EXCLUSIVE: Paramount is beefing up its corporate litigation department. Karen Magid, a well known name in the studio's legal affairs department, is moving over to the general counsel's office to go from contracts to litigation. Sources tell me to expect a more aggressive litigation posture from Paramount now, akin to [...]

The Best Actress Oscar winner who recently co-starred in Marvel's Iron Man will be repped now by a team of UTA agents headed by Tracey Jacobs, the board of directors member and co-head of the agency's talent department. Gwyneth Paltrow was previously handled by CAA. She left after appearing in [...]

EXCLUSIVE: After weeks of checking out rumor after rumor, I'm finally able to pin down details of the long-overdue shakeup that's ahead for NBC when this fall's primetime schedule shapes up to be an unmitigated disaster. Someone has to shoulder the responsibility, and both Ben Silverman and the Reveille development [...]

SUNDAY AM: The summer box office may have run up near-record numbers, but it crawled to a close this Labor Day weekend with some very uneven films. After 20th Century Fox's Vin Diesel sci-fi starrer Babylon A.D. (3,390 theaters) opened No. 1 Friday with a narrow margin of victory, holdover [...]

The summer box office may have run up near-record numbers, but it crawls to a close this Labor Day weekend. Twentieth Century Fox's Vin Diesel sci-fi starrer Babylon A.D. was No. 1 Friday with a narrow margin of victory, but DreamWorks/Paramount's moviemaking spoof Tropic Of Thunder from Ben Stiller should [...]

I'm told a group of IATSE members are circulating a petition that lobbies IATSE leadership to end what they say is a sweetheart deal enjoyed by HBO at the expense of below-the-line IATSE employees. "With all the labor management strife in recent months, it is important to call attention to [...]

NBC is crowing its Beijing Olympics has been the most watched American TV event of all time. That's for 16 days on NBC and its cable channels that showed the games. Final figures won't come in until Monday after tonight's carnival-themed closing ceremonies, but already the 211 million viewers have [...]

HBO announced today that, beginning September 1, 2008, the Cinemax main channel will become the first and only 24 hour, seven day a week True HD (1080i) premium channel. In addition to Cinemax's library of movies and documentaries, 100% of the service's on-air promos and short-form programming will be in [...]

Better Off Ted Single With Parents Unusual Cupid Castle Prince Of Motor City (possible) Captain Cook's Extraordinary Atlas (possible)[...]

You can't pay me to watch Fox's American Idol where the singing sounds like strangled cats. But it's been no secret that the show's network and the producers are planning changes to reverse its declining ratings. This morning, Fox announced that Grammy-nominated sogwriter Kara DioGuardi will join Simon Cowell, Randy [...]

SUNDAY: Sony's low-budget comedy The House Bunny, starring Scary Movie's Anna Faris and featuring Hugh Hefner's trio of Playboy blondes in this blatant rip-off of their TV show Girls Next Door, almost beat out the bigger budget laugher Tropic Thunder. But after winning Friday, the sorority spoof hopped back to [...]

The actress/singer/businesswoman has spent time at almost every Hollywood talent agency, sometimes more than once. But UTA board member Tracey Jacobs has just signed J-Lo in film and television with the focus on restarting her dormant acting career (after she had twins). J-Lo is prepping to start two films in [...]

Not only did the over age-40 TV writers settle with ICM but also the old Broder Kurland Webb agency which ICM acquired in 2006. How much moolah did it take? The $4.5 million I reported, paid for by insurance. According to the consent decree filed today, the settlement talks over [...]

EXCLUSIVE: I have huge news for the Hollywood tenpercentery world. Network sources tell me that Adam Sher, who has been Ryan Seacrest's longtime William Morris agent for well over a dozen years, is leaving the rep business to run Ryan Seacrest Productions. This means that Seacrest may now be in [...]

It's no joke: the Warner Bros comic book caper achieved this domestic gross milestone today on its 30th day of release. As of Friday, The Dark Knight's North American cumulative stood at $459,608,000, just behind Fox's Star Wars (incluing all re-releases) with $460,998,007. No. 1 is still Paramount's Titanic with [...]

SATURDAY AM: So this is the weekend that finally knocks The Dark Knight out of No. 1 after 4 straight weeks. But today Warner Bros' latest Batman installment becomes the 2nd biggest domestic grosser of all time behind only Titanic. The comic book actioner will achieve this domestic milestone on [...]

So this is the weekend that finally knocks The Dark Knight out of No. 1 after 4 straight weeks. Studio sources tell me that very early Friday numbers show DreamWorks/Paramount's Tropic Thunder made $8.2M from 3,319 North American theaters. The Ben Stiller-Robert Downey Jr-Jack Black spoof of moviemaking with Tom [...]

Reliable sources are telling me that the Wednesday opening for Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder from DreamWorks/Paramount was just around $6.5 million from 3,319 North American theaters. (But another R-rated comedy, Sony's Pineapple Express, did $12.1M a week ago.) So what are its weekend prospects? Well, the studio fully anticipated the [...]

Very early Thursday numbers for Tropic Thunder's domestic box office are running around $4.5 million after its Wednesday opening take of $6.5 million in 3,319 theaters. And tonight DreamWorks/Paramount is starting to revise downward the weekend and 5-day forecasts for the R-rated movie-within-a-movie comedy from Ben Stiller. Currently, the studio [...]

I just received this very important appeal. Coming as it does on the heels of 20th Century Fox's closing of its longtime research library (news I broke on July 1st), I despair for the way that Hollywood doesn't seem to give a damn beyond lip service about preserving its movie [...]

Yes, the show jumped the shark last season (sorry to say, but it's true -- unless of course Ari Gold starts screaming about "that bitch at Deadline Hollywood Daily" at which point I'll claim this is the best series ever...). Yet Hollywood still finds something to laugh at weekly in [...]

Reliable sources are telling me that very early numbers show the Wednesday opening for Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder from DreamWorks/Paramount were just around $7 million. (Another R-rated comedy, Sony's Pineapple Express, did $12.1M a week ago.) Uh-oh. The studio was hoping that the old maxim holds true: that any publicity [...]

EXCLUSIVE: It was decided Friday that he'd exit and the deal was done over the weekend and concluded today. So what happened 11 months after he went there with such fanfare after being axed from HBO in disgrace after his Las Vegas arrest for assaulting his girlfriend that unearthed a [...]

So Aaron Sorkin has met with HBO's Sue Naegle and they're trying to come up with a series. But the intriguing news from a brief GQ interview with him is what Sorkin had to say about his behind-the-scenes activity during the writers strike. And it closes out something that has [...]

What a crazy agency day... Details coming[...]