Trade Round Up: Paramount To Flip DreamWorks Library
· The trades react to the sad news that Richard Pryor died of a heart attack on Saturday. Var calls him "groundbreaking," and "talented and tormented," while THR reminds us that Pryor nabbed $4 million for the awful Superman 3. [Variety, THR]
· Paramount will try to defray the cost of Friday's impulse-buy (when Brad Grey sees something he likes in a store window, money is no object!) of DreamWorks by flipping the studio's 59 title live-action library to a third party for $1 billion. [Variety]
· The WB benefits from Friday's bombshell Paramount/DreamWorks announcement, pink-slipping about 20 network workers while everyone was worrying about how much richer Steven Spielberg and David Geffen were about to get. [THR]
· Brokeback Mountain and Memoirs of a Geisha set limited release box office record. The gay cowboys wrangled $108,910 per theater, while the controversially Chinese geishas did $84,194 per. [Variety]
· Hollywood Out of Ideas, British Import Edition, Part XXIV: Fox greenlights a pilot for The Worst Week of My Life, based on a BBC series about a "hellacious" week (read: wackiness ensues!) before a couple's wedding. [THR]