Category: Movies

MUMBAI: Members of the Screen Actors Guild have voted overwhelmingly to approve a new contract with the major Hollywood studios, ending a nearly year-long standoff.
The delay resulted in the union‘s missing out on millions of dollars in potential pay increases and on contracts to represent actors on many of next fall‘s new television series.

The union announced Tuesday night that 78 per cent of those who voted supported the contract. About 35 percent of the union‘s 110,000 members returned ballots. The votes in favor of the contract exceeded 70 per cent in all three of the union‘s major divisions, including in Hollywood, where much of the most high-profile opposition was centered.

The new, two-year contract gives the union a 3 per cent wage increase immediately and a 3.5 per cent increase after one year. In addition, it provides a number of benefits for actors working on material created for digital distribution, including residual payments for ad-supported Internet streaming of feature films and television programs.

Those benefits came at a cost, however. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents the major Hollywood studios, offered essentially the same terms to the Screen Actors Guild when its previous contract expired a year ago.

The producers‘ alliance first reached contracts with several other unions, including those representing directors, writers and a rival union representing actors. The Screen Actors Guild initially took a hard line in negotiations, but a lack of progress eventually led to the ouster of the union‘s executive director and its chief negotiator.

The producers‘ alliance hailed the ratification as “good news for the entertainment industry.” In a statement, the alliance said: “We look forward to working with S.A.G. members – and with everyone else in our industry – to emerge from today‘s significant economic challenges with a strong and growing business.”

MUMBAI: Just days before the transition to digital TV, 2.8 million households, or 2.5 per cent of the TV market, are unprepared. According to Nielsen‘s final update, the new tally is half of the 5.8 million that were unprepared in February, when the government postponed the transition by three months.

At a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, acting FCC chairman Michael Copps reiterated the importance of the transition and said the agency was expecting relatively minor problems when the switchover begins Friday.

“This is the biggest transition in television, an even bigger transition than black and white to color,” Copps said. “Our whole society is going digital, and broadcast needs to be a part of that transition.”

Copps the Barack Obama appointed head of the FCC was also critical of the government‘s handling of the transition during the past two years.
Copps said the freed-up bandwidth will help establish a public safety network, as well as provide more room for wireless and broadband applications.

“We‘ve got some humps and bumps to navigate; there‘s still a number of people who don‘t know what to do,” Copps said. “We knew this transition was coming; the government was late getting itself organized … but we are where we are and have to make this transition.”

The FCC has employed 4,000 phone operators to be standing by through the weekend to handle calls coming through their information line (888-225-5322). Some broadcasters are layering on their own initiatives to help viewers make the switch. For example, in Los Angeles, the TV stations have set up their own phone bank to help ease the transition.

MUMBAI: Peter Hedges has signed on to write and direct The Odd Life of Timothy Green, a modern-day fable for Disney. Green is based on an idea by Ahmet Zappa, who will produce with Scott Sanders.

Disney is keeping plot details under tight wraps, though it is understood to be a high priority for the studio as well as very personal to Zappa. Disney president of production Oren Aviv is overseeing with vp production LouAnne Brickhouse. Mara Jacobs is exec producing.

Zappa is a principal at Disney-based production shingle Monsterfoot Prods. and also runs Kingdom Comics, the studio‘s graphic novel publishing unit.

CAA-repped Hedges wrote and directed the Steve Carell dramedy Dan in Real Life for Disney. He was nominated for an Oscar for co-writing the adaptation of About a Boy and is working on Everything Changes a drama set up at Columbia with Tobey Maguire attached to star.

MUMBAI: Veteran NBC comedy and current executive Erin Gough Wehrenberg has joined Warner Bros. TV as senior vice president comedy development.

Gough Wehrenberg, who exited as the No. 2 executive at Universal Media Studios as part of an NBC executive shake-up in December, will run day-to-day operations of WBTV‘s comedy department, reporting to executive vp creative affairs Len Goldstein.

Gough Wehrenberg, who starts Aug. 1, will fill a position that had been vacant since WBTV‘s previous head of comedy, senior vice president Marianne Cracchiolo Mago, left the entertainment business in 2007.

For the past two years, WBTV‘s comedy development efforts were spearheaded by Goldstein with the help of vps comedy Lisa Lang and Wendy Steinhoff-Baldikoski, who will work under Gough Wehrenberg.

Gough Wehrenberg spent 13 years at NBC Entertainment and sister production company UMS, most recently as executive vice president at UMS, where she oversaw comedy development and current programming for comedy and drama series until UMS merged with NBC in December.

From 2004-08, Gough Wehrenberg worked in series programming at NBC Entertainment, rising to executive vice president current series. She supervised such shows as 30 Rock,Friday Night Lights, Heroes, My Name Is Earl, The Office and Medium.

MUMBAI: James Van Der Beek and his wife actress Heather McComb, have split up, according to the actor‘s

secretary.

“They remain good friends,” the secretary declared which reports that the couple separated two months ago.

Van Der Beek and McComb, both 32, tied the knot in Malibu in July 2003, not long after Dawson‘s Creek wrapped its sixth and final season.

McComb had a four-episode run on Prison Break last year, while Van Der Beek has been guest-starring all over the place since packing it in as Dawson Leery.

MUMBAI

: Producer Frank Marshall is making a rare foray into directing, conceiving and taking on the documentary Right to Play for ESPN Films. The picture, which will be part of the cable network‘s 30 for 30 series, will examine Norwegian speed-skating great Johann Olav Koss and his Right to Play organisation, which aims to bring sports to children in poverty-stricken and war-torn areas.

Koss won three gold medals at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, but after retiring decided that instead of taking it easy he would found the nonprofit organization and travel around the world spreading its gospel. Right to Play, which now has scores of employees and volunteers, works on continents ranging from Africa to Europe to South America organizing sporting events and providing the means for kids to play.

Marshall has begun shooting in places such as Pakistan and plans to head soon to Africa to explore some of Koss‘ work there. Footage will include, among other things, a soccer game in the Middle East between Israeli and Palestinian clubs that are affiliated with Right to Play. The documentary should be ready in 2010, Marshall said, with plans to also shoot at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver next year.

A prolific producer behind hits like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and franchises including the Indiana Jones and Jason Bourne series, Marshall occasionally has undertaken projects as a director. Perhaps best known for the 1990 thriller Arachnophobia, he most recently helmed the Disney survival tale “Eight Below” in 2006.

ESPN‘s ambitious 30 for 30 series pairs high-profile filmmakers with sports-related passion for hour-long documentaries. Spike Lee, Pete Berg, Barry Levinson and Barbara Kopple have all previously signed on for the series, which will debut in the fall.