Movie Producers

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.

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.

"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.

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.

A Los Angeles judge has delivered a legal setback to producer Bob Yari's challenge over the removal of his name from the credits as a producer of the Oscar-winning film "Crash." In a six-page ruling this week, Superior Court Judge Edward A. Ferns rejected arguments by Yari's lawyers that the Producers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are quasi-public organizations whose members' decision can be challenged through the hearing process.

THE good news for the producers of "Little Miss Sunshine": With its Golden Globe nomination for best comedy, the movie's Oscar chances keep building. The bad news: At least two of its producers can't enjoy any Academy Awards glory. And in the no-news-yet department: "The Departed's" four producers are still awaiting their fate.

GRAHAM KING is the kind of producer Hollywood likes, in part because he's good at raising money. Having developed an expertise buying and selling the foreign rights to films, the British native made a splash when he used foreign sales to secure much of the money needed to fund 2002's "Gangs of New York." The film featured two of King's most frequent collaborators, director Martin Scorsese and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Five months after being fired as president of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, Nina Jacobson has rejoined DreamWorks SKG as a producer. Before coming to Disney in 1998, Jacobson had been a top film executive at DreamWorks, the studio founded by Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen that was sold last year to Viacom Inc.'s Paramount Pictures. DreamWorks co-Chairman Stacey Snider, the former movie chief at Universal Pictures, made the deal with Jacobson.

TWO of the most prolific producers in Hollywood, Michael Shamberg and Stacey Sher, oversaw the acclaimed Oliver Stone film "World Trade Center," brought to their attention by their friend, the late producer Debra Hill. Released through Paramount Pictures, the movie chronicles the real-life struggle of two policemen fighting to survive beneath the collapsed World Trade Center towers on Sept. 11, 2001.

ALL LOS ANGELES is a sound stage, its people merely extras. Most Angelenos get that, accepting that a certain amount of inconvenience goes along with living in Hollywood's 10-million-inhabitant back lot. Local filming benefits everybody, providing jobs and pumping money into the economy. But at what point do we cross the line from being accommodating to exploited?