brad grey Tagged Articles at Cinematical

David Chase, the creator of The Sopranos -- you know, the greatest television show of all time -- has signed on to write, produce, and direct his first feature film, for Paramount Pictures. Calm down, fans of Tony and the gang -- this will not be a Sopranos flick. In fact, Deadline Hollywood Daily doesn't have much about the movie at all, other than that it's "an original drama," and that Brad Grey, Chase's Sopranos producing partner and CEO of Paramount, brought him on board. Chase says of their relationship: "Brad has always been adventurous as a producer and looked for different ways of doing things. I look forward to once again working with him, and now his team. For years, Brad has been a great partner, who helped enable me to do what I need to creatively."

Returning the love, Grey says "David is one of the great storytellers of our time, and his debut as a filmmaker is both highly anticipated and long overdue." I second that! "In truth, David has been creating cinematic-quality filmed drama for more than a decade – spanning nine seasons and 86 episodes of The Sopranos. Having worked with David as a producer, I'm delighted to be with him again and to bring his unique vision to the big screen." The Sopranos indeed delivered an hour-long movie each week, and each was better than 99% of films. I simply can not wait. And with the Sex and the City movie likely to be a big hit, here's hoping Chase can be talked into dropping that Sopranos movie on us and making my life worthwhile again.

Hell ... what if this "original drama" is the Sopranos movie and they're trying to keep it secret? There have been rumors swirling lately, and I don't stop believin'.

I guess you know your job has become unnecessary (or worse, wasn't necessary to begin with) when you're canned and then it's decided there's no need to even replace you. Jeff Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere has been covering the heck out of the story of the firing of Paramount Pictures president Gail Berman, starting with a piece linking back to a story he wrote nearly a year ago, when he received a letter from a supposed insider slamming this Hollywood Reporter piece by Anne Thompson about the challenges Berman, who came to Paramount from Fox Entertainment (so yeah, you can kinda blame her for American Idol, along with everything else), was facing eight months into her job.

One of my favorite directors of all time, Martin Scorsese, has been having a very good run lately. After having a little trouble getting films made during the late nineties, the last few years have propelled the director to not only greater creative accolades with films such as Gangs of New York, The Aviator and the exceptional The Departed, but for the first time in his career, significant financial success, as seen with The Departed -- his most successful film ever having earned over $150 million at the box office to date.

Scorsese has directed more than 40 films during his illustrious career and is one of the most honored filmmakers in Hollywood -- having been nominated for six Academy Awards and six Director's Guild awards so far. Even though it appeared, at least according to the man himself, that Scorsese was perhaps tired of big-budget filmmaking in the Hollywood studio system and was going to take a break, it seems now that he has changed his mind and is ready for more work. According to a release this week from Brad Grey, Chairman and CEO of Paramount Pictures (via Coming Soon) the studio has entered into a four-year, first-look deal with Scorsese which will have him directing and producing projects for the studio across all platforms including feature films, DVD and television.

In his statement about the deal, Grey said: "Marty and I have enjoyed great personal success together of late. Now it is our great privilege to welcome Marty to the Paramount Pictures family – a motion picture dream come true." In true Hollywood fashion, Scorsese was quick to acknowledge Grey's statement. "I have had a great personal relationship with Brad Grey for several years now and am looking forward to working with him at Paramount, a studio rich in cinematic history and responsible for making some of my favorite films-'Sunset Boulevard,' 'Shane' and 'The Heiress,' among others," said Scorsese.

In addition to financing projects directly for Scorsese under this deal, Paramount will also have the opportunity to co-finance and co-distribute any project Scorsese may direct for other studios or independent companies. This deal marks the first of its type for the director in many years but I, for one, am thrilled for him. A man with this much talent and skill deserves a home and it makes sense that that home is going to be Paramount -- especially given his relationship with Grey. No matter what projects are eventually born of this deal, it gives me hope for Hollywood in general when a major studio realizes a director like Scorsese needs to be given the resources to to do what he does best -- make movies.

Time to check in with some film blogs:

• Nistagmus, submitted to me a while back, is based in Argentina. Unfortunately for those of you who don't speak Spanish, that's the language it's in. It's a nicely-designed site, and co-administrator of the site, Martin, who submitted it to me, describes it thusly: "We just blog about the kind of movies we love, and we love "geek" films. I mean, is it a strip/cartoon/graphic novel/comic book based feature? Is an asian pop-culture weird film? It´s a 20k slacker garage film? It is a surprisingly buzzy indie horror film from middle east? We may be interested... It´s the next Brangelina of J-Lo Housewives-targeted flop? We probably don´t want to hear about it... Well I think you get the point.". I can muddle my way through just enough Spanish to figure out that if I was really fluent in Spanish, this site would be a regular read. You folks out there who do speak the language, check it out.
• Over in England, Matt Grover runs The Matte Reviews, "Film reviews by Englishmen who watch films (if only we'd get paid for it!)." Most recently, Matt has written up reviews (from a "regular guy" viewpoint, not a film critic one) on Japanese flick Haze ("I just didn't know what was going on by the end"), Spielberg's Munich ("ok, film, long but good performances and some good sequences"), and a low-budget UK flick called Crooked Features (which he highly recommends). Nice versatility -- if you want a Brit point of view on film, this is a good site to peruse.

Now that all the rapid-fire excitement over who did what to whom in the Tom Cruise/Paula Wagner split from longtime home Paramount has quieted down a little, Variety has slipped in an article that actually discusses something of relevance: Who gets the projects? C/W had numerous projects in the works for Paramount, and even more rights to books and scripts sitting on a shelf somewhere gathering dust (ah, Hollywood, where all the cool kids snatch up hot properties before anyone else can get them, only to sit on them ad infinitum).

According to the Variety piece, C/W had acquired some promising properties, including a script being written for Cruise by A Good Year scribe Marc Klein, and Carter Beats the Devil, a novel about a magician being adapted by Little Miss Sunshine screenwriter Michael Arndt (this must be the big season for films about magicians, what with The Illusionist and The Prestige both opening soon). For those of you who are actually interested in the business side of Hollywood, the article gives some interesting background on the effects of the executive shift at Paramount under Brad Grey. At any rate, it certainly beats reading yet another "they said/no, we said" story about the C/W-Paramount split.

[via Movie City News ]

Yesterday, we learned that Paramount distribution chief Wayne Lewellen had been dumped in favor of former Dreamworks distrib president Jim Tharpe. Today, we're getting more details on the shift, and it looks like it was anything but amicable. As suspected, Lewellen's status as a member of the old Paramount guard meant very little to new Paramount chief Brad Grey – or, at least, very little good. Grey, who was vacationing in South Africa at the time, instructed newbie marketing officer Rob Moore to inform 33-year veteran Lewellen, on the day before Christmas, that he had been terminated. I don't know where these chatty cathys got the idea that studio execs are suppossed to have manners, but that slight has apparently got the whisper train rolling. "It's just horrible. Truly horrible," a "high-level studio source" told Page Six. "Brad fired him at Christmas and he didn't even have the common decency to pick up the phone and call Wayne himself. He had to have his henchman do it. Wayne is the best in the business and to just toss him out like that is unforgivable."

The quick blow is apparently the first of many to come. The Sixxers' source claims that whilst trying to secure the merger, Grey made a promise to Dreamworks' Steven Spielberg and David Geffen that they'd be able to place any of their people anywhere in the Paramount organization that they liked. This is a double boon for Grey, who has been apparently looking for excuses to clean the Paramount house of the employees he inherited. "Unlike Brad, who just got here and couldn't care less about us, Steven has actual loyalty to his people," says the source. "Brad must have figured it was easier to get rid of everyone who built Paramount than to risk crossing Steven or screwing up the deal."  And so Grey lounges on the beach, no doubt surrounded by servants and nubile young boys, whilst Paramount's entire distribution division fears for their jobs. "Everyone is going nuts. Paramount isn't going to tell anyone whether or not they still have jobs until DreamWorks comes in and decides who gets to stay."