EXCLUSIVE: Lionsgate Television Group/3 Arts will mount an event limited series about 9/11. They have acquired exclusive television rights to Fall and Rise: The Story of 9/11, based on the Mitchell Zuckoff book that HarperCollins will publish April 30. The book is a comprehensive character-driven nonfiction narrative…

EXCLUSIVE: Makeready has set Francis Lawrence to direct Five Faces of Maria, a fact-based drama that will go under the worldwide theatrical distribution deal with eOne and Universal Pictures that former New Regency CEO and Paramount president Brad Weston put in place when he launched the company. The film will be…

EXCLUSIVE: Collateral Beauty‘s screenwriter Allan Loeb has come aboard to adapt the Evan Mandery time travel novel Q which is set up at Lionsgate. Matt Tolmach, Erwin Stoff and Francis Lawrence are producing the story about a 30-year-old guy who meets the woman of his dreams and life could not be better, but right…

EXCLUSIVE: Denzel Washington is in early talks to star in Shovel Ready, a Warner Bros adaptation of a debut novel by journalist Adam Sternbergh. Erwin Stoff is the producer. In a bombed-out, near future New York City where most of the population escapes reality by tapping into a digital fantasy world, a contract…

EXCLUSIVE: This is a cautionary tale for every Hollywood manager who’s spending a lot of time producing. Such is the case with Erwin Stoff. The 3 Arts Entertainment president has repped Keanu Reeves for something like 32 years (ever since the actor was 16 years old). The Stoff-Reeves relationship has long been…

EXCLUSIVE: Fox has bought Pandemic, a medical thriller from Mystic Pizza writer Amy Holden Jones, 3 Arts Entertainment and 20th Century Fox TV. WME-repped Jones is writing the project, which follows an epidemiologist who is facing difficult adversaries as he fights to stop a catastrophic pandemic. She will executive…

EXCLUSIVE: Elaine Goldsmith-Thomas is joining 3 Arts as a manager/producer, returning to the rep business after 11 years. Once a high-powered dealmaker at ICM best known for guiding Julia Roberts from unknown to $20 million a picture as the world's biggest female star, Goldsmith-Thomas left ICM in 2000 to run…

EXCLUSIVE: After more than 54 years of trying, Universal Pictures is getting closer and closer to telling the unbelievable story of Olympian-turned-WWII POW Louis Zamperini in a feature film. Walden Media has just signed on to co-finance with Universal Pictures the screen adaptation of Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller Un…

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures has set Richard LaGravenese to adapt Laura Hillenbrand’s bestseller Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption. Francis Lawrence is attached to direct the film about the unbreakable spirit of Louis Zamperini, the former Olympic track prodigy who endured…

EXCLUSIVE: Management/production companies 3 Arts and Untitled Entertainment are in merger talks. I'm not certain they are going to join forces, but they are exploring it seriously. The potential mix of assets of the two companies is intriguing. 3 Arts — run by Erwin Stoff, Michael Rotenberg, Howard Klein, David Miner…

Jairo Alvarado, who stepped right out UCLA and stepped into a job as a Warner Bros creative exec 18 months ago, is leaving next month to become a manager at 3 Arts. The 24-year old Alvarado said he wasn’t thinking of a career change before a general meeting with 3 Arts’ Tom Lassally, another Warner Bros exec who made…