Movie Producers

For years, filmmakers flocked to the Cannes Film Festival to sell their independently financed movies, confident they'd soon see their work exhibited in movie theaters. Like so many show business dreams, those visions have been vanishing quickly as numerous distributors of film-festival fare closed their doors after losing money or corporate support. But there's a potential savior on the horizon called video on demand -- and it may be hiding somewhere inside your cable television box.

Universal Pictures can breathe a sigh of relief. Two of the studio's most prolific producers are expected to stay put at the studio, laying to rest speculation that they would find a new home. Working Title Films co-Chairmen Tim Bevan and Eric Fellner have not signed their new contracts, but the deal points were hammered out as of Friday, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named because the negotiations were confidential.

"Little Miss Sunshine" was awarded the Darryl F. Zanuck producer of the year award for theatrical motion pictures. The 2007 Producers Guild of America Awards were presented by Tom Cruise in a Saturday evening ceremony at the Century Plaza Hotel. Collecting the award on behalf of the dark, dysfunctional family comedy were producers Marc Turtletaub, David T. Friendly, Peter Saraf, and Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa. "Cars" was awarded the producer of the year award in animated film.

How avidly is Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey seeking his own Oscar for producing "The Departed" -- a rival studio's movie? Neither Grey nor the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences would say Tuesday after the film received an Academy Award nomination. But the first tip-off that he has more than a passing interest in who takes home the statuette should the Warner Bros.

Most 10-year-olds are happy with an allowance and some video games. Budding filmmaker Dominic Scott Kay wants creative control, along with a shot at the Sundance Film Festival. And, as often happens in the entertainment business, to get what he wants he's headed to court with one of Hollywood's top litigators in tow.

Paramount Pictures Chairman Brad Grey has lost his appeal for a producer credit on "The Departed," a best-picture Oscar nominee released by rival studio Warner Bros. The decision by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which doles out the Oscars, was made Thursday evening at a meeting of about 20 top producers who sit on the organization's executive committee.

Penney Finkelman Cox, a veteran animation executive who helped launch Sony Pictures' foray into animation, is stepping down to become a producer for the division, the company announced Friday. The management shake-up follows mounting tensions between Finkelman Cox and Yair Landau, vice chairman of Sony Pictures Entertainment, over creative control of the animation division.

IF "Little Miss Sunshine" wins the Oscar for best picture, it will represent a phenomenal underdog victory for a raucous road-trip comedy that cost barely $7 million to make, was turned down by studios everywhere and was directed by a husband-and-wife team who'd never made a feature before. But for the film academy, a "Little Miss Sunshine" victory will be a huge public-relations embarrassment.

There are a lot of somebodies in Hollywood, but there are even more nobodies--the workaday dreamers who give L.A. its unique texture and energy. In a town where writers want to be actors and video store clerks yearn to direct, hopefuls like Brad Burnett, Dino Pergola and Matt and Greg Bell became faces in the crowd when they moved here from the heartland.

AS an 11-year-old growing up on Long Island, Judd Apatow began each week by studying the newspaper's TV section and highlighting all talk show guests of Mike Douglas, Dinah Shore and company. He spent afternoons holed up in his room watching TV, hanging out in his head with Charles Nelson Reilly. "I couldn't have had more fun in the saddest, lonely way," he says. "There was a period when I would get home at 3 and watch TV until 11, and I couldn't be happier."