Vulture - Devouring Culture

Hollywood's most literate producer Scott Rudin (so literate he lives in New York) is becoming even more intertwined with the book world, hiring publishing veteran John Schoenfelder to run development at his company for him. Schoenfelder comes with a varied, though recently troubled, pedigree: He's served time at St. Martin's Press and then Little Brown, which last year made him editor of its new imprint, Mulholland Books. Dedicated to "suspense fiction," Mulholland launched last April and ran into trouble seven months later with its eleventh book, Q.R. Markham's Assassin of Secrets; the well-reviewed novel had to be recalled after evidence emerged that the author had plagiarized from Ian Fleming, Robert Ludlum, and Charles McCarry.*

“Love,” the poet Robert Browning once wrote, “likes stratagem and subterfuge.” If that’s so, why is Fox’s romantic spy comedy This Means War struggling so much in the Valentine's Day season? Originally slated to open on February 17, McG’s action-comedy love triangle had Fox feeling so bullish that a little less than a month ago, the studio moved up its release by three days, hoping that opening it on February 14 would turn it into an irresistible date movie and blunt the appeal of Sony's rival chick flick, The Vow, which opens tomorrow. Then, disaster: On Tuesday, after the studio saw abysmal audience research data that suggested that The Vow would leave Fox eating its chocolate heart out, Fox slid War's opening date back to February 17, though even that doesn't seem to be helping its tracking.

Last week, news broke that the board game Candy Land had been dumped by Universal Pictures and instead set up at rival Sony Pictures, now as an Adam Sandler vehicle. And with this departure, Universal had unloaded the last of its Hasbro-inspired projects (having washed their hands of Stretch Armstrong, Ouija, and Clue within the last six months); this ends — nearly two years early — the studio's largely unproductive, multi-million-dollar deal with the world's No. 2 toymaker. Signed in 2008, the pact originally anticipated a far-less-costly moviemaking world in which movie stars wouldn't be the attraction, brands would. And yet: Candy Land has now been scooped up by another studio not because of the inherent attraction of the board game, but precisely because it would make a good vehicle for a big star. From this expensive and largely fruitless deal – the jury is still out on whether the $250-plus million adaptation of Battleship with no movie stars will end up like the Costa Concordia or rack up Titanic-size grosses – Hollywood can take a lesson not just about the dangers of relying too much on outside brand names, but also on the dangers of a studio looking for too quick a fix.

You've heard of Smash, right? That new NBC musical drama premiering Monday at 10 p.m.? Well, of course you have: Since the first on-air promo debuted November 6, the Peacock has been pounding Smash into our collective consciousness by every means possible. Featurettes showcasing Katharine McPhee's rendition of "Beautiful" have been been part of the preshow reel on thousands of movie screens for weeks now. McPhee and co-star Megan Hilty crooned carols at the lighting of the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree, while Debra Messing handed out an award at the Golden Globes. To build word of mouth, the pilot episode has been streaming online, on-demand, and in airplanes weeks ahead of its official debut. And then there are the billboards, bus advertisements, and, in selected areas, NBC execs tackling people and begging them to watch it. Big promo pushes are nothing new for NBC (remember the endless drumbeat in advance of The (Non-) Event?). But the launch of Smash has taken on a special urgency. For one thing, it's the first serious attempt by new NBC Entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt, on the job barely a year now, to reverse nearly a decade of decline at the Peacock. It's also coming at a time when NBC seems perilously close to shifting from merely uncompetitive to nearly irrelevant on many nights of the week. To wit: Late last month, Peacock brass woke up to an embarrassing post on industry bulletin board Deadline.com reporting that in the 10 p.m. Thursday slot — where not that long ago ER drew over 40 million viewers —NBC had finished in eighth place, behind everything from Jersey Shore and the Univision telenovela Rosa De Guadalupe to a repeat of The Big Bang Theory on cable's TBS. "There's a lot of racing hearts and held breaths over there right now," says one TV industry insider who deals regularly with NBC suits. "If it doesn't perform the way they need it to, there's going to be real concern about how they're ever going to turn things around." But just how important is the success or failure of Smash to the gasping network? Let's break down the potential aftershocks for the Peacock of three different ratings outcomes.

Last November, it was revealed that director Robert Zemeckis had ended his flirtation with Brian Helgeland’s American history and monster mash-up Here There Be Monsters, which pitted American Revolutionary War hero John Paul Jones against various tentacled monsters of the deep, and little more was heard about the project. But now insiders tell Vulture that the project may have signs of life, as Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol director Brad Bird is meeting with Legendary brass about the project, which originated as an idea by company chairman Thomas Tull.