Film Producer

The gig: Jason Blum is a producer whose career took off when the low-budget horror film "Paranormal Activity," which he played a key role bringing to the big screen, became a surprise hit in 2009 and spawned a new Hollywood franchise with annual sequels. After spending most of his career in the independent film world, the 42-year-old has reshaped his business around the "Paranormal" model, aiming to make inexpensive movies with mass audience appeal. He produced April's hit horror film "Insidious," is working on more "Paranormal" sequels for Paramount Pictures and is developing projects under a newly signed deal with Universal Pictures.

BEIJING - DMG Entertainment, the Beijing-based company that co-produced Hollywood films including "Iron Man 3" and "Transcendence," is in the process of going public on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The move will see DMG enter the exchange through a reverse takeover with meat-processing company Sichuan Gaojin Foods. The deal still needs regulatory approval. According to DMG and Sichuan Gaojin, the deal values DMG at $970 million. That's three times the value of Gaojin at the end of 2013.

JERUSALEM -- Film producer Yoram Globus was arrested for suspected tax evasion and released on bail Tuesday evening, local media reported . The Israel Tax Authority asked for Globus' arrest as part of its investigation of the veteran movie maker. According to a statement from the tax authority Wednesday, Globus withdrew more than $7.3 million from two of his companies in 2005 and failed to declare it as income. Tax authorities calculated the interest on the resulting tax debt that has accumulated over the years at more than $4 million.

Anna Anisimova, once described as a Russian Paris Hilton, has bought a home in Pacific Palisades that was listed at $9.85 million. The sale price has not yet appeared in the public record. The heiress, socialite and actress, who is married to film producer Peter Schafer, is the daughter of a metal mogul. Anisimova caught the attention of the media as a 20-year-old in 2005 when she reportedly bought a townhouse from Diane Von Furstenberg in Manhattan's West Village for $23 million.

It's been three years since film producer Michel Shane's 13-year-old daughter Emily Shane was killed by a speeding driver while she was walking along the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu.  Now Shane, 57, an executive producer for "Catch Me If You Can" and "I, Robot," is in a last-ditch push to raise money for a documentary film about the part of PCH that has been called "Blood Alley. "   Like many filmmakers before him , he is using the website Kickstarter to ask for donations to fund the movie, which he says will advocate for changes to improve safety along the highway, plus dangerous roads in other communities.

Prosecutors in Poland have questioned a newspaper editor about published allegations that a leading film producer sought a $17.5-million bribe to lobby the government for more media-friendly laws. The allegations against Lew Rywin were carried last month by the newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza. It reported he approached its chief editor with the offer last July, claiming he represented Prime Minister Leszek Miller. Rywin, 57, is one of Poland's most prominent media entrepreneurs.

Since Cuban film producer Carlos Vives died in Havana last week at 71, tributes have floated in from newspapers and websites across the Spanish-speaking world. Except, of course, in the United States, where because of Cold War-era political rationales Cuban culture remains largely a taboo topic. By any measure, Vives was a cinematic mogul, with more than 130 works to his credit, including about 40 feature films. More significantly, he backed a number of movies that delved deep into the intricacies of Cuban society and the complex daily lives of ordinary people, while quietly challenging the island nation's communist orthodoxies.

Stephen Friedman, 59, producer of such films as "The Last Picture Show" and "The Big Easy." Friedman earned a bachelor's degree in economics and a law degree at Harvard University. Entering the motion picture business as an attorney, he worked for Columbia Pictures, Ashley-Famous Agency and Paramount. He founded and operated Kings Road Entertainment with profits from his first producing effort, "The Last Picture Show" in 1971.

Jake Eberts, the Canadian independent producer and founder of Britain's Goldcrest Films, which revived the British cinema industry in the 1980s with a string of Oscar-winning movies, including "Gandhi" and "Chariots of Fire," died Thursday in Montreal. He was 71. He was diagnosed in late 2010 with uveal melanoma, a rare cancer of the eye, which recently spread to his liver, said his wife, Fiona. During four decades in the film business, Eberts financed or produced more than 50 films, including four that won Academy Awards for best picture: "Chariots of Fire" (1981)

The gig: Bill Gerber is a film producer whose credits include "Gran Torino," "The Dukes of Hazzard," and "The In-Laws. " His next movie, "Grudge Match," which will be released by Warner Bros. on Christmas Day, stars Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone as old boxing rivals who come out of retirement for one final fight. Rock 'n' roll dreams: Gerber, 56, grew up wanting to be a rock 'n' roll drummer. "The minute I heard [the Beatles'] 'I Saw Her Standing There,' the world changed," he said.

Writer Budd Schulberg isn't around to see it, but Wednesday, on his 100th birthday, he landed a new Hollywood deal. Schulberg, who died at 95 in 2009, was the son of a Hollywood film producer who first made his mark with the bestselling, iconic Hollywood novel "What Makes Sammy Run?" and went on to win an Oscar for the script of 1954's "On the Waterfront. " Deadline reports that his widow, Betsy Schulberg, has signed with Gersh to represent his estate. According to agency co-head Bob Gersh, “He was an American treasure and a Hollywood legend, and we couldn't be more pleased at Gersh to work with his estate on future projects that will entertain and inform audiences for generations to come.” But Schulberg's legacy isn't quite that simple.

There was a 69-year gap between the time that Stanley Rubin enrolled at UCLA in hopes of launching a writing career and 2006, when he actually graduated. And during that seven-decade break in schooling, the prolific film and television writer and producer left his mark at nearly every studio in Hollywood, helped run the Writers Guild and Producers Guild and took home one of the first Emmys ever awarded. Rubin, 96, died Sunday in his sleep at his home above the Sunset Strip, said actress Kathleen Hughes , his wife of 59 years.

The gig: Bill Gerber is a film producer whose credits include "Gran Torino," "The Dukes of Hazzard," and "The In-Laws. " His next movie, "Grudge Match," which will be released by Warner Bros. on Christmas Day, stars Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone as old boxing rivals who come out of retirement for one final fight. Rock 'n' roll dreams: Gerber, 56, grew up wanting to be a rock 'n' roll drummer. "The minute I heard [the Beatles'] 'I Saw Her Standing There,' the world changed," he said.

Steven-Charles Jaffe's first-rate documentary "Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird" appears right on the heels of "Dear Mr. Watterson," another enjoyable cinematic profile of a famed cartoonist ("Calvin and Hobbes'" Bill Watterson). But Jaffe's film has a distinct advantage: Wilson, unlike the reclusive Watterson, happily and thoroughly participates in this highly dimensional recap of his life and career, to compelling effect. The jaunty, eccentric Wilson, 83, has been generating his unique brand of humorously macabre cartoons for more than 50 years.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Perennial tensions between Pakistan and India found their way into movie theaters Tuesday when a Pakistani judge imposed restrictions on the screening of Indian films. Responding to a petition filed by controversial television talk show host Mubashir Luqman, the Lahore high court issued an interim order barring the screening of any imported film unless it can be established that it has proper documents and the sponsorship of a Pakistani national, both required by law. Luqman, once a film producer, is known for his anti-India views.

Megan Ellison, a film producer and the daughter of Oracle head Larry Ellison, has sold her three-house compound in Hollywood Hills West for close to $47 million. The first sale, which closed in the summer at $20.5 million, was of the 2010 Esquire magazine design house, described then as “the ultimate bachelor pad.” The four-bedroom, seven-bathroom contemporary was purchased by Megan Ellison in 2010 for $13.75 million. Then late last month the other two houses sold together for $26.25 million.

Nat Cohen, 82, the Cockney butcher's son who became the movie executive behind such hits as "Darling" and "Murder on the Orient Express." Cohen entered films at age 25 and rose to become chairman and chief executive of EMI, Britain's largest film producer in the 1970s. Under his leadership, EMI produced a series of madcap box office hits with names such as "Carry On, Sergeant" and "Carry On, Nurse."

The federal obscenity prosecution of Los Angeles fetish film producer and distributor Ira Isaacs ended in a mistrial Tuesday after jurors deadlocked on charges that the filmmaker produced, sold and transported obscene material. The panel deliberated for about a day after watching four films created or distributed by Isaacs, whose Internet-based business specialized in a niche of the pornography industry that included scatology and bestiality. The films, two of which Isaacs directed and appeared in, made up the bulk of the three-day trial last week.

Los Angeles didn't get chosen as the location for the latest "Fast & Furious" movie, but it did land the spoof version of the popular car chasing franchise. The actual "Fast & Furious 7" has been filming in Atlanta to tap into Georgia's 30% tax credit, though some filming is expected to occur in L.A. But "SuperFast," a parody of Universal's "Fast and Furious" films, began filming in Vernon, south of downtown, last week. The independently produced movie comes from writer-directors Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg, known for the "Scary Movie" films and for parodies of "Twilight" with their satiric "Vampires Suck" and the historical epic "300" with their comical "Meet the Spartans.

Actor/producer/director Forest Whitaker, who won the best actor Oscar for the 2006 film "The Last King of Scotland" and is currently starring in the acclaimed "Lee Daniel's The Butler," will be presented with the Actor Tribute at the 23rd Gotham Independent Film Awards. Whitaker, 52, will receive the honor at a ceremony Dec. 2 at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. "We are thrilled to pay honor to a man whose work has played a significant role in the film world over the last 25 years," said Joana Vicente, executive director of the Independent Filmmaker Project, the advocacy organization for indie filmmakers that presents the awards.