It's been clear for several weeks now that the independent distribution company THINKfilm has been suffering from some money troubles. Around the time the Cannes Film Festival kicked off this month, blogger AJ Schnack assembled reports from various sources that the company owed a lot of money to many different places. Now, Nikkie Finke reports that Allied Advertising Ltd. filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court today against THINKfilm owner David Bergstein, claiming that THINKfilm failed to pay for Allied's advertising services in a timely manner, while the distributor pretended that wasn't the case. A serious problem indeed.

It's a little unfair, however, for Allied to complain about THINKfilm's decision to continue doing what they do best -- buying films. The lawsuit says that the company embarked on a "lavish film licensing buying spree at various film festivals around the world," rather than exclusively focusing on paying off debt. It's worth noting that THINKfilm remained fairly withdrawn at Cannes this year, and while they did pick up theatrical rights for Marina Zenovich's Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired at Sundance, the film already had a television deal in place with HBO. Meanwhile, the company has dropped Battle in Seattle, which it originally purchased at the Toronto Film Festival. The "buying spree" sounds like needless exaggeration on Allied's part. Whatever the case, given THINKfilm's track record (they did guide Ryan Gosling to his Half Nelson Oscar nod), one hopes they'll survive this nasty legal snafu.

Is getting the Letterman show back on the air more important than keeping Hollywood's movie writers churning out sequels? Apparently so. Before the recent side deal brokered by the WGA to put Letterman's writers back to work -- Leno can't make such a deal because his show is owned by NBC, while Letterman's show is owned by his own production company -- Nikki Finke speculated over whether the move would cause serious rifts within the ranks of the WGA, specifically between television and film writers, and now that seems to be happening. Finke says that when the deal was being considered, she was contacted by "well-known WGA members, especially feature film writers, angry that the WGA was even contemplating such an agreement." Now that it's happened, she's quoting one unnamed "successful screenwriter" who tells her "I'm going back to work. I have gotten five phone calls tonight from feature writers and every single one of them has said some variation on, 'Bullshit on this. Why am I looking at staying out of work until April when these guys are going to start picking up paychecks on Tuesdays?"

The writer goes on to point out that the Letterman deal creates a wedge for stars to flock to Letterman's show to promote their products -- SAG won't have a problem with that since WGA has given Dave's show their blessing -- thus diluting the effect of the ongoing strike. "If you're going to strike GM, then you strike GM," the anonymous writer says. "You don't say 'We're going to give a waiver to the guys making pickup trucks because they're really good guys. You don't maintain solidarity by letting a handful of guys go back to work."

Finke also says that many angry film writers like that one are now planning to go Financial Core, which means returning to work while using a legal protection to prevent the guild from punishing them. Under the law, union members only have to pay their dues to be union members -- they can't legally be punished for crossing picket lines as long as they inform the union that they are exercising that right.

I haven't been following the strike issue nearly as close as I'd like, but I'm starting to get increasingly interested as it looks like there's less and less chance of a deal being cut to spare the Golden Globes and Academy Awards from the wrath of the writers. David Poland's blog is the place for some entertaining commentary on this issue. Like everyone else, he doesn't care about whether or not the Globes goes on, but he's absolutely enraged at the thought of Oscar being put in the crosshairs next. "There is a world of difference between f*cking with 100 'foreigners' with the collective journalistic weight of a sitcom sidekick's blog and taking on 6,000 of the town's most powerful people," he writes. He goes on to explain how the Oscar ceremony is a critical income generator for the AMPAS and attempting to derail it is tantamount to a declaration of war. "If the union tries to shut down Oscar, they will be messing with something more than money. WGA would really be tapping into the mass ego of the industry," he writes, before blasting off into an extended hyperbole that ends with -- I'm not kidding -- a picture of Moe Green about to get shot in the eye.

And what does Nikki Finke think about this line of argument? Not much. Her position is that the WGA simply has them over a barrel, and it's their own fault, although she does confine most of her argument to the Globes issue -- she hasn't said very much about Oscar specifically yet, but you can see where she's headed. "For the AMPTP to expect a groundswell of Internet anger aimed at the WGA for threatening the Golden Globes or the Academy Awards is naive not to mention downright laughable. The ratings for these shows keep going down almost every year so the public doesn't much care."

Over at her blog, Nikke Finke has written a long and somewhat contradictory post-mortem on last weekend's big news story, spawned by her, that Warner Bros. no longer sees women as viable leads for their motion pictures. She notes a number of communications she's had over the last few days with Robinov, the studio chief who apparently made the offending comments, but says they are off the record and won't discuss them. She also strangely calls his e-mails "charming" at one point before returning to defend herself against accusations of overreach on this issue. Just as I was rolling my eyes and about to flip away from the blog, I noticed that Finke also throws in something on the Justice League movie. She says Robinov "has been saying he would only make Wonder Woman ... as a spin-off of Justice League. But his proviso is that Justice League, about four superheroes including Wonder Woman, would have to do really, really boffo to justify having a female as the main star of a spin-off pic."

This makes sense to me. I bet Robinov tried to lock Jessica Biel into some indentured servitude contract that would pay her peanuts for both the Justice League film and a low-budget Wonder Woman stand-alone to follow (think Catwoman-level cheapness), and she balked. If that's the case, then what is Robinov's problem? Why doesn't he just stop postponing the inevitable and cast Jennifer Connelly in this thing -- honestly, could anyone else do Wonder Woman justice? -- pair her with an A-list male star to alleviate concerns over womanly box-office punching power and throw money at someone to write a script that's actually not terrible. How hard could it possibly be?

If you don't know Woody Allen loves the films of Ingmar Bergman, you don't know much about Woody Allen. When I read that Bergman passed away on Monday, I actually thought about Allen and how upset he must be. But there's no reason to single Allen out. Many filmmakers were inspired and influenced by Bergman and so many were saddened by the loss of one of cinema's great masters. Online, there are two compilations of statements regarding Bergman's death. One by Nikki Finke of Deadline Hollywood Daily and one (technically two, actually) by Roger Ebert. Of course, Woody Allen, who paid Bergman direct homage with his 1978 film Interiors, is present in both compilations. He offers us an honorable joke about Bergman's desire not to die on a very, very sunny day. He wrote, "I can only hope it was overcast and he got the weather he wanted."

Another person able to keep spirits high was Bibi Andersson, who acted in many of Bergman's films, including The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries. She admits to being sad, but points out that Bergman was old and we were prepared for this. Other collaborators paying tribute included actor Max von Sydow (also in both The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries) and Fanny and Alexander producer Jörn Donner. Ebert also give us older quotes from the late cinematographer Sven Nykvist (Oscar winner for Fanny and Alexander and Cries and Whispers) and actress Liv Ullman (Cries and Whispers; Autumn Sonata). Other more Bergman-related persons include Astrid Soderbergh Widding, who heads the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, and Cissi Elwing, who heads the Swedish Film Institute.

The rest include a variety of Bergman fans. Finke's compilation has filmmakers Bille August, who says he's in shock, Sir Richard Attenborough, Michael Apted and Andrzej Wajda, plus Cannes Film Festival president Gilles Jacob. Ebert, who actually wrote his own tribute, which included statements and quotes from others, as well as a list of statements he received personally via email, gives us David Mamet, David Lean (another old quote, obviously), Haskell Wexler, Studs Terkel, Paul Cox, Paul Schrader, Richard Linklater, Gregory Nava, Guy Maddin, David Gordon Green, Paul Theroux, Sally Potter and film historian David Bordwell.

Over at Deadline Hollywood Daily, Nikki Finke has been investigating the employment status of Richard Saperstein, who supposedly still works for Dimension Films. Saperstein is/was the president of production over at Dimension, which I'm sure you all know is part of The Weinstein Co. Finke had heard a rumor that Saperstein was canned, probably because of the disappointing Grindhouse box office. Supposedly, he was even telling friends that he got fired, but then later he found out he didn't actually lose his job. According to Finke's sources, the confusion has to do with Saperstein's contract with Dimension, which either lasts another 18 months or as long as another four years. So, maybe the guy was relieved of his position but hasn't technically lost his job. In a statement from The Weinstein Co. to Finke, Saperstein was said to still be "an employee of the company." Of course, that doesn't say he's still the president of production.

Other tidbits that Finke points out about Saperstein's reign at Dimension include his involvement in the recent hit 1408, which should be redeeming him for Grindhouse, which certainly shouldn't have been his fault anyway (who do you think has more influence with Tarantino and Rodriguez -- Harvey and Bob Weinstein or Saperstein?). Also, Saperstein reportedly just snagged Dimension the rights to remake David Cronenberg's Scanners. Whether or not Saperstein is still employed at Dimension, it appears that lawyers may end up involved, and we will probably see him leave the studio anyway. Then maybe we'll hear about the Weinstein's continued plans to fix the reputation of their slow-going company, of which Dimension should be doing the better business, like it was doing when it was a part of Miramax. Dimension is probably doing better than The Weinstein Co. as a distributor, but maybe it could layoff the sequels and horror remakes and be even more successful.

Nikki Finke put a piece up yesterday that I'm just now getting around to writing up, about how she doesn't at all miss the oId "Clockwork" Harvey Weinstein**, aka the Harvey who ran Miramax with all the subtlety of Tony Soprano (oh, come on, like you never noticed the resemblance there). Ms. Finke, who, to give her credit, certainly never fears writing exactly what's on her mind, recalls a meeting with Weinstein at the Peninsula Hotel that reads like a scene pitch for a Quentin Taratino movie (just picture Uma Thurman as Finke, and James Gandolfini as Harvey).

Weinstein, sayeth Finke, demanded asked for the meeting with her after she wrote a piece for New York Magazine (supposedly toned down by the mag in response to threats from Weinstein's legal team) that slammed Weinstein, accusing him of using heavy-handed tactics to secure the Oscar for Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan. Weinstein, Finke alleges, ordered her into a windowless room, where he proceeded, in what she likens to a "Clockwork Orange" experience, to yell at her for 90 minutes while she sat there wearing sunglasses indoors until he broke her into laughter by swearing on the lives of his children that he hadn't done any of the things she'd alleged.

It's hard to know without hearing a tape of what transpired exactly how accurate Finke's account of the interaction is, but it sure doesn't sound like a cozy lunch date. Personally, I don't think that, were I in Finke's position, I would have gone into a windowless room with Harvey Weinstein just so he could yell at me, even if there was someone else there to make sure I came out in one piece. Unless I had my handy-dandy little tape recorder in my purse, and intended to record the whole thing for a podcast. That would be something to hear, wouldn't it?

**I put this link in when I posted, but it didn't take. Thanks to the reader who pointed out the link was missing from the body of the story. It can also be found in the "read" link below.

Depending on which source you believe -- there's about a ten-thousand dollar difference -- Grindhouse is either holding onto the tenth spot for the weekend or it has slipped into eleventh place, behind Wild Hogs. With Friday estimates included, the film's total cume is $16.7 million; that gives it a second-weekend drop of 74%, which is just terrible any way you slice it. The per-screen average for the film is $494, which as Deadline Hollywood points out, means its "playing in near-empty theaters." If these numbers hold for Saturday, then more Americans will have turned out this weekend to see Redline, which is a movie I never gave a moment's thought to until I had to edit a review that someone did for this website yesterday, than Grindhouse, which arrived in theaters with major advertising campaign fully supported by the national media and all of the fanboy-support that the online community can muster. Wow.

I don't expect the failure of Grindhouse to have any effect on Robert Rodriguez's career, frankly. He is currently prepping Sin City 2, which is a film that will undoubtedly do big business and be well-received and erase memories of Grindhouse, but I wonder how the failure will affect Quentin Tarantino. Are the Weinsteins going to gamble on fronting his war movie, Inglorious Bastards, or are they going to gently push him towards a less expensive-sounding endeavor? Will they chalk this whole thing up to the bad taste of the American public and continue to support their signature star, much the way Warner Bros. supported Stanley Kubrick all those years? I certainly hope so.

Deadline Hollywood is reporting an exclusive scoop -- Universal Studios has set a plan to build a Harry Potter theme park inside the grounds of Universal Studios Florida. According to Nikki Finke, this story dates all the way back to 2005, when it was reported that Disney was debating whether or not to create a Harry Potter theme park in Singapore. The company was apparently engaged in "protracted negotiations' with J.K. Rowling and Warner Bros. to secure rights to the project. That plan morphed into the current one, with Universal stepping into the picture and going into negotiations with Warner Bros to build the Universal Studios facilities. According to Finke, the deal is now "set in principle, but terms are still being finalized." Which could mean anything, of course.

Finke also notes that until now, the closest thing to a Harry Potter theme park that's been built is the Alnwick Castle, location of Hogwarts School, so it's somewhat of an untested idea. To date, the Harry Potter books have sold more than 325 million copies and have been translated into over 60 languages. The fifth of seven Harry Potter films, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, is due for release this July, with the remaining two films coming soon. We recently brought you the news that negotiations with the three leads for the final films have been sewn up, after some dispute as to whether Emma Watson, who plays Hermione Granger, would be returning to finish out the series. With plans for the film series finalized and the theme park plans supposedly afoot, it looks like J.K. Rowling won't have to get a day job anytime soon. Stay tuned to Cinematical for all the latest.

When it was revealed Tuesday that Across the Universe was having some creative control issues, a lot of people (myself included) sided with the film's director, Julie Taymor. While I didn't go so far as to compare Taymor to Orson Welles (that would be the NY Times), I had to put in my usual two cents about how a visionary director should at least be in the loop regarding the final cut if he or she isn't actually given authority over the final cut. Apparently Taymor is too stubborn for such a privilege, though, as she has a reputation for not being willing to compromise. L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke wrote up a story on how difficult Taymor is and why it is in fact her fault that Universe is having troubles.

Finke goes into great detail regarding Taymor's career and cites examples of problems she's had since becoming a big hit on Broadway with the stage adaptation of The Lion King. Both of the director's previous films had their share of difficulties and Finke finds it surprising that anybody would even hire Taymor for anything anymore. So, in a way, Joe Roth is at fault for not knowing any better. This story is illustrative of what I and others despise about Hollywood, how the business side of the movies is always more important than the art side. And I understand this is the way it is and I understand this is best for the industry. But as much as whining doesn't help, it is often our job as writers to complain about the system, and Finke sure isn't going to change my mind about supporting Taymor on this one.