Posted Feb 28th 2007 9:50AM by TMZ Staff
The clock is ticking for people who attended 13 events catered by uber-chef Wolfgang Puck, after one of Puck's employees was diagnosed with Hepatitis A. So why won't Puck fully disclose which events are at the center of this health crisis?
TMZ spoke with a Puck rep a few minutes ago, who said they made the Sports Illustrated public because of the large number of people who attended. The rep added that her company would not disclose the other 13 events "for privacy reasons."
The rep says that the other 13 parties were "smaller," though we're told that several of the events were high-profile, with celebrity guests. TMZ asked the question, what if a guest invited a friend and that friend had no idea that Puck was catering the party? The rep said that the people who planned the other 13 events have been notified and now it's the Health Department's business to notify the guests, not theirs. But TMZ pressed on -- what if the Health Department could not get in touch with some of the guests who brought friends?
The Puck rep had no answer and would not say how large the events were, and whether they were thrown by businesses or individuals. TMZ will press today to reveal the remaining 13 events.
Filed under: The Biz
Posted Feb 27th 2007 6:59PM by TMZ Staff
Rats.
As the Wall Street Journal will report in tomorrow's paper, DreamWorks Animation's fourth quarter was plagued by the underperformance of the rodential adventure "Flushed Away" -- the film is a $109 million write-off that drowned the studio's last quarter, in a net loss of over $21 million.
It's a shame DreamWorks in stuck in the middle of a two-year deal with McDonald's; the rat-themed "Flushed" would have clearly been a better fit for Taco Bell.
Mmm...Ratchalupa. Yummy.
Filed under: TV, Movies, The Biz, City Of Industry
Posted Feb 27th 2007 6:54PM by TMZ Staff
The Los Angeles Times' Claudia Eller reports that Team Cruise is closing in on some $500 million in financing that would be spread over several years at United Artists.
Now, we hate to admit this, but Cruise's career almost appears to be stabilizing.
After the "creative suicide" of last summer, Cruise's team has gone into overdrive: First the smart, classy deal that put Cruise into Robert Redford's next movie, "Lions for Lambs," in which in which Cruise plays a congressman.
(Even better, we hear that the congressman's name is not Mark Foley; Capitol Hill Blue, a non-partisan blog, wins our award for best recent Foley headline with "Mark Foley blows town," which in Foley's case could really mean anything. But we digress.)
More encouragingly, the LAT points out that Lambs had everyone, including Cruise, deferring their upfront fees so as to get the movie made for $35 million. Imagine: A Tom Cruise / Robert Redford / Meryl Streep movie for less than the price of a nuclear submarine?
But don't worry: Cruise still has a chance at blowing up this deal: Viz, "People close to the talks cautioned that the deal with expected lead investment bank Merrill Lynch wasn't final, and that terms were still being negotiated. They said an agreement could take an additional 10 days to two weeks to complete."
You hear that, Tom? Only ten days left to get the spray butter into your financial fridge. Better get cracking.
Filed under: Movies, The Biz, Tom & Katie
Posted Feb 26th 2007 7:28PM by TMZ Staff
For those of you who've been wondering how Barbara Walters has been handling the insane slide of "The View" into a bare-knuckles cage match between Rosie and The Donald, New York magazine today offers this glimpse into the chaos:
Viz, "'Barbara has the exterior of a debutante,' her friend Dan Rather notes, 'but the heart of an assassin.' The dilemma confronting Walters: How does an old-school debutante-assassin operate in the crude new world of celebrity thuggery? Trump and O'Donnell are perfectly happy to trade blows and spatter blood, on the theory that WWF warfare is more reliable than subtle maneuvering at the court, and the low road is preferable to losing...
Or as Trump, the Sun Tzu of shamelessness, tells me in his office-shrine on the 26th floor of Trump Tower: 'There are some sound bites you can't beat by taking the high road.' "
As is also revealed in the piece, Rosie may be laughing all the way to the bank -- again:
"[Rosie] is credited with an over 20 percent hike in the ratings in the key 18-to-49 female demographic, which has fueled speculation about her bright future on daytime TV. Will ABC cash out Walters's stake and retire her in favor of O'Donnell, who, after all, had her own very successful show from 1996 to 2002? The betting in Las Vegas at last month's programming-executives convention was that O'Donnell will leave soon to launch her own show, for either ABC or a major syndicator. At minimum, O'Donnell, who's said to be pulling down nearly $3 million from
The View, about twice what Vieira was paid, will likely be demanding a big raise."
Filed under: TV, The Biz, City Of Industry, The View, Rosie O'Donnell
Posted Feb 25th 2007 10:40PM by TMZ Staff
And the crowd goes wild for Marty, who promptly says, "Could you double-check the envelope?"
Well, so much for the theory that there'd be no clear Oscar favorite: "Departed" has taken best picture, director, editor and screenplay.
We also imagine that this is a bad time to be Brad Grey's shrink. I mean, talk about mixed feelings: The good news? You just produced the best picture of the year. The bad news? You produced it for your bloodthirsty competitor, Warner Bros.
Pass the Paxil, please.
Filed under: TV, Movies, The Biz, Awards/Awards Shows, City Of Industry
Posted Feb 25th 2007 9:35PM by TMZ Staff
Introducing the Oscar for Best Visual Effects with Naomi Watts, Robert Downey, Jr. won us over all over again.
"Visual effects: They enable us to see aliens, experience other universes, move in slow-motion, or watch spiders climbing high above the city landscape." (a beat) "For me, just a typical weeknight in the mid-Nineties."
God, I love this guy: Abusive childhood. Seen more snow than the Swiss alps. Regular jail. Movie jail.
Sense of humor still intact.
Filed under: TV, Movies, The Biz, Awards/Awards Shows, City Of Industry
Posted Feb 25th 2007 7:43PM by TMZ Staff
Thank the Creator for TiVo: Just before I started live-blogging this year's Oscarcast, I mentioned to my editor that while this year's Oscars will probably have its largest international audience in history (owing to the worldly mix of best picture films), we will probably see decidedly lower ratings here, in what I affectionately call 'Merica, that mass of reddish-hued states that separate the cultural elite of L.A. from the cultural elite of New York.
Then I just heard KABC's Marc Brown say this stunner: Based on a nationwide poll, only a pathetic 9 (nine) percent of Americans saw all five movies nominated for Best Picture. And only 31 (thirty-one!) percent of Americans saw any of the the Best Picture nominees at all.
Wow.
I mean, don't get me wrong: I think "Letters from Iwo Jima" is the best movie I've seen in years; you'd have to go back to the Oscars of 2004 and "City of God" to find as compelling a film. But when the front-runner for Best Foreign Film ("Pan's Labyrinth") has out-grossed a Best Picture nominee like "Iwo Jima" by more than double, it doesn't bode well for the Oscar's Nielsen ratings. Even nominated "Iwo Jima" director Clint Eastwood looked like he was on total auto-pilot, absently responding to a question by ABC's George Pennacchio about whether award shows get tiring by saying, "We got 'Flags,' we got everything going." When his wife Dina pointed out to him, "That's nonsensical." Eastwood struggled on, "I'm just here... you know, I get some rubber chicken or something," walking away in mid-sentence. We wouldn't be surprised if viewers have the same reaction.
So fair warning: If this year's Oscars deliver low numbers domestically, don't blame Ellen DeGeneres.
Filed under: TV, Movies, The Biz, Awards/Awards Shows, City Of Industry
Posted Feb 25th 2007 6:39PM by TMZ Staff
Despite the hundreds of mics on the red carpet at this year's Oscars, none of the journos holding them thought to ask Al or Tipper Gore who created their "new look."
We're not talking about who designed Al's tux, or Tipper's gown; we're referring to the total 180 degree turn their image has taken in Hollywood over the past two decades: Back in 1987, Tipper's role in creating the much-derided Parents Music Resource Center would have made her a red carpet pariah. At the '87 Oscars, Tipper would have been dodging tomatoes, not walking on rose petals.
And even in 1997, a favorite Al Gore joke went, "How do you pick Al Gore out of a roomful of secret service agents?"
Punchline: "He's the stiff, unnatural one."
A few years and an Oscar-nominated documentary later, Gore's electrified the often-neglected documentary category. It's gratifying to see a smooth, relaxed and dare we say it, downright presidential Al Gore on the red carpet.
How come? Well, as Al put it, "I'm old enough to know that a red carpet is just a rug."
And speaking of 180s, here's hoping it's not 180 degrees on the red hot carpet before we take Big Al's message seriously.
Filed under: TV, Movies, The Biz, Awards/Awards Shows, City Of Industry
Posted Feb 22nd 2007 7:11PM by TMZ Staff
After cars that GM licensed for "Transformers" were unveiled during a pre-Academy Awards fashion event at Paramount Pictures, speculation has been rampant that GM may be debuting a line of specially-badged vehicles to coincide with the launch of DreamWorks' "Transformers: The Movie."
GM's cast of "characters" in the Michael Bay film include "Jazz," who's played by a Pontiac Solstice; "Ratchet," who's really a Hummer; and "Ironhide," who looks suspiciously like GMC's new TopKick.
Says Mike Jackson, GM North America Vice President of Marketing and Advertising, "'Transformers' is a compelling project and offers us a global platform for marketing GM products and building our brands; it represents the perfect intersection of entertainment, marketing and design."
Great.
Toyota expects to dramatically increase sales this year -- by half a million -- to 9.34 million vehicles. That's well ahead of troubled GM, which is actually in the throes closing plants and laying off 30,000 workers.
Rather than mulling some lame line of "Transformers"-badged cars, how about this crazy marketing idea, GM?
Build a car people love.
Filed under: Movies, The Biz, Fashion Police, City Of Industry
Posted Feb 21st 2007 5:44PM by TMZ Staff
Good news today for anyone who loves to hate the self-entitled brats of MTV's "My Super Sweet Sixteen," or the bong-loaded humor of "Sponge Bob Squarepants" -- shows like these are coming back to the web, free of charge.
Viacom, which owns MTV, VH-1, Nickelodeon and the Paramount Pictures, has just cut a deal with the brand new video-sharing site Joost that cuts the conglomerate in on revenue, and cuts out hugely popular YouTube from the picture. No word on the terms of the deal, but the New York Times speculates a 65% / 35% split of revenue in favor of Viacom is probably a safe bet.
February may be the month for Valentines, but YouTube hasn't been getting much love this month - at least, not from Big Media.
Two weeks ago, Viacom demanded YouTube remove over 100,000 unauthorized clips from its site.
Then , last week, NBC fired off a six-page warning to Google, demanding that it do a better job of keeping unauthorized content off of it's newly-acquired YouTube.
The only downside? Unlike YouTube, you can't upload onto Joost. We say: If the stuff is free, high-quality and legal, who cares?
Filed under: TV, The Biz, City Of Industry
Posted Feb 21st 2007 12:24PM by TMZ Staff
These days, ABC is as white hot as it once was ice cold. Which is to say, pretty damn hot.
So we were at once both surprised that ABC was willing to gamble on a planned spin-off on "Grey's Anatomy" that will feature Kate Walsh (Dr. Addison Montgomery-Shepherd) and not surprised that the network locked down "Desperate Housewives" creator Marc Cherry in a massive, eight-figure, four year deal with its in-house studio.
But resting on your laurels is the surest way to disaster: Just ask NBC, which is clawing its way back from a billion dollar loss of revenue after its prime-time ratings imploded two years ago.
So we ask you, dear TMZ reader: Will a "Grey's" spin-off be what "Frazier" was to "Cheers," (very McWatchable), or what "Knots Landing" was to "Dallas" (not so McRiveting) ?
Filed under: TV, The Biz, City Of Industry
Posted Feb 20th 2007 7:21PM by TMZ Staff
We don't often moralize here at TMZ, with good reason: Salaciousness is our metier, after all. But at the risk of sounding a little schoolmarmish: Why is it SO difficult for celebs to take responsibility?
Case in point: Lots of high profile DUIs in the news today. Let's look at how differently they're handled.
US Airways' CEO Doug Parker pleaded guilty today to drunken driving, and somewhat unbelievably for a white collar guy of his standing, reached a plea that will send him to jail for a day. I am downright impressed with the guy.
"He accepted full and total responsibility for his recent DUI charge," US Airways spokeswoman Valerie Wunder said in a prepared statement to the AP.
By contrast, attorneys for Nicole Richie were also in court today, and she had the audacity to plead not guilty after driving in the wrong direction on a California freeway and confessing to cops she'd been smoking pot while taking Vicodin.
Now, don't get me wrong: A good attorney always wants to keep his or her client out of the county blues. But a savvy public figure also knows that you can also do more damage to your career by skating than facing the music. Own up to your mistakes, and the public -- and the business -- will probably respect you all the more. True, US Airways' stock was down today, but only by a paltry 32 cents. That's barely half a percentage point -- which hardly qualifies, if you'll pardon the pun, as "getting hammered."
Filed under: Celebrity Justice, TV, The Biz, City Of Industry, Nicole Richie
Posted Feb 10th 2007 10:47PM by TMZ Staff
UPDATE!
Apparently, it was a busy Saturday for both Disney Channel and reps for "High School Musical 2" stars Ashley Tisdale, Corbin Bleu and Vannessa Anne Hudgens: Eric Feig, the lawyer representing all three of the renegade "HSM2" kid-stars, tells TMZ that managers for all three actors say their clients have now decided to fly to pre-production rehearsals on Sunday after all.
As was first reported here on Friday, eleventh-hour negotiations to return all three stars to the sequel had hit a snag over the talented teens' desire for participation in the expected-to-be-huge "back end" for "High School Musical 2" -- that is, its soundtrack and vast merchandising opportunities. Indeed, things had gotten so woolly, some of pubescent thespians were mulling not flying to rehearsals.
Reached by TMZ.com, Feig declined to comment on the current state of negotiations beyond confirming that all three kids will be in the air bound for Utah on schedule.
While Feig isn't talking, TMZ will keep you posted on whether there's any further action from this volatile teenage drama department.
Developing...
Filed under: Gossip/Rumors, TV, The Biz, City Of Industry
