Lions Gate filling true-life 'Glass' with Hayden Christensen

Hayden Christensen is in final negotiations to star in Lions Gate Films' "Shattered Glass" from screenwriter Billy Ray, who will also make his directorial debut on the project.

Production is aimed to begin in August in Los Angeles, with C/W Prods. and Baumgarten Merims Prods. producing in association with Forest Park Pictures, the production company headed by Christensen ("Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones") and his brother Tove.

The film tells the true story of Stephen Glass (Christensen), who from 1995-98 was a twentysomething whiz-kid journalist in Washington writing for publications ranging from the New Republic to Rolling Stone. Considered a rising star, it was later revealed that he made up sources and quotes, fabricating 27 of his 41 articles.

Glass' story was told in Buzz Bissinger's article "Shattered Glass" from the September 1998 issue of Vanity Fair. Lions Gate is in the process of optioning the article. The company is also securing the life rights to the various people who were involved in Glass' life at the time.

Craig Baumgarten, Gay Hirsch and Tove Christensen are producing the project. Paula Wagner and Adam Merims are executive producing.

Mike Paseornek and Marc Butan are overseeing the project on behalf of Lions Gate. The project marks a return to Lions Gate for Christensen, who worked for the company's television division on the 2000 series "Higher Ground." He is repped by CAA and manager Robbie Kass.

The project also marks the second collaboration between Lions Gate and C/W as the duo, along with Paramount Pictures, will be jointly distributing the upcoming feature "Narc." Ray ("Hart's War") is repped by Broder Kurland Webb Uffner.

Tom Stoppard His Dark Materials

Oscar-winning screenwriter Tom Stoppard is negotiating adapt "His Dark Materials," the award-winning fantasy book series by Philip Pullman, for a New Line Cinema movie franchise.

The series revolves around two kids in parallel universes who contend with shape-shifters, witches, armored polar bears and myriad other visually spectacular creatures as they try to save other endangered children. New Line is planning at least two CGI-heavy pictures, much like its "Lord of the Rings" franchise.

Negotiations have not yet concluded, but Stoppard, who shared the original screenplay Oscar with Marc Norman for "Shakespeare in Love," is expected to sign on to write the first installment, beginning in late summer. He would organize the material and won't necessarily follow the order of the books as Pullman has written them. New Line won't know whether the project will be done as two films or three until Stoppard begins writing.

The book series consists thus far of a trilogy, "The Golden Compass," "The Subtle Knife" and "The Amber Spyglass," the latter of which became the first children's book to capture Britain's prestigious Whitbread Prize.

New Line made a deal for rights to the book series earlier this year with U.K.-based publisher Scholastic, an accord fostered by the critical and financial success of the first Peter Jackson-directed "Rings" installment, "The Fellowship of the Ring."

Stoppard has been in high demand. He will reteam with "Shakespeare in Love" director John Madden on an adaptation of Deborah Moggach's novel "Tulip Fever," a love triangle set in 17th-century Amsterdam. That project is set up at DreamWorks.

The Sixteen Pleasures For Nicole Kidman

Mark Damon's MDP Worldwide and its investor/partner Neverland Pictures have entered into a first look production deal with hot LA management and production outift Handprint Entertainment which numbers Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Lopez among its clients.

The first film under the arrangement is "The Sixteen Pleasures" which will star Kidman as an American woman who is entrusted with a lost volume of erotic sonnets and whose life becomes increasingly wrapped up with the book. Based on the novel by Robert Hellenga, the film is currently being scripted by John Collee, who also adapted "Master And Commander" by Patrick O'Brian to be filmed by 20th Century Fox and director Peter Weir.

The two companies will also enter into a joint venture partnership on all feature films produced through this new entity. Handprint was founded in 1995 by Benny Medina and Jeff Pollack and quickly recruited other partners such as Jane Berliner and David Guillod. It has a client list of over 150, a satellite office in New York and is currently in production on "Fighting Temptation" with Paramount Pictures and MTV Films starring Cuba Gooding Jr and Beyonce Knowles.

The deal was announced by Damon and Pollack. "In addition to immediate access to production financing, this partnership will give us greater control in greenlighting projects and ultimately a shorter time frame from development to production," said Pollack in a statement.

Record opening for Star Wars worldwide

"Attack of the Clones," the latest "Star Wars" installment, is set to open over two days in a record number of theaters in a record number of countries, according to the distributor.

"The opening of 'Attack of the Clones' marks the biggest worldwide release of a film," said Florence Grace, spokeswoman for 20th Century Fox, the studio that is distributing the film.

The films opens Thursday and Friday in 74 countries and 3,161 theaters across the United States and Canada, according to the studio, which was unable to give a figure for theaters worldwide.

"The release also marks the largest digital presentation for a film with 94 digitally-projected presentations in 17 markets, including the United States and Canada," said Grace.

Lucasfilm's latest film is not the first film released simultaneously on several continents. It has become the common practice for distributors of much anticipated films such as "The Fellowship of the Rings," but no other film has opened in 74 countries over just two days.

After the sweeping success of "Spider-Man," released on May 3 in North America, which broke all box office records in the following weeks, all of Hollywood is waiting to see if the "Attack of the Clones" can compete.

"Of course everyone is going to compare, but it is not an apples and apples comparison because 'Attack of the Clones' opens in less theaters (in North America)," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations, which monitors North American box office sales.

"But if any film has the chance to achieve what 'Spider Man' has done it would be 'Attack of the Clones'," he said.

More interested in quality than quantity, Lucas chose cinemas for their digital technology over the number of theaters, releasing the film in 3,161 cinemas across the United States and Canada.

"To ensure optimum presentation quality for moviegoers, Fox and Lucasfilm have limited the release to theaters with digital sound, wherever it is available," Grace said.

So far the fans, some of whom have been sleeping on the streets for hundreds of hours to be the first to see the film, have been satisfied with the new "Star Wars."

"I thought it was much better than the Phantom Menace," said Tariq Jalil, who attended a midnight session with hundreds of other fans that pitched tents for 42 days on Hollywood Boulevard.

"Everything that was successful in this movie were the things that were successful in the original trilogy, the characters really worked in this movie," he said.

Another fan interviewed on CNN, Josh Collingham, a university student who took the semester off school to spend 700 hours camping in the entrance to the famed Chinese Theater in Hollywood, considered it well worth the wait.

"This film has everything that the original films had. It's a deep complex story, it's really entertaining and wholly worth your money," he said.

Not only in Los Angeles, but most American city streets were lined by fanatical fans waiting to be amongst the first to see the film.

"It was great, it was cool, it was what I expected. I'm not disappointed at all, I've been waiting for this for months, for me it's a highlight of this year," Mike Chamber said standing at the cinema exit, the young New York banker came equipped with a light saber like Obi-Wan-Kenobi.

"It's very difficult to star in a prequel where already the first three films that are out are very successful because everyone had their expectations. But with 'Attack of the Clones' we are moving further forward, there is more happening," said actor Jeremy Bulloch, who played Boba Fell in the original trilogy.

The success of a film can be so great in the United States that, according to analysts, the local economies can be hurt by the large number of people who turn up suddenly absent from work to see the opening.

Michael Ovitz answers Tannenbaum in fiery court filing

Attorneys for Michael Ovitz fired back at Eric Tannenbaum in a lengthy legal filing Wednesday, accusing Ovitz's former Artists Television Group partner of mismanaging the now-defunct production venture and subsequently "engaging in a highly publicized smear campaign against Mr. Ovitz personally."

The filing in Los Angeles Superior Court was a formal response to the $9.6 million lawsuit that Tannenbaum filed last month against Ovitz and his Artists Management Group, which claimed that Ovitz reneged on promises he made when the two joined forces to launch the TV production arm of AMG

Tannenbaum's suit accused Ovitz of making fraudulent promises, including a commitment to fund the operations of ATG for five years, to lure him away in May 1999 from his job as president of Columbia TriStar Television. The suit also claimed that after ATG was shuttered in August 2001, Ovitz defamed Tannenbaum by bad-mouthing his management skills to other executives in the industry.

Ovitz's filing seeks to dismiss the fraud and defamation counts and narrow Tannenbaum's suit to the breach-of-contract claims. A hearing on the Ovitz motions has been set for June 11.

The Tannenbaum lawsuit hit last month as Ovitz was in the eye of a media storm about the future of AMG. Ovitz has since folded most of AMG's operations, selling the bulk of its talent management assets to the Firm

Tannenbaum's suit claimed that Ovitz promised he had a $1 billion line of credit on tap to support ATG's operations. Ovitz countered in the filing that no such promise was made. Ovitz's response maintains that under the terms of Tannenbaum's contract to run ATG, Ovitz was only obligated to pay Tannenbaum's salary for the five-year term of the deal, not to pay for the entire operations of ATG.

The written agreement, according to Ovitz's response, spelled out that Ovitz and ATG would seek outside funding for the venture, "but in the event that such development funding is not available, ATG and Tannenbaum shall proceed to develop and produce product consistent with the funding available to ATG through the remainder of the term."

Tannenbaum's suit claims that as ATG's losses piled up in early 2001, Ovitz laid off most of the staff and left Tannenbaum with no company to run. But in Ovitz's view, it was Tannenbaum who breached his contract by refusing to come to work, thus leaving Ovitz with no choice but to formally terminate him last November.

"Rather than satisfy his contractual and fiduciary obligations to ATG and assist his company through difficult times, Tannenbaum refused to come to work and instead claimed that Ovitz' failure to continue funding ATG at the then-unsustainable levels amounted to a termination for which he is entitled to compensation," the filing states.

The filing also details the tens of millions of dollars that were spent during the rise and fall of ATG.

"Under Tannenbaum's guidance and direction, ATG wasted millions on overhead, made costly and irresponsible hiring decisions, entered into costly and unprofitable television development deals and suffered the loss of millions of dollars on writer contracts," the filing states.

Eventually, Ovitz began to have "grave concerns regarding Mr. Tannenbaum's ability to manage the financial aspects of a substantial television production company."

Attorneys for Tannenbaum on Wednesday scoffed at the notion that the ATG president was acting alone in making financial and management decisions for the startup venture.

"There wasn't a single major expenditure that wasn't approved by Michael Ovitz," said attorney Mel Avanzado, of White, Curry, O'Connor, Gatti and Avanzado. "Anybody who knows Ovitz wouldn't believe for an instant that he would allow anything major to be done without his knowledge. All of this was done at his direction. That's what the evidence is going to show."

The Ovitz filing also aims to counter Tannenbaum's defamation claims by noting that Tannenbaum's complaint does not cite by name the people to whom Ovitz allegedly made the defamatory statements. The Ovitz filing also asserts Ovitz's First Amendment right to express his opinion about Tannenbaum and notes that the burden is on the plaintiff to prove that any statements made by Ovitz were false and made with malicious intent.

Cannes festival 2002 poses a rare dilemma for directors

For film directors, the movie madness of Cannes can be pure heaven or two weeks of hell. For a frenzied fortnight, hype reigns supreme on the Cote d’Azur as the world’s most famous film festival swings between arthouse movies and Hollywood glitz.

Woody Allen, whose "Hollywood Ending" opened the 55th Cannes film festival on Wednesday night, is as phlegmatic as ever about the showbusiness razzmatazz on his debut at the silver screen jamboree.

“Everybody says it’s going to be a madhouse and very crowded and frantic but I’ll go through all the craziness with my family for the few days I’m there because I feel the French have been really nice to me,” the cult New York director who has turned quirkiness into an art form said. Over the years, directors’ reactions have varied from elation to disillusion.

Steven Soderbergh was so stunned at winning the coveted Palme d’Or for his 1989 film Sex, Lies and Videotape that he said he “felt like a Beatle for a week”.

Dead Man Walking director Tim Robbins was not quite so euphoric. Reflecting on his encounter with the movie madness of Cannes, he buried his head in his hands and said: “I don’t get why you’d want to submit your baby to this place.”

The Hollywood star has expressed disbelief at the cocktail of high art and crass commercialism at the world’s most famous film festival: “It is a very strange mixture of the art of the film and total prostitution of film.” For up and coming film directors, the media glare of Cannes can be overpowering. Quentin Tarantino was shell-shocked when he won the top prize in 1994 with Pulp Fiction, which went on to become an international box office triumph.

“I don’t make the kind of movies that bring people together. I make the kind of movies that split people apart,” he said. To the French, film directors are the gods of the silver screen. Little wonder the favoured few keep coming back.

Cannes 2002 Market Data May 17, 2002

Paramount Pictures

Paramount deals announced are;

"The Good Girl" acquired rights in Italy and Japan from Myriad Pictures

"The Curse Of The Jade Scorpion" in talks to buy the UK rights from Capitol Films which has remained unsold in the UK even though director Woody Allen is in Cannes with his next film, appears to be a rich one for Capitol involving a significant p&a commitment from the studio which would release it through UIP.

"The Way Home". Korean drama From CJ Entertainment The studio has grabbed rights for all English-language territories and will release the film through UIP in the UK, Australia and South Africa The film, the story of a boy sent to live with his deaf grandmother in the countryside, was made on a $2m budget by director Lee Jung-hyang and was released in Korea at the beginning of April. After five weeks in the number one and two slots it has been seen by 3.5 million spectators.

"Sahara" acquired UK, Italy, Spain, Australia and New Zealand from Crusader and Summit Entertainment.

Ironically movies produced by Paramount are the talk of independent distributors hungry for big budget product. Cobalt Media is selling territories on Richard Donner's "Timeline", while several sellers, including Paramount-based Seven Arts and Lakeshore, are bidding on F Gary Gray's $80m remake of "The Italian Job" to star Mark Wahlberg and possibly Jennifer Lopez.

Sony Pictures Classics

Sony Pictures Classics (SPC) has acquired US rights to "Owning Mahowny", the new film from Richard Kwietniowski from Alliance Atlantis Entertainment Group.

The film stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Minnie Driver and John Hurt. The film is inspired by the true story of a junior level bank executive with a secret addiction to gambling who invents ingenious schemes to steal and lose millions of the bank's money.

Alliance Atlantis produced the film with Andras Hamori and Natural Nylon Entertainment and is handling worldwide sales.

SPC meanwhile also has domestic rights to "Love Liza", another movie starring Seymour Hoffman, which will be released later in the year.

Summit Entertainment

Summit Entertainment has concluded a wave of sales on Walden Media's "Ghosts Of The Abyss", James Cameron's ground-breaking 3-D large screen documentary exploring the wreckage of the Titanic.

Telepool took the film for Germany,
Buena Vista International
(BVI) for the UK,
UGC for France and
Belga Films for Benelux.
Gaga Communications for Japan.

The movie, footage of which Walden, Cameron and Summit showed at AFM, saw Cameron take a personal journey to the ocean bottom to explore the wreck using revolutionary new cameras developed specifically for the expedition by Sony. Titanic star Bill Paxton was among those who accompanied Cameron on the trip.

 The film is the first Walden Media production to be represented by Summit per a recently negotiated agreement. Walden is the new entertainment outfit financed by Philip Anschutz's Anschutz Group and run by former Dimension Films chief Cary Granat with a remit to produce films with educational and multi-media application potential.

Second film in the arrangement is "Holes", Andy Davis' film of the bestselling novel starring Sigourney Weaver, Jon Voight and Patricia Arquette which is a co-production between Walden and Phoenix Pictures.