Negotiators met face-to-face Thursday in the first official meeting in over four months but progress appears to have been negligible.

Neither side had any comment about the confab orchestrated by federal mediator Juan Carlos Gonzalez at AMPTP headquarters. But people familiar with the meeting disclosed that it consisted of little more than each side re-stating its positions.

Gonzalez emphasized at the start of the meeting that the proceedings would be confidential. It appears Gonzalez will probably notify both sides as to the next step within the next day or so.

Expectations remain low that the mediation will lead to a deal. The Screen Actors Guild and the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers have stressed they haven’t changed their negotiating postures, with SAG demanding a better deal than the other Hollywood unions and the congloms are insisting they won’t change terms of their June 30 final offer.

Among labor insiders, the only optimism that a deal can be reached comes from the recent lack of verbal fireworks from either side and SAG’s willingness to put a strike authorization vote on hold while the mediation process plays out. But the negotiators achieved minimal progress in more than 40 sessions between April and July.

Each side received a boost in their negotiating positions prior to the meeting.

The AMPTP concluded negotiations Wednesday on a tentative three-year deal with IATSE. That prompted the congloms to note that it was the sixth such master contract it had reached this year including deals with the DGA, WGA, casting directors and two pacts with AFTRA.

As for SAG, its stance of insisting it’s entitled to sweeter terms than the other unions was bolstered Wednesday as the WGA blasting the AMPTP by accusing the companies of nonpayment of new-media residuals — an assertion denied by the companies, which said the WGA is wrong about the applicable dates in the contract.

Should the mediation fail, SAG’s negotiating committee could ask the guild’s 120,000 members for a strike authorization. That’s a potentially embarrassing step for guild leaders since members who cast ballots might might not back the authorization by the 75% level needed for the guild to go out on strike — particularly while the economy continues to implode.

Supporters of seeking going the strike authorization have pointed to a September postcard poll of SAG members in which 87% of the respondents endorsed holding out for a better deal.

The final decision on striking would rest with the national board, in which control shifted to a more moderate faction in September elections. New York reps, who are part of that coalition, had sought mediation a month earlier but the been spurned by SAG prexy Alan Rosenberg on grounds that mediation hadn’t worked during the WGA negotiations.

Gonzalez had no success a year ago as a mediator in trying to prevent the WGA strike. Thursday’s SAG-AMPTP session marked the one-year anniversary of the WGA’s solidarity march on Hollywood Boulevard, an event that drew about 4,000 supporters.

Should the mediation process crater, a SAG strike could be called as early as January. That could imperil the Jan. 11 Golden Globes — which saw this year’s awards show reduced to a news conference after SAG said its members would not cross WGA picket lines.

Source: Variety

Digital software firm Sonic Solutions has acquired CinemaNow, a 9-year-old video download store partially owned by Lionsgate, for a paltry $3 million. Minimajor’s exit from the download biz comes a year after five studios sold Movielink to Blockbuster for $6.6 million.

Since the Movielink deal, however, Apple has aggressively stepped up its movie download and rental biz, making it harder for independents like CinemaNow to compete against it plus rivals such as Amazon.com and Microsoft’s Xbox Live. Longtime CinemaNow topper Curt Marvis exited the company to head Lionsgate’s digital media biz in April.

Sonic plans to use the acquisition to grow its download-to-burn business. It will form a Premium Content Group headed by Mark Ely, Sonic’s exec VP of strategy, whose focus will be on embedding CinemaNow onto devices and expanding the adoption of the company’s Qflix DVD drives in the process.

“CinemaNow is a very logical fit for Sonic,” asserted Sonic prexy-CEO Dave Habiger, who maintains that digital delivery of premium content “is at a tipping point.”

CinemaNow now offers more than 6,000 movies and TV shows for digital distribution over a variety of platforms, and Habiger expects to ramp up existing offerings considerably.

“We hope to have twice that number at this time next year,” he said.

Lionsgate had a 21% stake in the Marina del Rey company, which had secured more than $40 million in investments over its lifespan, as well as content deals with all the majors. Despite the backing of EchoStar, Cisco and Microsoft, the company struggled to make a profit.

According to Sonic, CinemaNow has been generating around $1 million-$1.2 million per quarter in revenue on expenses of $1 million-$1.5 million. Company, founded in 1999, first offered digital movie rentals, later expanding to downloads when studios allowed that. As it struggled to turn a profit in a tiny market, the service added more profitable softcore adult pics. Nonetheless, it never found much of an aud and, more recently, had a hard time competing against companies like Apple, Amazon.com and Microsoft, which have much greater brand recognition and an ability to leverage existing business with digital distribution.

More recently CinemaNow had shifted its strategy from Web destination toward a device-centric strategy. And Sonic said that made the company an extremely attractive acquisition since it will give it a chance to leverage software and distribution.

CinemaNow, which has 30 employees, will remain based in Marina del Rey.

Sonic publishes professional software used to author DVDs and Blu-ray titles. It also publishes software for the consumer market, including DVD Decoder and Easy Media Creator.

Source: Variety

The Mouse House — the market leader in 3-D — has been noticeably absent when it comes to exploiting Imax screens, choosing instead to play its digital 3-D titles in conventional theaters only.

Relations between Disney and Imax grew strained after the two partnered on “Fantasia 2000,” which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the acclaimed animated feature.

But the ongoing shortage of conventional 3-D screens, plus the success of other Imax studio partnerships, provided an opening for Disney and Imax to come together once again.

The five-picture deal was announced in Singapore, where Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Group prexy Mark Zoradi and Imax toppers, along with other studio execs, are attending a 3-D conference.

“Disney’s commitment to 3-D is great for Imax moviegoers, and dovetails ideally with our strategy to build a slate of top-quality movies from the best filmmakers that lend themselves to the Imax format,” Imax Filmed Entertainment chair-prexy Greg Foster said from Singapore.

Zemeckis’ “Christmas Carol,” a reworking of Charles Dickens’ classic tale toplining Jim Carrey, opens Nov. 9, 2009.

Source: Variety

The suit, filed in federal court in Manhattan late on Tuesday, seeks exclusive rights over the fashion design contest starring model Heidi Klum that had been scheduled to jump to the Lifetime Network from its cable TV rival Bravo.

It follows similar legal action filed in New York State Supreme Court by NBC Universal, the media wing of General Electric Co and the owner of Bravo, against the producer of the series, The Weinstein Co. NBC sought to keep the show on one of its channels.

In September a state court ruling temporarily halted plans by The Weinstein Co to take its fashion program to Lifetime and prevented Lifetime from marketing or broadcasting the series until the case was decided. Lifetime now seeks to have the case permanently moved to federal court.

“Project Runway,” in which contestants design new clothes each week and are judged by Klum and other fashion experts, has finished showing its fifth season and has already shot much of its sixth season.

Its popularity continues to increase and last season it averaged 4 million viewers. The first episodes of the show’s sixth season will be ready to air in December, the federal lawsuit said, but without a settlement the show may not be seen for months.

Lifetime, which targets women and is owned by Hearst Corp and The Walt Disney Co., seeks a judgment saying its rights to the show trump any of those claimed by NBC. It also named The Weinstein Co as a defendant, so it would not transfer any conflicting rights to NBC.

The Weinstein Co, the studio run by Miramax Films founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein, has said it is still committed to the Lifetime deal it says was worth $200 million over five years.

The state court ruling said NBC Universal had shown, among other things, a likelihood that it might eventually prove it had a right of first refusal to re-sign the show to a new cable TV distribution contract before Weinstein reached a separate agreement with Lifetime.

While the future of “Project Runway” is pending, Bravo is moving ahead with a similar design competition show, where winners will be decided by the audience.

A lawyer for NBC Universal said she could not comment on the case. Lawyers for Lifetime and a spokesperson for The Weinstein Co were not immediately available for comment.

Source: Reuters

“In five to seven years, all films, regardless of budgets or type, will be made in 3-D,” the DreamWorks Animation boss said here Wednesday during his keynote at the inaugural 3DX Film and Entertainment Technology Festival.

“3-D is how we see, how we take things in. It’s natural,” Katzenberg said. “This is not a gimmick, it’s an opportunity to immerse the audience, to heighten the experience.”

He added that the migration to 3-D will happen on all screens, including mobile phones and laptops.

Katzenberg was joined by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group president Mark Zoradi and others in stressing the industry’s commitment to 3-D as the future of film.

Moviegoers’ early response is clear, Zoradi said, citing the success of such 3-D titles as “Chicken Little” and “Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert.”

“Consumers clearly prefer 3-D if they have a choice,” he said, adding that 3-D films could bring in two to three times the business of a 2-D release.

Zoradi touted his studio’s new five-picture deal with Imax, which will kick off with Robert Zemeckis’ “A Christmas Carol” in November 2009, adding that the slate could involve projects from Tim Burton and Jerry Bruckheimer, though no details were disclosed.

Producer John Landau, now working with James Cameron on “Avatar,” said that 3-D would “do for cinema what stereo did for the audio industry.”

All the film industry has to do is “demystify” 3-D for consumers, whose perception of 3-D may be of “gimmicks on B films” and “theme parks that forced things off the screen,” Landau said.

Zoradi’s presentation Wednesday included the first public screening of 3-D footage from “Beauty and the Beast” (originally released in 1991), which Disney is re-rendering for a 2010 release, as well as Disney’s “Tron 2,” set for 2011 or 2012.

The addition of “Beauty and the Beast” brings Disney’s number of digital 3-D releases for 2009-10 to 11, with another six to come in 2011. This would give Disney more than 50% of all 3-D releases during the next three years; 11 of those would be animated.

“The biggest barrier (to 3-D) is not product, it’s the installed base of digital cinemas,” Zoradi said.

Katzenberg predicted that 35%-40% of admissions for March DWA release “Monsters vs Aliens” will be for 3-D. For a film coming out 15 months later, he envisions 80%-85% of admissions for the company’s next “Shrek” installment to be for 3-D.

Stressing the technical advances that made the latest incarnation of 3-D different from past efforts, Katzenberg said 3-D “will bring people back to the movies who have stopped going.”

“This is not my father’s 3-D,” he said. “There’s no ghosting, no eye strain and best of all, you don’t throw up. Throwing up is not good for anyone’s business.”

All agreed that 3-D’s ability to immerse audiences in the film is the key.

“There is nothing more immersive than 3-D,” Landau said. “On ‘Titanic,’ our goal was to use visual effects to make people feel part of the film. With ‘Avatar,’ we’re using technology to transport people to another world.”

Katzenberg said that theatrical digital 3-D represents a “unique opportunity for cinemas” to create an experience that consumers could not get at home, “and it will be many years before they can.”

Among the reasons cited was the fact that light diminishes the quality of the image.

“The only place in the home to replicate this is in the coat closet … and I would not want to spend two hours there watching a movie,” he said.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Kidman, 41, has three children — 4-month-old daughter Sunday Rose with her country-singer husband Keith Urban, with whom she lives with in Nashville, and two children adopted during her first marriage to Tom Cruise.

The Oscar-winning actress, in Sydney for the world premiere of her latest movie, the outback epic “Australia,” acknowledged some of her recent films have not been great successes, saying she has “quirky taste.”

“In terms of my future as an actor and stuff, I don’t know,” she told a news conference. “I am in a place in my life where … I’ve had some great opportunities and I may just choose to have some more children. I’ve no idea what is in my future, but I am very at peace with where I want to be.

“There are many things I want to do besides act.”

Kidman, who won an Oscar for her role as writer Virginia Woolf in 2002’s “The Hours,” has become one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, often described as Australia’s “leading lady.”

But in recent years her movie credits have included “Birth,” “The Interpreter,” “Fur,” “The Invasion” and “Margot at the Wedding,” all of which failed to take off at the boxoffice.

“But that’s my body of work — I am not going to apologize for it,” Kidman said. “I have kind of unusual taste, and sometimes it’s mainstream and a lot of times it’s not.”

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Among the directors signing onto projects that have come to light this week:

  * “Superbad” helmer Greg Mottola will direct the extraterrestrial comedy “Paul” for Working Title and Universal Pictures. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the duo behind “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz,” will star.

  * Martin Campbell will helm “Nagasaki Deadline,” an action thriller that Alcon Entertainment is financing and co-producing with James Cameron’s Lightstorm Entertainment and 8:38 Prods.

  * New Line Cinema has tapped documentarian Nanette Burstein (”American Teen”) to direct the romantic comedy “Going the Distance,” with Adam Shankman and Jennifer Gibgot producing via their Offspring Entertainment shingle.

Mottola, who hasn’t worked since wrapping the upcoming comedy “Adventureland” last fall despite the heat generated from “Superbad,” will begin lensing “Paul” in mid-April in New Mexico.

“Greg is a big fan of Nick and Simon’s. He loved the concept,” said Working Title’s Eric Fellner, who is producing with Tim Bevan and Nira Park.

Story revolves around two British slackers who, after visiting Comic-Con, go on a road trip to Area 51, where they encounter a small alien named Paul, who enlists them to help him find his way home. Pegg and Frost penned the screenplay for the pic, which will shoot in March.

Edgar Wright, who directed “Hot Fuzz” and “Shaun of the Dead,” is exec producing.

Feature production in Hollywood has slowed to a trickle in recent months amid uncertainty over a potential SAG strike. But studios seem to be hedging against a strike and are putting some 40 films into production in the spring and summer.

Campbell (”Casino Royale”) will return to work on “Nagasaki” after helming the Mel Gibson starrer “Edge of Darkness.” David and Peter Griffiths (”The Hunted,” “Collateral Damage”), who penned the original screenplay, will exec produce. William Broyles Jr. (”Cast Away”) is currently working on a rewrite of the story, centered on an emotionally damaged FBI agent who must decipher historic events in a desperate race to avert a terrorist plot.

Alcon toppers Andrew Kosove and Broderick Johnson will produce with 8:38’s Kira Davis (”Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”) and Lightstorm’s Cameron, Rae Sanchini and Jon Landau.

“Nagasaki” has been picked up out of turnaround from Fox, where it was developed prior to 9/11. Alcon’s fast-tracking the project with a goal of putting it into production next year.

Meanwhile, New Line made the bold decision to tap a documentarian for its romantic comedy “Distance,” which it bought in July in a preemptive purchase from tyro writer Geoff LaTulippe, who has been a script reader at New Line for four years. Story centers on a couple trying to maintain a long-distance relationship while one lives in Chicago and the other in Los Angeles. Burstein, who most recently directed Sundance hit “American Teen,” also helmed “The Kid Stays in the Picture” and “On the Ropes,” for which she received an Oscar nom.

“Distance,” which will likely go into production early next year, reteams Shankman and Gibgot with New Line after they produced the upcoming “17 Again.” Shankman also directed and exec produced New Line’s “Hairspray” with Gibgot.

Source: Variety

Marvel’s Kevin Feige is producing.

Created in 1941 by Jack Kirby and Joe Simon for Timely Comics, Captain America is the heroic alter ego of Steve Rogers, who is rejected by the Army for being too sickly and undergoes an experiment that takes him to the pinnacle of human form. Paired with an indestructible shield, he becomes a symbol of the war effort, fighting Nazis and villainous scientists like the Red Skull.

In modern times, the character starred in his own long-running comic series and also was a charter member of Marvel’s superteam, the Avengers.

Kicking off with “Iron Man,” Marvel Studios’ slate of movies — including “Thor” and the “Iron Man” sequel — is building toward an “Avengers” movie set for release in 2011, in which the characters from the films team for one big adventure. “Captain America” is scheduled for release May 6, 2011.

Marvel’s “Captain America” will be a World War II-set movie, and the character will appear in the modern day-set “Avengers.”

Markus and McFeely, repped by UTA, worked on “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and its sequel, “Prince Caspian.” The duo also wrote HBO’s “The Life and Death of Peter Sellers.”

Source: Hollywood Reporter

3Ality Digital — the company behind the musical documentary film “U2 3D” — handled the special episode of the spy comedy series, set to air Feb. 2, the Monday following the Super Bowl. Plans to distribute glasses to consumers are under way.

The exec offered his perspective on the prospects of 3-D in the home. “The good new is there are at least two million ’stereo-ready’ sets in the U.S. market waiting for stereo content,” he said. “The bad news is the market has moved away from rear projection TVs, so that will eventually go away.”

But he added that new options for 3-D TV are on the way. “The home market is moving forward because there is starting to be content in the market.”

In New Zealand, 3-D is starting to make inroads: There are believed to be seven 3-D-ready cinema screens currently installed. Production is already taking off, with James Cameron’s “Avatar” (slated for a Dec. 18, 2009, release by Fox) in production at Peter Jackson’s Wellington-based Weta and “Tin Tin” awaiting start of production.

“3-D came on us really quickly,” said Aimee McCammon, GM of Peter Jackson’s Park Road Post, speaking of its reach in the region. “Everyone is asking what 3-D is going to do to our production schedules.”

Schklair said: “With ‘Chuck’ we did a location move and 47 setups in one day. That was proof that it doesn’t take longer to shoot if it is done right.”

He said that the show’s regular crew worked with 3Ality technicians on the episode. The team also was able to view what was being shot in 3-D on-set. “It integrated seamlessly,” Schklair said.

Habib Zargarpour, senior art director at Electronic Arts in Los Angeles, said, “On the games side, the question is what is the standard format in the home going to be for people to start supporting 3-D.”

Addressing the theatrical market, speakers noted that a transition to 3-D technology — with the required digital-cinema installations — has largely stalled.

“There are big plans to switch to digital cinema, but today nobody can access the funding,” said Patrick von Sychowski, COO of Adlabs Digital Cinema in Mumbai. “The only screens that are getting converted today are maybe a couple of screens in each multiplex specifically for 3-D. … You do not get half the benefits by switching half the screens or half the cinemas. You get twice the logistics, twice the problems.”

Today, there are an estimated 1,300 3-D-ready screens in the U.S. and 700 in the rest of the world.

“If you are to have 4,000 3-D ready screens in the U.S. by December of next year, things need to be happening right now,” von Sychowski said. “I think we will probably see a doubling of what we have today, but we aren’t going to be close enough to make James Cameron happy.

“There aren’t really any other major digital-cinema drivers,” he added. “There isn’t that much money to be saved from abolishing prints, if you consider the recoupment period for paying off the projectors.”

Panelists also emphasized a need for quality 3-D production that will not give viewers eye fatigue, particularly as many viewers are still forming their impressions about the digital 3-D format.

“It scares me a lot to see companies spring up, screw two cameras together and say ‘we are in the 3-D business,’ ” Schklair said. “Poorly made 3-D will rip your eyes out. SMPTE is looking at quality standards, but it will be years before that comes out. I look forward to the day when people who get a headache will say, ‘That was a really badly made 3-D movie.’ Right now they say, ‘3-D still sucks.’ “

Looking beyond 3-D, sessions underscored the message that emerging technologies are ushering in new creative possibilities and democratizing filmmaking.

What will be the result of this trend? “There will be a thousand shit films made — and two really great films,” Park Road’s McCammon said during another session.

“The key is having tools that can bring the filmmaker’s creative vision to life,” she said. “Technological change is happening on two levels. There is a really high end. The other end is making filmmaking more accessible. People with no money but amazing ideas can have different entry points for getting into film.”

Organized by the New Zealand Games Animation and Visual Effects Trust, the confab also was presented with participation from the Visual Effects Society and Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences.

The event was set to conclude Monday with a screening of “U2 3D” at Park Road Post.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Billed as a cross between “Out of Africa” and “Gone With the Wind,” the nearly three-hour romantic adventure starring homegrown Hollywood stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman is reported to have cost 20th Century Fox about $130 million.

“Australia” is a World War II drama about an English aristocrat who travels to Australia and joins forces with a cattle “drover” or cowboy and an Aboriginal child to drive a herd of cattle across the stunning, rugged Australian landscape.

Geoff Brown, executive director of the Screen Producers’ Association of Australia, said the industry hoped director Baz Luhrmann’s film draw in investors and lure moviegoers back to Australian movies after a string of bleak, boxoffice flops.

“This is a truly cinematic film, a real epic, filmed in 1940s style. We just haven’t had the opportunity to show our wares on this scale before,” Brown told Reuters.

“This is the marketing tool for Australian film. It’s an Australian film from beginning to end, shot in Australia with an Australian cast, crew, special effects, lighting, even director, and we are seeing this as a calling card to the world.”

Tourism Australia has spent AUS$50 million ($32 million) on an advertising campaign and promotions linked to the film, aiming to make Australia a coveted destination as the global financial crisis hits tourism, as “Crocodile Dundee” did in the 1980s.

The campaign received a major boost last week when influential U.S. talk show host Oprah Winfrey described it as “the best movie I’ve seen in a long, long, long, long time.”

Local film industry watchers were not convinced after watching Luhrmann racing to finish the ambitious movie and reportedly battling studio executives over its length and ending.

“It’s set to be either Australia’s most fabulous cinematic feat — or its costliest folly,” wrote the Sydney Morning Herald.

But the local film industry was hoping the movie would put Australia back on Hollywood’s map as a good location, with talent for filmmaking and as a nation producing top-class films.

Brown said reliance on government funding had seen a shift from popular, quirky Australian movies like “Muriel’s Wedding,” “Strictly Ballroom” and “Babe,” to darker, art house movies.

This even drove away Australian moviegoers with government figures showing Australian films’ share of the national boxoffice dropped to 4% in 2007 from 10% in 1994.

Brown said “Australia” was one of the first films to take advantage of a new system for privately financing films introduced last year, under which the producer can claim back 40% of production costs through the tax system.

“This film is a great example. We can go to Hollywood and say we can cut 40% off costs,” he said, but added the ongoing credit crisis would clearly make it harder to secure financing.

Luhrmann, known for “Strictly Ballroom” (1992), “Romeo and Juliet” (1996), and “Moulin Rouge” (2001), acknowledged it would be hard for “Australia” to meet high local expectations.

But he said even if the film was not a financial success, he hoped it would draw more international financing to Australia.

“The idea of people like Peter Weir or Australian directors who have global financing … coming back and working in Australia, that’s much more present as an idea,” he told Reuters.

“Australia” opens in the U.S. and Australia on Nov. 26 and in Britain on Dec. 26.

Source: Reuters