Creative Artists

Escalating a war with its founder, Hollywood's most powerful talent agency has given its clients--including such superstars as Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg--an unusual ultimatum: If you retain Michael Ovitz as your manager, we will no longer represent you as an agent. The managers of Creative Artists Agency said they were refusing to share any of the company's clients with Ovitz, who they contend is acting "aggressively and hostilely" toward the agency by raiding its clients.

PARK CITY, Utah - Parties at the Sundance Film Festival typically feature maverick filmmakers, the best in nouvelle cowboy cuisine and plentiful pours of high-end spirits and Utah microbrews. But the bash thrown by Hollywood's powerful Creative Artists Agency on Sunday night took festival revelry in an unexpectedly bawdy direction, as Sundance guests mingled with lingerie-clad women pretending to snort prop cocaine, erotic dancers outfitted with sex toys and an Alice in Wonderland look-alike performing a simulated sex act on a man in a rabbit costume.

Creative Artists Agency has realigned its top management posts, naming Michael Ovitz chairman and Ron Meyer president of the Hollywood talent agency. Ovitz was previously president of the agency, and Meyer, although one of its founding partners, had no title. Individuals close to the agency said Meyer, a veteran Hollywood actors' agent, has been gradually assuming administrative duties as the agency has grown in recent years.

Creative Artists Agency and one of the top talent agencies in India, Kwan Entertainment & Marketing Solutions, have formed a joint venture to represent Bollywood talent, in a move that underscores the importance of the growing Asian market to the entertainment industry. The newly formed CAA Kwan will pursue opportunities for talent in film, television, music, commercial endorsements, sports consulting and other businesses. The company will be based in Mumbai, with offices in Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency is teaming up with top sports representative IMG in an alliance that will launch CAA into two businesses: booking celebrity speakers and licensing entertainment-related names. The deal also is aimed at bolstering a third business, its growing marketing consulting operation.

Interviews don't come easy to Michael Ovitz. Even in his private sanctum, flanked by a pair of colleagues, safe beneath the dual gaze of Buddha and Marilyn Monroe--totemic bits of art on a movie maker's wall--the sandy-haired president of Creative Artists Agency is wary and tense and never stops wishing the limelight would go away. "This is not a comfortable experience for any of us," he says, his hoarse voice so low a reporter's recorder barely registers. "We really function behind the scenes.

The usually quiet rivalries between Hollywood's powerful talent agencies exploded into the open on Friday as one agency leveled conflict of interest accusations against another. The dispute revolves around a consulting deal between Creative Artists Agency, whose clients include Kevin Costner, and Credit Lyonnais, the French bank that owns the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio.

In a move that will shock the advertising industry, Coca-Cola Co. has turned over sizable responsibility for its 1993 marketing campaign to Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency. The new agreement calls for CAA to develop creative concepts and produce advertising for Coke in partnership with McCann-Erickson, Coke's New York ad agency.

The done deal wasn't done after all. Talent agent Michael S. Ovitz, widely regarded as the most powerful man in the entertainment industry, Monday ended a two-month-long drama that had captivated Hollywood when he told his staff at Creative Artists Agency that he is staying put rather than jumping ship to run entertainment giant MCA Inc. for new owner Seagram Co. Sources close to Seagram Chief Executive Edgar Bronfman Jr.

Michael J. Fox Signs With CAA: Actor Michael J. Fox has signed with Creative Artists Agency after 15 years of being represented by United Talent Agency. Fox, who is currently starring in "Life With Mikey," was rumored to be leaving United Talent Agency for several days. He spoke with several competitors before settling on Creative Artists.

SAN DIEGO - More than 24 hours after arriving in town for Comic-Con International, movie producer Daniel Alter had an admission: He hadn't actually been to the Con. "The truth is that for industry people, there are so many great parties that you don't have to go to the convention center anymore," said Alter, chatting at an exclusive rooftop bar with a drink in his hand and a VIP pass around his neck. Most know Comic-Con as the jampacked geekfest where 130,000 fans wait in long lines to see movie, TV, video game and comic book presentations at the San Diego Convention Center and listen as their favorite stars repeatedly say things like "Without you guys, the show would not exist," as "The Walking Dead's" Andrew Lincoln told the enthusiastic crowd during the panel for the hit AMC television series.

It was a tense negotiation. Fox Sports and ESPN were paying about $54 million a year for the TV rights to Pac-12 Conference games. The Pac-12 guys wanted five times that. And a 12-year commitment. The networks were so taken aback that a top executive sarcastically asked if the Pac-12 was smoking something, according to people who witnessed the exchange but spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the deal. But in the end, the two sides agreed to the biggest TV rights contract in college sports history — a 12-year, $3-billion deal, which works out to a per-year average of $250 million.

Concert giant AEG is teaming up with Ryan Seacrest, Mark Cuban and Hollywood powerhouse talent firm Creative Artists Agency to launch a pop culture and music cable channel that is expected to debut in June. Called AXS, the cable network primarily will carry live programming aimed at entertainment aficionados. It will include a heavy diet of music and concert coverage as well as lifestyle programming. Los Angeles-based AEG's downtown L.A. Live complex will serve as the network's on-air home.

On a recent breezy Saturday, the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica is, like most days, packed with tourists meandering and snapping pictures as the sounds of street acts — claps and chants from an army of break dancers popping and locking, traditional Middle Eastern music with belly dancer accompaniment, and the giggles of pedestrians clamoring to get a handshake from a tiny monkey — compete for attention. Surrounded by it all is singer John West. He is perched on a stool and focused on his guitar.

David Rone, a former agent at Creative Artists Agency and senior executive at Fox Sports and Walt Disney Co., is joining Time Warner Cable as president of sports. The move further signifies Time Warner Cable's desire to become a force in sports programming. This year, Time Warner Cable snagged the television rights to the Los Angeles Lakers away from Fox Sports and is using the team as the foundation to launch a regional sports network in Southern California. But Rone's background and stature in the media industry is too big for one channel.

Good thing the Pacific 10 Conference hired Creative Artists Agency as part of its image makeover, because it could take some imagination to put a positive spin on the state of the conference's basketball teams. Among the possible slogans heading into the start of conference play Wednesday: The Pac-10: We're no longer behind the Colonial Athletic Assn. in RPI The Pac-10: We may be 0-2 against Montana, but we own Montana State The Pac-10: No need to waste part of your Mondays checking for us in the rankings No Pac-10 team appears in the Associated Press rankings for a third consecutive week, raising the possibility that the conference could be left out of the final rankings for a second consecutive season.

Creative Artists Agency appears to be within a polar bear's whisker of inheriting the entire TV advertising campaign for Coca-Cola. Less than six months after the Beverly Hills talent firm created two dozen television ads for Coca-Cola, the Atlanta-based soft drink maker said late Thursday it gave Creative Artists the go-ahead to produce 30 more spots.

James Woods doesn't come close to fitting the standard profile of the creative artist. The stocky president of the Watts Community Housing Corp. does define his life as "performance art," although most authorities would consider it an extremely loose application of the term--even for that broadly defined artistic genre. But his may be even more of a maverick vision than the creative artists already profiled in this series.

Activision Blizzard Inc. has dragged its biggest rival and Hollywood's biggest talent agency into its legal battle with the creators of Call of Duty. Santa Monica-based Activision, the nation's largest video game publisher, on Tuesday amended its lawsuit against Jason West and Vince Zampella, who were fired last March, to add Electronic Arts Inc. as a defendant. The new complaint accuses No. 2 game publisher EA of hatching a secret plot to "destabilize, disrupt and ... destroy Infinity Ward," the Activision-owned studio that West and Zampella ran. The lawsuit accuses EA, of Redwood City, Calif.

Martin Baum, an old-time New York theatrical talent agent who became a veteran voice of experience for the upstart Creative Artists Agency in the late 1970s and who brought to the firm such established star clients as Sidney Poitier and Peter Sellers, has died. He was 86. Baum died Friday at his home in Beverly Hills, the agency announced. The cause was not given. "To those of us in his CAA family, Marty was a hero," the agency's partners said in a statement. "He was not only a brilliant agent, but a generous mentor to so many.