illegal snacking
We bring to you yet more news of unsavory comings and goings on the Sony lot, this time in the form of an all-employees-bulletin distributed on the company intranet, informing whoever keeps sneaking up to craft services tables to load up on illicit granola bars, purloined M&Ms, and stolen slices of soggy turkey wrap that the jig is up:
UNAUTHORIZED USE OF CATERING AND CRAFT SERVICE ON THE LOT
Thursday Jul 10, 2008, SPE
Over the last couple of weeks, Studio Operations has received a number of complaints from production companies who are experiencing an increased number of unauthorized persons entering their stages and eating from their craft service areas and catering trucks.
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defamer connections
Now comes that portion of the broadcast where we break from our hard-hitting coverage of celebrity lingerie purchases and NBA ass-tastings to focus instead on what really matters: Bringing you, the lot-bound drone in desperate need of human connection, in contact with your perfect match. We turn to the always-fertile singles' mingling grounds of Craigslist for our latest bachelor offering, a pent-up fellow currently finding it hard to concentrate on his duties at Sony Culver Studios [NSFW] :
Anyone on the SONY lot up for a mid afternoon Jerk? (Culver City)
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working blue
And here we thought the future of the Smurfs franchise in America was merely an esoteric quarterly concern at Defamer — that the talk we'd heard a while back about some feature-length updating was mere Euro-rumor. But the impossible blue dream of about 350 emotionally stunted children of the '80s inched closer to reality Monday when Sony Pictures Animation announced it had acquired the domestic rights to develop a Smurfs movie at last.
We're not sure where this puts the original project we'd privately cherished a few months ago, but you won't hear us tell you the world isn't big enough for a pair of Smurfs films — especially something blending live-action, animation and such unadulterated corporate dorkdom:
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cannes film festival
Where are the big spenders this year at Cannes? After a 2007 buying spree that topped out with Universal snagging
We Own the Night for a whopping $11.5 million, only one distributor has made any considerable investment in the current crop of selections —
IFC Films, which
made news Wednesday by acquiring the acclaimed Irish drama
Hunger, its seventh buy in as many days. And even its other deals — an international mash-up including
A Christmas Tale (France),
Chaser (S. Korea) and the American indie
The Pleasure of Being Robbed — are slated for minimal theatrical play as they funnel into IFC's day-and-date on-demand circuit.
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comebacks
After the implosive one-two punch comprising his recent tandem War. Inc. and Grace is Gone (not to mention, of course, his spellbinding online short film featuring Diablo Cody as "Girl Who Thought He'd Be Cooler"), fortune may yet favor the slumping John Cusack. Or at least that's the only option our optimistic hearts will allow upon reading about the actor's reported next project, a massive-budget, honest-to-goodness end-of-the-world film by apocalypse maven Roland Emmerich:
John Cusack is in negotiations to star in director Roland Emmerich's (10,000 B.C., The Day After Tomorrow) new disaster movie 2012 for Sony Pictures. The title refers to the year the world is supposed to end after a global cataclysm. Cusack is negotiating to play Jackson Curtis, a divorced dad who alternates between writing and driving a limo. ...
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download lowdown
The inevitable grouping of the major studios under the iTunes roof finally occurred today, when Apple officially announced it had reached agreements with Universal, Paramount, Fox, Warner Bros., Sony and Lionsgate (along with previous bedfellow Disney) on day-and-date downloads of their new DVD titles. The studios had made most releases available for rental since earlier this year (with catalog titles for sale before that), but this marks the first time users can buy and download new releases on their DVD street dates.
The good news: You can wait and watch Made of Honor on your iPod in about three months! The bad news: It'll cost you $14.99 to download it. (Or $9.99 three months after that.) And for digital media that costs exactly nothing to reproduce, package or distribute, we think that amounts to little more than information highway robbery. And just in time for the studios to stonewall SAG on new-media revenues!
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The impossible dream imagined last year as word of the scintillating, straight-to-DVD
Zombie Strippers — an
actual movie starring
Jenna Jameson and
Nightmare on Elm Street veteran Robert Englund — circulated around the Web inched closer to reality last week, with
Sony Pictures so certain of the magic at hand that it announced theatrical releases in
more than a dozen cities April 18. A note slipped over the Defamer transom this morning (with the accompanying poster) alluded to "worldwide media sensation" Jameson's role in a strip club that gets hit with a secret government virus: "As one of the strippers gets the virus, she turns into a supernatural, flesh-eating zombie stripper, making her the hit of the club. Do the rest of the girls fight the temptation to be like the star stripper, even if there is no turning back?" We can hardly wait to find out, though we're guessing that like all canonical zombie films with ripe moral metaphors on hand, only a forceful 20-spot to the G-string can save the afflicted dancers from an eternity of brain-chomping damnation. [
Sony Pictures]
exclusives
Defamer has learned that executives at Sony tried to have an MSNBC story outing Will Smith as a closeted Scientologist killed. With the Smith tentpole Hancock slated for a July release, execs are clearly worried their big summer blockbuster will turn into another Mission:Impossible 3 conundrum, when Tom Cruise's anything-but-glib antics spurred petitions against the film and damaged the film's B.O. on both the domestic and international fronts. In an effort to prevent a similar shitshow come July, our source claims Sony forced a denial statement out of Smith after MSNBC stuck by their original story:
"After word got out that Will was a secret Scientologist, reps from Sony [the studio behind Hancock] completely flipped out, and asked that the online exclusive be taken down immediately. After being refused, Sony forced Smith to speak out and release a denial statement."
But how did his friends in the Church take the news? Find out after the jump.
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disasters
Not to be outdone by the swift, shaky-cam destruction of its transcontinental nemeses in
Cloverfield, Los Angeles is getting its own taste of catastrophe in the
latest viral sensation to hit YouTube. At least we
think it's L.A.; some have suggested that
Case 1017 — the grainy home video of HazMat-suited CDC officials and semi-automatic weapons fire that has attracted 1.1 million views since Saturday — is a tease for
Cloverfield 2 or M. Night Shyamalan's forthcoming Philly disaster epic
The Happening. Follow the jump, however, for what turns out to be a much simpler explanation.
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courtship
Seemingly unstoppable late night force Jay Leno has already demonstrated that he needs no writers to conquer his time slot: Audiences looking for non-addictive insomnia cures and lovemaking soundtracks clearly prefer Leno's middling presence and chirpy joke-delivery over his more cantankerous competitors. For whatever reason, however, the management at NBC decided four years ago that Leno required an expiration date, unfeelingly stamping the host on the forehead with a "BEST BEFORE 2009" notice, and designating Conan O'Brien as his successor. Now, a full two years before his contract expires, rival networks and studios are unfurling their green, high-currency plumage, and doing the late-night mating dance for the still viable talk show host. The NY Times reports:
Senior executives at ABC and Fox said that their networks had discreetly gotten the message to Mr. Leno that they were waiting eagerly for the time when they would be able to make official overtures. [...]
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trade roundup
· The strike's over, but we were waiting for a deal like this one to really start celebrating: Sony bought 2012, an obnoxiously over-the-top end-of-the-world disaster flick that's going to cost at least $200 million for Roland Emmerich to make! Yay! The studios are back to hemorrhaging money again! [Variety]
· The Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films Saturn Awards nominations gave 300 the most nominations with ten, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix a close second at nine. Flabbergasted producers of The Golden Compass responded by saying, "We had fucking talking-polar-bear fights! What else could you possibly be looking for?!" [Variety]
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brave new world
Drunk on power after
slaying the HD-DVD dragon, Sony rolled into CES `08 with more confidence than Colin Farrell after a couple of key bumps. Eager to gloat but unwilling to pay huge appearance fees, they trotted out
Leonard Maltin (the poor man's Roger Ebert) and
Dean Devlin (the homeless man's Jerry Bruckheimer) to
shill discuss the impact that Blu-Ray will have on the filmmaking process. The two spent a few minutes lamenting the demise of the in-theater viewing experience before launching into orgiastic praise of all things Blu-Ray. After explaining that "home video is no longer an ancillary market, now it's a PRIMARY market", Dean Devlin dropped a radioactive bomb on us.
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As it turns out, the script for
Da Vinci Code prequel
Angels & Demons that screenwriter Akiva Goldsman
rushed in to beat the pre-strike deadline wasn't as shoot-ready as Sony had hoped, forcing the studio to indefinitely postpone production of
Ron Howard's next crowd-narcotizing blockbuster:
"'While the filmmakers and the studio feel the screenplay is very strong, we do not believe it is the fully realized production draft required of this ambitious project,' a Sony spokesperson said. 'At this time, there is no new start date for
Angels & Demons, but we are setting a release date of May 15, 2009, and are hopeful to deliver the movie worldwide to theaters on that date. We do not expect any other film on our 2008 slate to be affected.'" But take heart: as we've recently learned, the production setbacks that don't kill Imagine's
Brian Grazer only make him stronger, so we have every confidence he'll make sure this latest passion project eventually gets made—even if that means he has to circumvent the too-cautious studio by buying his own copy of the book at the Grove's Barnes and Noble, taking it over to
Tom Hanks' house, then forcing the star to act out the story at gunpoint while the dogged superproducer captures every precious word on a camcorder. [
Variety]
The corporate mothership has extended the contract of Sony Pictures CEO/chairman/Showman of the Year
Michael Lynton through 2012. If you're thinking of sending over the perfect kiss-up gift to celebrate this happy occasion and get your project jammed into the pre-strike production pipeline, we suggest a basket of
ham-and-cheese sandwiches. [
THR,
Var]
everybody loves cake
While some might find the "some of my favorite things" boxes featured in Variety's "Showmen of the Year" tribute to Sony heads Amy Pascal and Michael Lynton a feature that might be more at home in Mogul Fancy, the resourceful can always find some utility behind the whimsy: for example, knowing that Harold and Maude inspired Pascal to pursue her wildly successful career in "the biz" could lead a bold producer to begin a pitch by dousing himself in gas and lighting himself on fire or by chopping off his hand with a cleaver, creating an instant bonding moment over a shared love of the cult film. Or, you know, he could just bring along a slice of delicious cake, opting for a safer appeal to her decadent side. (For the record, Lynton's "favorite things" box indicates he's more of a ham-and-cheese sandwich guy, Plan your food bribes accordingly.)
[Image via Digial Variety]
gender-related honors
The weekly edition of Variety officially awards its Showmen of the Year honor, the most coveted recognition in all of showbiz trade journalism (and yes, that includes Var's Billion Dollar Director Day celebration), to Sony's Michael Lynton and Amy Pascal, an occasion necessitating the purchase of full-page tribute ads by any talent, producers, or agency ever hoping to get a movie made at their red-hot studio. While none of the ads make direct mention of Pascal's ceremonial bepenising by the publication, this minimalist, phoned-in-by-someone's-unimaginative-assistant offering by Spider-Man's trio of Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst, and Sam Raimi (really, couldn't someone have thrown some spider-related clip art on there?—click the thumbnail to enlarge) nods to the co-president's honorary gender reassignment, a little in-joke that only those who've generated billions in box office grosses can get away without fear of career reprisals.
[Ad via Digital Variety]
gender reassignment dept.
We thought it was a little strange when Sony chief
Amy Pascal,
THR's
Most Powerful Woman in Hollywood 2006 and one of the top-rated honorees in
Premiere's celebration of the industry's
most influential ladies, was left off
Variety's recent
Women's Impact Report, but now it all makes sense: The trade didn't want to ruin the surprise that it had awarded her its highest honor, an official promotion to Man, for an incredible year of directing her studio to the lead in motion picture marketshare. We congratulate Pascal on this recognition, and can't wait until someone sends us a cameraphone photo of the many baskets of bananas her new male peers are messengering over to ceremonially welcome her into their fraternity.
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