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July 16, 2008

Yet Again... & The Ongoing Paramount Exodus

Just another reminder of the games people play with press release news...

At 9:35a this morning, Michael Fleming ran the news that Par Pub chief Mike Vollman was heading over to UA/MGM and exiting Paramount. Ink isn't dry on the deal, but indeed, the town gossip mill has been on notice that this was happening for weeks now. Apparently, Vollman dropped the "bomb" on his Par bosses on Tuesday.

Who fed the news to Fleming, who has been the town's top phone-call-receiver for years? Not Vollman. Look to the first name in the story for insight.

At 10:06a, Crazy Nikki Finke runs an "exclusive" with fewer details and the "see, I am an insider" schtick of "This is all supposed to be very hush-hush so everyone I've named here is gonna kill me. Sorry, guys, but news is news."

If Nikki had run the gossip last week, it would have been "hush-hush," which is why the many people who knew but did not tell didn't run it a week ago. But my guess is that the same person who called Fleming called Nikki and that Nikki hadn't noticed that it went up on Variety before she started transcribing.

Vollman is actually a fan of Finke... but this intentional leak was not his. Few execs in Hollywood are better at holding their nose and swimming through the crap with a smile and an affirmative argument than Vollman, who did a very good job of cleaning up the mess left by the first wave of this administration slicing and dicing at Paramount, but never really got clear of the bureaucratic thinking that never weighed him down during the DreamWorks years. The step up to marketing chief at UA gets him out of jail free… a card he earned after landing on Unhappy Community Chest for long enough. (No “Chance” here.)

(Nikki also jumped all over a trade report about Amy Pohler getting a new sitcom, this time shortly before the Hollywood Reporter ran their much deeper, fully reported story. This is, actually, how Drudge developed his rep… by stealing major papers’ headline stories before they could run, thus claiming “first” position. Here comes some more paranoia and the compulsion to run stories before they are ready just to avoid being “scooped” by someone not interested in getting it all or getting it right, but just getting it first.)

Fleming correctly reports, "Since Vollman worked closely with Terry Press at DreamWorks, the hire will only accelerate speculation that she is in line for the top post, which has been the rumor for months."

If Press heads to MGM, in spite of telling people that she is happy consulting - and if she did take a job, fall consulting gigs that she already has have to be jettisoned - the last big cog of her marketing team (aside from retired Mitch Kreindel), Chip Sullivan, sits in the job of President of Publicity at DreamWorks. He was a key element in buffering Terry's edge, so he would be missed.

Here is some TOTAL SPECULATION... Stacey Snider & Mary Parent, together again? Team DreamWorks, united again? A DreamWorks/MGM relationship that could actually produce 15 big movies a year and finance a lot of their business through other studios who want Spielberg and/or Cruise and/or Stiller and/or Bond and/or the promise of a high-quality DVD output deal? Again, TOTAL SPECULATION. Other families have split up and been reconstituted elsewhere. And DreamWorks will live in The Adobe on the Universal lot no matter what. But hmmmm….

DreamWorks looks like it will be funded by Reliance, but the ambitions of Reliance seem bigger than DreamWorks’ ambitions. MGM needs reliable funding. That library is actually still enticing and offers stability. It’s also large enough to absorb the overpriced DreamWorks library that Soros floated for Par/DW a couple of years ago without it being painful.

MGM could be the underground railroad for getting DWers out of Paramount without creating a war between the companies as they start the separation process.

I KNOW NOTHING. But hmmmm… it makes more sense than any other story we’re all chewing on right now. For DreamWorks, it would be bigger than just becoming another Imagine, but not as massive a deal to approach as buying NBC Universal. For Harry Sloan, it would make MGM real… right now. Hmmmmm….

Again... it's 100% SPECULATION...

Anyway….

Rumor at Paramount is that Jessica Rovins, who lost the top publicity spot at the studio to Vollman the last time it was up for grabs, will now take the slot for Brad Grey, reporting to the three-headed marketing chiefs for the studio. Vollman exits August 15. We’ll see. My guess is that there will be a skirmish from the Vantage side, looking to place one of theirs in the slot instead of the Grey-Weston associated Rovins.

And by the way - Amy Israel’s exit at Vantage was no surprise after Lesher didn’t take her “upstairs” and the division was reduced to picking up fewer than a half-dozen films a year. The only people who could have been surprised were people who believed that the shutdown of the division was only partial. Expect Israel to land before Aug 1 at some company looking for legitimacy in the now-tough indie market by Toronto… or to wait until October or so to take a job that has her revving up for Sundance/Berlin/Cannes ’09.

Posted by dpoland at July 16, 2008 12:10 PM

Comments

Posted by: SJRubinstein at July 16, 2008 03:40 PM

Posted by: David Poland at July 16, 2008 03:43 PM

Posted by: a1amoeba at July 16, 2008 04:58 PM

Posted by: TVJunkie at July 17, 2008 07:54 AM

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