deals (75 posts)

SAG

Heading into the holiday weekend, there are no fireworks coming from the Screen Actors Guild.

The union briefly resumed talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers today, but the meeting ended with SAG asking for more time to review the new contract the studios have proposed.

On Tuesday, SAG executive director Doug Allen said the deal as it stands is sorely lacking in the new-media residuals department.

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Kevin Mazur/WireImage.com

For those of you who can't envision an election season without Rush Limbaugh's fair and balanced political perspective, fear not.

On the eve of The Rush Limbaugh Show's 20th anniversary, the conservative talk-radio host has signed an estimated $400 million deal with Clear Channel Communications that will keep him on the air through 2016, the New York Times reported Wednesday.

According to Limbaugh, that hefty sum includes a $100 million signing bonus. His existing $225 million, nine-year contract was due to expire in 2009.

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SAG

The Screen Actors Guild has agreed to disagree for the moment.

As the clock on the union's contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and TV Producers continues to tick toward its 12:01 a.m. expiration date, SAG announced Monday night it has agreed to let members continue to work under the terms of their existing deal until further notice.

The two sides are scheduled to reconvene Wednesday afternoon.

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FOX

American Idol's most proudly (or maybe just strategically) American finalist has landed herself a record deal.

Maybe she can celebrate with some apple pie.

The recently betrothed Kristy Lee Cook has inked a deal with 19 Recordings/Arista Nashville for a twang-heavy album debut, with her first single, "15 Minutes of Shame," already getting an Aug. 11 release date.

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Warner Bros. Entertainment

For Greece! For glory! For ripped guys in skimpy armor!

Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros. are looking for a plot to hang a follow-up to 300 on, as they try to repeat the surprise blockbuster success of the 2006 flick adapted from Frank Miller's graphic novel.

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Merie Weismiller Wallac/Dreamworks

Paramount Pictures is hoping Booty Sweat leaves a good taste in America's mouth. (We know, it felt disgusting just writing that.)

The studio has announced plans to market a real version of the aforenamed energy drink that can be spied periodically throughout the upcoming Ben Stiller-directed comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black as actors who get left behind in an actual war zone after ticking off the director of the war film they're supposed to be acting in.

While product tie-ins and increasingly viral marketing campaigns are nothing new—what would McDonald's and Burger King do without Disney, hobbits and superheroes?—Paramount believes that by actually creating a usable product to promote an upcoming film, not to mention one that will compete against Rockstar and Red Bull, they've broken the mold.

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AP Photo/Philippe Wojazer, POOL

Steven Spielberg is having a Clues encounter of the 39 kind.

The Oscar-winning filmmaker is pumping up his already crowded slate with another would-be blockbuster. DreamWorks has acquired the big-screen rights to The 39 Clues, a multiplatform adventure series hitting stores in September from Scholastic Media—a publisher that knows a thing or two about launching mega-franchises, having foisted a little something called Harry Potter on us Yanks.

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©Michael Caulfield/WireImage.com

Tom Hanks probably won't be hurting too much if there's an actors' strike, but that doesn't mean he cares to see any hard-up fellow thesps slinging lattes at Starbucks instead of practicing their craft this summer.

In hopes of avoiding yet another debilitating Industry strike, Hanks has thrown his support behind the new contract that the smaller of the two major actors unions—the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists—has arrived at with the major studios and networks.

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Alfonso Catalano/LaPresse/ZUMAPress.com

Spike Lee did Clockers. In keeping with the theme, his next project: Time Traveler.

Per Variety, the filmmaker will cowrite and direct the drama based on the memoir by Ronald Mallett, the physicist famed for working on plans for a real-life time machine

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Jonathan Alcorn/ZUMAPress.com

Now Anthony Pellicano is a stickler for protocol.

The disgraced private investigator, who after serving as his own lawyer was convicted last month on 76 of 77 counts of wiretapping, computer fraud, racketeering and other sins he commited for his powerful clients, has filed a motion requesting a new trial, alleging that jury misconduct tainted the proceedings the first time around.

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Jon Furniss/WireImage.com

Heard about Chanel conjuring up an ad campaign featuring Harry Potter star Emma Watson? Just an illusion.

A rep for Chanel tells E! News that widespread Internet reports, fueled in part by a story in Britain's Daily Mirror, that the 18-year-old actress was set to pocket a $6 million payday for pushing Coco Mademoiselle perfume are "just a rumor": "It's false."

Per the erroneous reports, Watson, famed for playing loyal pal Hermione Granger in the Potter franchise, supposedly inked a two-year deal and would replace Keira Knightley.

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Robert C. Mora/WIreImage.com

Jason Bateman has a new development on his hands.

The former Arrested Development star has inked a one-year first-look deal with 20th Century Fox TV that will see him develop a variety of small-screen projects, some of which he'll produce and direct.

The 39-year-old Bateman, who at 18 became the youngest member of the Director's Guild when he helmed three episodes of The Hogan Family, just directed Do Not Disturb, a live-action comedy pilot starring Jerry O'Connell, and the only new series Fox greenlighted for the 2008-09 season.

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