Brad Gray And Brad Pitt Into The Movie Production Business Together.

In a partnership that will test the hypothesis that two Brads are better than one, manager/producer Brad Gray and client Brad Pitt are going into the movie production business together.

They have formed a three-year venture that has struck a first-look deal at Warner Bros. "Friends" star Jennifer Aniston is also an equity partner. She comes to the venture by way of a producing deal she and her husband Pitt have had at WB for the past year under the Bloc banner. The new shingle, not named yet, will be housed at the same Wilshire Boulevard headquarters as Grey's other companies.

Warner Bros. has dangled a large carrot in a first-dollar gross deal for any films the Brads make, plus a fund for development, and an option for them to put together their own equity financing.

Pitt said he and Aniston will also be hands-on in using their relationships to put together films, even the ones they won't star in. Pitt has been proactive and fee flexible to get movies from "Fight Club" to "Ocean's Eleven" made, but has yet to produce a film. He has begun developing projects with Aniston over the past year.

"Jen and I got started in a development capacity at a time that coincided with Brad looking to build a film company," said Pitt. "We want to let this venture define itself. It becomes harder to find things that spark your interest, and I've found there is a lot to be excited about in the development stage, being involved from conception to incarnation. It feels like the right vibe."

Grey, of course, will sustain his successful management and television production companies.

On the feature front, Brad Gray Pictures has generated, among other pictures, "Scary Movie." It has two releases slated for this year, the Robert De Niro starrer "City by the Sea" and the Gwyneth Paltrow starrer "A View From the Top." Brad Gray Television makes "The Sopranos" and "Just Shoot Me," and scored midseason berths for "My Big Fat Greek Family" on CBS to "What Leonard Comes Home To," an ABC series starring Griffin Dunne.

Grey's Brillstein-Gray management company represents 150 clients, including Nicolas Cage, Adam Sandler, Lorne Michaels, Eddie Griffin and former Gotham Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

'White Out' With Christopher Bertolini, To Write, Antoine Fuqua To Direct

Gaylord optioned in Jan 2002 based on the upcoming novel by former New York Police Officer Jerry Speziale's manuscript, tentatively titled "White Out," a Warner Bros. release with David Permut producing. Gaylord Films has signed Christopher Bertolini, who adapted "The General's Daughter," to write "White Out,". Antoine Fuqua is attached to direct.

The project is about Speziale's real-life experience as a New York police officer. It is being billed as a "Pygmalion" story set against an international backdrop, with the characters traveling the world.

The manuscript details Speziale's younger days as an ambitious New York cop recruited by the Drug Enforcement Administration and assigned to an elite drug task force whose main purpose was to infiltrate and dismantle the powerful Cali drug cartel. Against policy, he employed the help of an internationally blacklisted informant, and the relationship transformed him into the ultimate undercover operative. After learning the ropes, though, Speziale discovered that his informant was betraying him all along.

Through his experiences, Speziale has become one of the foremost experts on wire-tapping, and he often lectures around the country, including at the FBI training facility in Quantico, Va.

Gaylord president Hunt Lowry and production head Casey La Scala are producing the project with Permut. Permut Presentations vp production Steve Longi will co-produce.

The project reunites Fuqua with the project's distributor, Warner Bros., who released his "Training Day" and "Bait." The helmer, repped by ICM, is readying Revolution Studios' "Man of War," starring Bruce Willis, Monica Bellucci and Cole Hauser. The deal was agented by Frank Weimann of LGI and Mickey Freiberg of Acme Talent

'Hardcourt' A Legal Thriller For Phoenix Pictures

Phoenix Pictures has put on a full-court press for "Hardcourt," a legal thriller by scribe Mark L. Smith.

The spec is the second to come from the North Carolina-based Smith, who last year sold his tyro effort, "The Devil's Kiss" -- a suspenser about a sheriff whose retirement is postponed to train a deputy and catch a serial murderer -- to Mel Gibson's Paramount-based Icon Prods.

The deal for "Hardcourt" is potentially valued in  the mid-six-figure range, and is said to be in the vein of "Jagged Edge." The story follows a prominent young criminal attorney who must defend his old mentor, a college basketball coach under suspicion of having murdered his mistress.

Meg Ryan learns boxing for film role

Meg Ryan learned how to throw a few punches for her role as a boxing manager. "I was so pathetic," she said during a break from filming Against the Ropes.

"When you watch it, it looks like a brawl. But there is a science and art to it,'' she said. "In the ring, it is so pure and stripped away. But around the ring it is political, dirty, funny.

"It's a metaphor for Hollywood. It is the red-light district of sports.'' To help with her role, Ryan said she read books on boxing, including those by authors Norman Mailer and Joyce Carol Oates.

The movie is actor Charles S. Dutton's directorial debut. He thinks Ryan hits the mark with her portrayal of a neophyte boxing manager.

"I think Meg is going to surprise a lot of people. This is a departure role for her,'' he said.

The Rain Falls On Blossoming Naomi Watts And Kate Beckinsale

Naomi Watts and Kate Beckinsale are in discussions to star in "Rain Falls," a dark comedy that details the emotional fallout after an upper-middle-class suburb adopts the hobby of partner-swapping.

The Fine Line Features project marks the directorial debut of scribe I. Marlene King ("Now and Then"). Budgeted at under $10 million, the film goes into production in mid-July.

The film was originally greenlit by Myriad Pictures, with a cast that included Christian Slater, Patricia Arquette, Thomas Jane, Amanda Peet and Ian Somerhalder. However, the picture is now being entirely recast.

Danis Tanovic, Mira Nair To Make Short Films On Sept 11

Danis Tanovic, the Bosnian writer-director, who won this year's Oscar for best foreign language film, has begun filming a short film about the September 11 attacks as part of a project in which India's Mira Nair is also involved.

The project which started on Saturday, recently promoted at the Cannes Film Festival, brings together 11 award-winning directors from around the world to create a series of short films about the terror attacks on New York and Washington and their aftermath.

The collection will be released worldwide on September 11 this year under the title 11'09'01: Eleven Minutes, Nine Seconds, One Frame.

Tanovic's short, to be filmed in Sarajevo and southern city of Mostar, establishes a link between the September 11, 2001 attacks and the July 11, 1995 massacre in Srebrenica, eastern Bosnia. "The end of twentieth century was marked by the Srebrenica tragedy, the terror in Srebrenica, and the beginning of the 21st century was marked by terror attacks in the US... and that is behind the concept of this film," Tanovic told reporters.

More than 7,500 Muslims were killed, when Bosnian Serbs captured the town in July 1995 in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II.

Besides Tanovic and Nair, the other directors involved in the Vivendi Universal financed project are: US actor/director Sean Penn, Britain's Ken Loach, Burkina Faso's Idrissa Ouedraogo, Iran's Samira Makmalbaf, France's Claude Lelouch, Egypt's Youssef Chahine, Israel's Amos Gitai, Japan's Shohei Imamura and Mexico's Alejandro Inarritu.

Legal; Universal Sued For $6 Mn By Schindler's Estate

Universal Studios is being sued for $6 million by the estate of Emilie Schindler, the woman whose struggle with her husband Oskar to save Jews from the Nazi regime inspired the hit movie Schindler's List, Focus magazine reports in its Monday edition.

The case has been launched by Erika Rosenberg, one of Emilie Schindler's friends who inherited her estate after she died in October 2001.

Rosenberg says that a 1964 agreement between Oskar Schindler and Metro Goldwyn-Mayer studio gave the Schindlers five percent of any profit from any film based on his book.

Universal, which subsequently bought the rights from Metro Goldwyn-Mayer under the same conditions, said that despite its world-wide success, the 1993 film made a loss of 11.5 million dollars (12.3 million euros).

Focus magazine says this is contradicted by other sources, including the respected Internet Movie Data Base, which lists Schindler's List as having gathered 317 million dollars at the box office.

It says Rosenberg is claiming six million dollars from Universal, now part of the French Vivendi Universal group.

"I have never been happy that the film about her and Oskar made millions but she did not benefit," Rosenberg is quoted as saying.

The Schindlers emigrated to Argentina from Germany in 1949, after having saved the lives of an estimated 1,200 Jews during the Nazi regime.

Oskar Schindler left his wife to return on his own to Germany in 1956, and died in 1974. His wife returned to Germany to live out her final days.

Schindler's List, starring Liam Neeson and Ralph Fiennes, told the story of Oskar Schindler's battle to save 1,200 Polish Jews from Nazi death camps during World War II.

The list itself was found a few years later in 1999 in a suitcase that had belonged to Schindler.

It was found in the northern town of Hildesheim in a house where Schindler spent his last years before his death at the age of 66.

The list was handed over to the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, which in May 1994 awarded Emilie Schindler the title Righteous Among the Nations given to gentiles who helped Jews during the Holocaust.

Industry; Viacom, AOL Tussle for Germany's Viva Media-Report

U.S. media giants Viacom Inc. and AOL Time Warner Inc. are fighting for control of German music television broadcaster Viva Media AG, one of Viva's founders was quoted as saying on Saturday.

"We are in the middle of a takeover battle," Helge Sasse, a co-founder of the music channel, told German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel.

The magazine reported that AOL Time Warner, which already owns 15.3 percent of the Cologne-based media group, and Viacom -- owner of Viva rival MTV -- were interested in shares held by UK music company EMI and French media group Vivendi Universal.

A Viva spokeswoman declined to comment.

EMI and Vivendi each also own 15.3 percent of Viva, according to the company's Web site. Viva, which has a market value of some 65 million euros ($60.75 million) according to Reuters data, has seen its stock rally by some 34 percent since April 22. Its benchmark, Frankfurt's Neuer Markt all-share index, has lost 10 percent over the same period.

Der Spiegel said that Viva's founding shareholders and management would prefer to see AOL come out on top. A takeover by Viacom could threaten the survival of independent Viva programming, it said.

Viva, which is best known for its youth music channel, bought German light entertainment production company Brainpool TV at the end of last year to reduce its dependence on the depressed advertising market.

It had 2001 sales of 60.1 million euros and a net loss of 9.65 million but posted operating profit of 30 million in the first quarter of 2002, including 29.7 million from the sale of 49 percent of Viva Plus Fernsehen GmbH to AOL Time Warner.

Viva, which owns five percent of Italian channel Rete A, is planning to enter two or three new European markets this year, either via partnerships or acquisitions. It has said it is focusing on Italy, Spain and France.