It’s been a very long week and we’re not even over the hump…

Yesterday, people who link directly to the column had a hard time finding The THB Fall Preview and those who went to the front page may not have been sure that there was a regular column yesterday.  In the meanwhile, we have fielded a number of name misspellings (Sorry, Salma), given Stanley Donen credit for his movie Charade, suffered a Robert DeNiro/Al Pacino brain freeze that goes back two decades for me, noted a week-old MGM/UA move of Dark Blue to 2003, and heard about the first studio date shift since publication.  According to PTAnderson.com, Punch-Drunk Love is about to move to October 11.  Good choice.

MONEY CHANGES:  Variety’s Dana Harris has a good story up on the vagaries of foreign financing in the new millennium.  One of the keys is set up by ICM’s Ken Kamins… the movie business used to be a showplace for foreign companies to prove they were players.  Now, like the American market, they realize that profits are actually more important than image.  People continue to talk about the internet bubble bursting and killing the American stock market.  That’s an exaggeration.  That correction has already been adjusted to by the markets… it’s 18 months old.  But the comet tail of those high flying internet kids is dragging along previously solid corporations that tried to fly as high as fast and damaged their own futures by overreaching… whether the accounting department is heading to prison or not.  The story is here.

FRIDA!!!!:  A reader sent in a link to a Salma Hayek website (HayekHeaven.com) where I found four clips from her upcoming film, as well as a wealth of clips from some press event for the movie with Spanish-language television.  Stuck speaking English was the great Geoffrey Rush, who plays Trotsky in this bio-pic.  And his comment amused me, so I hope it shall do the same for you:  “I played Walsingham in Elizabeth and in that film, Joe Fiennes got to sleep with Cate Blanchett.  Then I did Shakespeare in Love.  I played Phillip Henslowe, who ran the Rose Theater, and Joe Fiennes got to sleep with Gwyneth Paltrow.  In Frida, or as I like to think of it, “Trotsky In Love,” I get to sleep with Salma Hayek.”

POOH!!!:  Won’t this stupid story ever die???  Amy Wallace joins the long list of writers sucked into the Winnie The Pooh lawsuit against Disney.  And I must say, despite being one of the best industry writers in Los Angeles, she has found a device for this story that is far more irritating than entertaining after the first paragraph or so.  Nonetheless, she covers the entire waterfront, from the evolution of the deal that brought Pooh to Disney to the Nikki Finke lawsuit.  Still, I am so very bored by reading about how the big mean corporation is roughing up these poor innocents who get $12 million a year for having a talented relative.  It’s not that Disney might not be ripping these people off for millions, but… am I asleep yet?… welcome to Hollywood.  I believe that morality is fixed and that wrong is wrong, no matter who the players, but the $200 million that is really at stake here – and you know that every lawsuit is priced well over retail so that deep discounts can be made in negotiations – is not going to destroy Disney and it’s not going to make The Milne Trust any quicker in paying their telephone bill… it’s rich people fighting rich people. 

And again, on the issue of how much Pooh generates for Disney… to even suggest that Pooh is responsible for a quarter of the revenue stream for this multi-national is just whacked.   Yes, Pooh makes more money for Disney than any of its other characters.  Yes, total sales related to Pooh may be as high as $6 billion a year.  But Disney isn’t hiding anything or playing fast and loose by saying that most of that money isn’t coming in to their pocket.  Most of it is generated in licensing arrangements. 

But more importantly, look at the lawsuit that has generated this insane amount of ink.  Working backwards from Dan Petrocelli’s numbers, the Milne family gets about 1 percent of Disney’s revenue from Pooh each year.  The trust seems to be arguing that they are being shorted around $10 million a year.  If that were true, it would put the Pooh income at about $2 billion a year… not 3… not 6.  And that’s what Bert Fields – who is going to maximize the figure as much as possible – is, by extension, claiming.  That is the high number. 

Where is the truth?  Given the world as it works, I’d bet that Pooh generated $2 billion for Disney in its best years, but averages $1.5 billion or so.  That would mean that Disney is shorting the Milne trust by about $5 million a year and owes them somewhere around $100 million in back payments.  Bert Fields may hate Disney, but he’s not a dumb man and Disney exploits the Pooh property better than anyone else could hope to, so don’t believe the hype that he wants to strip Pooh from the Mouse House.  His clients just need to get paid.

I wish this thing would settle already… it’s boring me to tears. 

(Amy Wallace’s story is here.)

READER OF THE DAY:  CHRIS FAILES sent this is for people who are really, really interested:  “Wanted to point you to my own column today on City by the Sea-- so much has been changed by the screenwriter from what really happened in '96-- thought you, of all people, would enjoy. The column is here.

HIS HAIRYNESS writes:  “1) Great Fall Preview.  All of the films coming out this fall that might be worth our time seems staggering.  Simply, staggering.  Sure, there will be some flat out failures, but when a Fall appears this good on paper.  A fan of films (and even those blasted geeks) cant help but get excited.  If it could only get cool sooner.  It was also interesting for me to find out that the Summer movie season ends before the actual season.  I guess when you start the Summer movie season in the last week of April, things like this are bound to happen.

2) Tobey Maguire and his people are out of their damn fool minds.  Asking for 15 million dollars from a studio for a movie that seems like making 35 to 50 million dollars will be a struggle.  Is bloody daft.  Not to mention he is playing a jockey.  Great, Spider-man is a jockey.  If they needed a paycheck so damn bad why didnt they send Tobey over to freakin Japan and have him sell jeans, bear, and soy burgers?  I hope the movie is good and Tobey portrays some of the charisma he has had in other movies he did not exactly have in Spider-man.  Never the less, this is baffling.”

And this came in from JACON, LETTUS & TOMATO:  “I had been curious on what project Tobey Maguire would choose as a follow up for Spider-Man.  The guy certainly is picky.  I'm sure he had plenty of offers after Cider House and Wonder Boys but since then he's made only one film.    The guy is pretty smart.  In the late 90's he managed to avoid making any dumb teen sex comedies or slasher films and how many actors his age can say they have been directed by Woody Allen, Lasse Hallstrom, Terry Gilliam, Sam Raimi, Curtis Hanson, and Ang Lee twice.    Now granted a movie about a race horse doesn't sound very cutting edge or blockbuster material, but at the very least Gary Ross is a good storyteller and Maguire knows a good script when he sees it.  Plus, the book has a big following and it attracts a different audience than Spiderman.  The Hollywood reporter article mentioned that Universal was looking at Mel Gibson and Sam Shepherd for the roles of the trainer and the owner of Sea Biscuit, so Maguire won't be out on his own. 

Most of all though, the character of Red Pollard is very different than the sensitive nerd types that Maguire has made his career on.  He's a larger than life character; a former boxer, an alcoholic, cocky as hell, and good with the ladies.  I think the bottom line is that I admire Maguire's choice of roles over the other actors of his generation.  None of his films except for Spiderman have done anything at the box office, but Maguire has established a healthy career  for himself by appearing in good films that people actually remember.  Nobody will care about Scream 3, American Pie 2, Scooby Doo, or Charlies Angels in 5 years, but through word of mouth, dvds, and cable TV, people will still be watching Pleasantville, The Ice Storm, and Wonder Boys and associate Maguire with good movies.  He is not Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise yet, but I think he is smartly building an audience and will be around for a long time.”

E ME:  I know… where’s the Signs stuff?   Sorry.  Tight schedule this morning.   Tomorrow.