Drew Barrymore has revealed that director Steven Spielberg taught her everything she knows about acting.
The Whip It star, who was cast in Spielberg's ET when she was only five years old, said that out of all the directors she has worked with, he has always given her the best advice.
Barrymore told Empire: "I've spent my whole life working with more than 60 directors, so I've picked up all kinds of tips. Steven Spielberg has been a big help."
She continued: "He gave me great notes. He's a wonderful mentor."
Barrymore also compared her latest film to her first, adding: "My favourite scene in Whip It is actually the food fight, which is an homage to ET, when we had that big food fight in the lunch room."
Even before Steven Spielberg’s newly reformulated Dreamworks SKG makes its first film, his studio is moving – well, sort of. BusinessWeek has learned that movies made by Dreamworks, headed by Spielberg and producing partner Stacey Snider, will be moving from the Starz pay TVLMDIAto Showtime (CBS).
The move, which has yet to be announced, is being driven by the Walt Disney Co.(DIS), which signed on to distribute Spielberg and Co.’s films in February. That deal included a provision by which Starz would distribute Disney’s films under an existing agreement by which Starz distributes all of Disney’s films to its pay TV customers. Now, it appears that Starz doesn’t want to distribute Dreamworks movies to its cable and satellite viewers, and is pressuing Disney to find someone else to do it instead. Enter Showtime.
Why wouldn’t Starz want to show films from the hitmakers at Dreamworks or, more importantly, give up a shot at Spielberg flick? Starz, Dreamworks and Showtime aren’t commenting. But try to follow Starz’ reasoning, if you can: pay channels like Starz get a piece of the annual $10-12 a month that a cable operation collects from customers who get the channel. So, let’s say that Starz has 18 million subscribers, the last number Liberty reported to the SEC. If it gets, say $5 a month from each of those subscribers, it generates revenues of $90 million a month or about $1.1 billion a year. The problem comes in the payout to Disney. Pay channels pay studios a fee on the number of films they get from the studio, but the fee escalates as the film does better at the box office.
Starz execuitves, as I understand, were concerned that they hadn’t bargained for a slew of big blockbusters when they initially signed their deal with Disney. In its most recent SEC filing, Starz parent company Liberty Media Entertaiment says that “the number of qualifying films under Starz Entertainment’s output agreement with Disney may be higher than it would have been otherwise” as a result of the Dreamworks deal. The point is that Starz, which through the first six months of this year had seen its operating earnings increase to $187 million from $113 million a year ago, is in a bind. Its revenues were fixed, while its faced the prospect of skyrocketing costs.
On the other hand, Showtime could use a boost in the number of films that it puts on its service. That’s because last year it lost the films it had distributed from Paramount(VIAB), MGM and Lionsgate (LGF). After a nasty negotiation over the fees that Showtime was willing to pay, the trio left to start their own pay channel, Epix, which is just now rolling out. As Showtime starts lining up for its next round of negotiations over fees with cable and satellite operators, it likely would love to have Spielberg & Co. as one of its headline acts.
Dreamworks already has plenty of ties to Showtime. Spielberg is executive producer for the show United States of Terra that Showtime airs. Spielberg and Snider are also producing a show on the behind the scenes making of a Broadway play for the pay channel. When will the first Dreamworks flick appear on Showtime? Probably not until next year. The studio is making Dinner for Schmucks, a comedy starring Steve Carrel with Paramount, but that’s being distributed on HBO. The first Dreamworks movie for Disney – and presumably for Showtime – would likely be Real Steel, a futuristic boxing film that The Pink Panther director Shawn Levy has signed to direct.
Rex Features
Steven Spielberg and Will Smith's update of South Korean film Oldboy has reportedly been scrapped.
Mandate Pictures and Spielberg's DreamWorks were in the process of securing story rights to the movie when the latter "walked away", reports Latino Review. The production companies apparently "didn't see eye-to-eye" on the terms of the deal.
Director Chan-Wook's Oldboy, released in 2003, is a dark and violent revenge tale that involves torture and murder. Voters on CNN named it one of the ten best Asian films ever made.
The Smith/Spielberg production was believed to be based on the picture's original source material, a Japanese manga by Nobuaki Minegishi and Garon Tsuchiya.
Published on Nov 9, 2009
Jurassic Park 4, then. It's the sequel that we'd pretty much written off, and even now, we wouldn't want to lay down too much cash in favour of it actually happening. After all, it's been the best part of a decade since we saw Jurassic Park III (which we've written in defence of here), and while there have been very sporadic smatterings of news since, there seems little inclination to pick up the cameras and get the dinosaurs moving again.
As he puts the finishing touches to next February's The Wolfman, Jurassic Park III director Joe Johnston has, however, been talking about another sequel. And he's told AintItCoolNews, "There is a great story for the fourth one that I would be interested in getting involved with and it's nothing like the first three. It sort of takes the franchise off in a completely different direction, which is the only way I would want to get involved."
Furthermore, he hints at a potential (although, again, we suspect unlikely) future trilogy. "Why would anybody go back to that island?" he says. "It was hard enough to figure out the second and third reason for them to go, but it would take it off in a whole other trilogy basically, but when it gets to that level it's sort of about studios and Steven's thing and who knows. I think we are at that point where we are due for another one if we are going to do it."
It does seem that it's pretty much in Steven Spielberg's hands, and were he to say that it was going ahead, then chances are it would go ahead. But the mix of news over the past few years on the project has both suggested that the franchise is now dead, or that some of the original cast are coming back.
Hopefully this one will clear up soon, as this writer, at least, is mighty keen to sit through another Jurassic Park movie. And don't forget to check out the intriguing AinItCoolNews piece here.
