February 3, 2006

The Great Settling is here.

It is quite late this year, the moment coined about the Oscar season by one of its participants (not by any writer, great or small) a few years back. But this year, the idea applies to much more than the Oscar season.

There is a Great Settling going on at ParaWorks/DreamAmount/ViacomCBSParamountDreamWorks
CWMTVVH1ComedyCentralBET ParamountNotClassics as well. CBS and Paramount have split. DreamWorks is invading, causing many Paramount employees to split. (Any journalist who sold that "25 from DreamWorks/25 from Paramount" crap they were selling a few days ago and printed it as anything other than spin to soothe the still churning primarily Paramount bloodbath should be ashamed of themselves. Dig deeper. Just because someone says it on the record does not make it news.) Even the office space is splitting, as some Paramount employees who are not being chopped are being told to report to Glendale on Monday morning.

Normally, this event on Melrose would be a great unsettling, but given how long Paramount employees have been cruelly forced to sit on pins and needles, waiting to see what would happen, being fired is settling. (Please note: There rolls of the slaughtered available, but we will not be running them at THB or MCN except for Sr. VP or above... and then, only when that individual is ready. Unfortunately, we've had to develop this policy over the last six months of bleeding, which is now a gusher.)

Meanwhile, rumors continue apace at both Paramount and DreamWorks about Brad Grey moving up, Gail Berman moving out, and Universal's Stacey Snider leaving GE's golden handcuffs to become ParaWorks' Queen Of The Movies. This would, in turn, put her back in the Steven Spielberg business and also start the clock on speculation about how soon Imagine could make the shift to Paramount. Would Stuber & Parent, just getting their producing feet wet, return to corporate life with an absolute greenlight and control of both the Universal and Focus empires?

Like I said... everything is settled.

Rothman and Giannopoulos have resigned for five more years as Peter Rice expands his molehill (now releasing 17 movies this year... and that is before the new label begins) into, essentially, a second major studio inside of the Fox lot.

The Weinsteins are doing exactly what they have to do... which is to eat shit until they can get a Scary Movie sequel, a Tarantino/Rodriguez collaboration and other such Screen Gems-ish product into the market to make their $1.2 billion of capitalization actually function as though they actually have enough money to be serious players again. (You'll know they are for real again when they can afford to hire on some serious HarvBob-tempered old school Miramax execs.)

Daniel Battsek continues to fly under the radar. He's got an Oscar nominee in Tsotsi. He picked a nice film up at Sundance. La dee daa.

Amy Pascal rumors have quieted in light of the shake-ups everywhere else, but Cannes she survive a bad showing of The DaVinci Code in France? She seems to have Howard Stringer's support and if she can make it through the summer, she has Spider-Man and James Bond coming to the rescue.

Like I say... everything is settling.

As for that pesky Oscar race, prognosticators are more than a little afraid to get off of Brokeback Mountain as Crash - the surging choice of the middle-class - starts to enjoy the benefits of BBM vulnerability and a somewhat premature ejaculation. The fear, of course, is not only PC backlash (As one idiot said to me last night, "Any gay man who doesn't support Brokeback has something seriously wrong with them!" A heterosexual idiot who expressed overt homophobia regarding Memoirs of a Geisha earlier this season, might I add.), but a slap in the face if BBM retains its apparent leading position of the moment and rides it in for the win.

The same crowd that told me that Munich could never be nominated are, of course, now telling me that there is no point in the movie trying for a win. But the simple reality is, if they built it, Academy voters would come. Even a Munich basher acknowledged last night that on second viewing, the movie was much better for him. Wait until he sees it a third time.

But it doesn't look like Munich is ready to come out fighting, hoping instead to be the Raging Bull when remembered in 2015.

So it comes to Crash, the aggressor, and BBM, the passive beloved, to duke it out. We all know that Brokeback can take it like a man and that the guns in Crash never seem to go off when you expect them to.

And so, it settles...

EMe.

---

January 3, 2006 - Reflections On A New Year
January 6, 2006 - Sundance Preview
January 5, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 1
January 9, 2006 - The Business Of 2005, Pt 2
January 11 - Munich In Sequence | Act 1 | Act 2 | Act 3
January 12 - V For Vendetta