I don't understand from these press snippets whether someone is just *hoping* for Biel and Gyllenhaal to sign, whether they've tentatively accepted, or whether they have actually contractually signed on. Anyone here better at film-speak than me, who could enlighten me?
I got this from The Answer Bitch at E! Online. Hope this helps...
by Leslie Gornstein
Jul 6, 2007
Ask the Answer B!tch
At want point is an actor committed to doing a movie role? You often hear that someone was signed on for a movie but backed out. I am specifically thinking of Anne Hathaway for the lead role in Knocked Up. You rock!
—Angela, Lafayette, Indiana
The B!tch Replies: Here's a little known fact: Celebrities, like cats, have floating collarbones. And like cats, they can use this trait to worm out of any situation at any time—including ironclad movie contracts, losing, at worst, a few million in the process. So, if during your nocturnal wanderings, you spot Christina Aguilera staring up at you from a sewer drain or a tiny spider hole, and she's peeping and mewing and asking you to get her out, remind her that as long as she can get her head and whiskers through the opening, she can rescue her own self.
Then walk away.
I say this because even after a star has promised—promised!—to shoot a movie, it doesn't always mean that'll happen. In 1993, an incensed film producer complained Kim Basinger had promised—promised!—to appear in his project Boxing Helena and that she broke her word.
There wasn't even a written contract, but in a subsequent lawsuit, a court ruled against Basinger to the tune of roughly $8 million. During testimony in that case, it was revealed that of Basinger's nine previous films, she had signed only two formal contracts.
I speak of an extraordinary case, of course. According to Jeffery Erb, whose company, FeverPitch Pictures, is producing Let the Game Begin with Adam Rodriguez, usually an initial payment seals a deal. More often, he says, an actor is officially on board upon the creation of a "short-form memo." That is sort of a letter of intent, stating an actor plans to appear in a movie and that producers can go ahead and announce that to the world while everyone works out a long-form contract.
Most of the time, the star approves the long-form contract a few weeks later, crossing all the t's and putting hearts over all the i's, and everything is grand. But occasionally, a deal goes sour somewhere between the short-form memo and the contract, and an actor, as Variety says, "ankles."
Maybe that's what happened in the case you mention involving Anne Hathaway. Officially, she left the movie after she'd been announced as the female lead, citing "creative differences."
http://www.eonline.com/gossip/answer/?uuid=23ccac3d-cbd3-4143-a874-9ace3a738909
Topic: Jake Jake Jake! (Read 3210280 times)