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Recession-Proof Sharon Waxman Opens 'Wrap' For Business

STV — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:30:26 EST

What better time than the worst media battering in generations to launch a new Hollywood quasi-trade publication? That's mostly rhetorical, but if you do have a better answer than "today," don't tell Sharon Waxman.

The former WaPo/NYT reporter — who took a couple years off to dabble in the always-volatile antiquities beat — has finally reemerged with The Wrap, which she'd been teasing for months from her blog HQ at Waxword and finally launched this morning with a wordy introduction to "new Hollywood" and about $500,000 of venture capital at her back. That kind of money won't hurt, just as fun rumors from Sundance ("Screenwriter of festival winner Push, Geoffrey Fletcher, so hated the first cut that he opted for a pseudonym, Damien Paul") and inspired Slumdog slags also offer some rowdy good times on opening day.

Yet other rooms on the grand tour left us a little chilly: "Who E-Mails In Hollywood?," Sharon? Really? ("Scott Rudin, Academy Award-winning American film producer and a Tony Award-winning theatre producer – but he's new to it.") And we foresee the consolidation (read: eviction) of underwhelming media news and personal blogs before long, including this home run from LAT critic emeritus Howard Rosenberg

Samuel J. “Joe the Plumber” Wurzelbacher is a sitcom waiting to happen since being dispatched to Israel by the website pjtv.com for in-depth reporting on Israel vs. Hamas. Here's my vision of how prime time’s “Journalist Joe” might progress.

Israeli military officer briefing Joe: “Our troops are in the Gaza Strip.”

Joe (perplexed): “Gaza Strip? Is that an Arab girlie club?

Laugh track.

That would coincide with prime time’s generally banal view of journalists.

What? As you were, Howard; there's fresh blood coming in from Variety any minute now.

The Wrap

2008 Fails To Produce Absilicious-Spartan-Warrior Money

Seth — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 15:30:00 EDT

· The 2008 box office year has been "solid rather than spectacular," failing to yet produce the kind of runaway, $200 million-earning blockbuster that 300 did for the first quarter of 2007. You want a hit? Turn South Heavy Metal Park into a feature. [Variety]
· Dennis Quaid and approximately two dozen other stars sign up for Legion: On the eve of Apocalypse, a "group of strangers...must deliver a baby they realize is Christ in his second coming." Or as it was pitched in the room, "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World meets Children of Men!" [Variety]
· Superproducer Jerry Bruckheimer has reteamed with his Pirates of the Caribbean writers Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio for a take on The Lone Ranger for Disney that promises to be as overbloated, over-CGId, and overly fucking confusing as their last outings. (Tonto's half-squid.) [THR]

· Second generation Bluth patriarch Jason Bateman will direct the Fox pilot The Inn, an "Upstairs/Downstairs set at a hip New York hotel." [THR]
· Just in case Wipe Out doesn't deliver all the herniated laughs its rock-solid premise suggests, ABC has ordered another comedy pilot, called Bad Mothers Handbook. [Variety]

Clint Eastwood Back In The Driver's Seat

Seth — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 15:25:19 EDT

· Clint Eastwood will direct and star in Gran Torino for Warner Bros. While details "are being kept under tantalizingly tight wraps," muscle car enthusiasts are hoping the grizzled star of Dirty Harry will be voicing the Laser Striped title vehicle. [Variety]
· Juno-seeder Michael Cera in talks to star in Universal's Scott Pilgrim's Little Life, an adrom (adventure romance) about "a young slacker (Cera) who meets the woman of his dreams but finds that he can only win her heart by battling and defeating her seven evil ex-boyfriends." [THR]
· Anton Yelchin is in talks to play the Michael Biehn role of Kyle Reese: Post-Apocalyptic Warrior in McG's meaninglessly titled Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins. [THR]

· Battlestar Galactica fans: sad face. The hit Sci Fi Channel series won't be getting a motion picture treatment. [THR]