 16th annual Independent Spirit Awards, held [...]

Somehow the Kevin Costner vehicle 'Thirteen Days,' directed by Roger Donaldson, vanished in the Christmas and pre-Oscar shuffles. What went wrong? Brought to New Line on the recommendation of Ted [...]

HOLLYWOOD Warner Bros. Pictures will pay Andrew Marlowe ('Air Force One') an upfront fee of $750,000 to pen an untitled project for John Woo to direct and Harrison Ford to [...]

DreamWorks Pictures has paid an undisclosed sum for the film rights to Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's as yet unpublished biography on Abraham Lincoln. Insiders said the book may [...]

Continuing to stockpile comic moviemakers, 20th Century Fox and Fox 2000 have closed an overall directing and producing deal with Jay Roach and his Everyman Pictures label. Roach, who directed [...]

HOLLYWOOD Writer-producer Scott Steindorff has signed a first-look deal with Bill Mechanic's Pandemonium shingle. Pact will guarantee overhead for the suddenly prolific Steindorff. Deal's duration is unspecified. A former real [...]

HOLLYWOOD Novelist James Ellroy ('L.A. Confidential') will pen his first original script, '77,' for Paramount Pictures, with Dick Wolf and Wolf Films prexy Tony Ganz on board to produce. Script [...]

So why is Miramax suddenly cozying up to its smaller New York neighbor Good Machine? Before announcing a first-look deal earlier this month, Miramax had kept Good Machine at arm's [...]

Maybe setting Shakespeare's 'Othello' in a contempo high school wasn't the best idea after all. In the wake of the March 5 high school shootings near San Diego, Dimension Films' [...]

HOLLYWOOD Initial Entertainment Group (IEG) has closed a deal with 20th Century Fox Intl. for the Italian theatrical, vid and TV rights to Martin Scorsese's 'Gangs of New York.' Fox [...]

HOLLYWOOD With Writers Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild strikes looming, studio execs still are frantically finalizing pre-strike 'go' movies. That means they have less time and energy to [...]

HOLLYWOOD In this split-rights world we live in, whose Oscar nominations are they, anyway? No matter how you slice it, Sony Pictures Classics is justly proud with 13 Oscar noms [...]

With financing falling apart for the $45 million budgeted 'Lovers, Lies and Thieves,' time is running out for the romantic comedy slated to star Robin Williams, Antonio Banderas and Renee [...]

HOLLYWOOD Lars yon Trier and Peter Aalbaek Jensen's Denmark-based Zentropa Entertainments has struck a co-production pact with the newly formed ZentAmerica Entertainment, a sister shingle based in Los Angeles. Thomas [...]

Jennie Lew Tugend, Ron Moler and Elliot Rosenblatt's newly formed Capstone Pictures has entered into a joint venture with German film production and sales arm EuroArts. Under the arrangement, Capstone [...]

Disney has given the go-ahead to 'Frank McCluskey, C.I.' -- with comic thesp Dave Sheridan toplining a pic the studio says will be the last it greenlights before any potential [...]

Caution and pre-sales prevail in Park City For cineastes complaining that the Sundance Film Festival has been over-run by commercialism, the good news about the 2001 edition was that it [...]

Even though Julia Roberts joked, 'I'm kind of freaking out because critics, in general, I don't eat with,' thesps and critics set aside their differences for a couple of nights [...]

Exit signals `tamer' New Line under AOL He's been surely one of the most approachable of studio chiefs. Also the most empathetic and creative, which is why talent is drawn [...]

HOLLYWOOD Jon Turteltaub and Christina Steinberg's Junction Entertainment has reupped with the Walt Disney Co. for three years. Deal includes commitment for two pictures over the period. Turteltaub has yet [...]

HOLLYWOOD Overseas Filmgroup, which specializes in the acquisition, financing, packaging and distribution of indie features, has renamed itself First Look Media (FLM). Overseas will continue as a division of the [...]

It looks like USA Films has a hit on its hands with the Steven Soderberghhelmed 'Traffic,' but can the company make any money off of it? Several years ago, the [...]

HOLLYWOOD Michael Lembeck, best known for directing episodes of 'Friends,' is in final talks to helm Disney's bigscreen sequel to 'The Santa Clause.' As in the first installment, Tim Allen [...]

Does Miracle Entertainment need divine intervention? Two weeks after co-founder Richard Abramson exited the finance, sales and production company, principals Neil Sacker, Julie Savay-Ross and Gregg Hoffman have resigned. 'I [...]