EXCLUSIVE: Reese Witherspoon and Bruna Papandrea, who co-founded and co-ran the production company Pacific Standard that produced such hits as David Fincher’s Gone Girl and the Jean-Marc Vallee-directed Wild, are ending their long partnership. Papandrea will be leaving to start a new venture. Witherspoon will retain…

EXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures is tying down a deal to make a movie out of The Grownup, a package built around the short story by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn. Natalie Krinsky is attached to adapt the tale, and Mike De Luca and Flynn will produce together what is her first big project since Gone Girl became a big hit…

EXCLUSIVE: While most of the movie deal makers are focused on Berlin, there’s a hot package in Hollywood that has got studios hot and bothered. I’m told that Universal, Fox, Paramount and TriStar so far are in the mix on The Grownup, a package built around the short story by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn. Natalie…

EXCLUSIVE– NY-based production company Dutch Tilt Film has optioned the screen rights to Marion Pauw’s thriller Girl In The Dark. Originally published in Dutch in 2008, the book was a bestseller in the Netherlands, winning the annual award for the best Dutch crime fiction and adapted into a 2013 Dutch-language film…

When it comes to evaluating the financial performance of top movies, it isn't about what a film grosses at the box office. The true tale is told when production budgets, P&A, talent participations and other costs collide with box office grosses, and ancillary revenues from VOD to DVD and TV. To get close to that myster…

Final Draft, Inc., the screenwriting software company, named Birdman best original screenplay and Gone Girl, best adapted screenplay in its 10th Annual Final Draft Awards tonight on the Paramount Studios lot.  Birdman’s win tonight arrives after key wins at the SAG (best ensemble), DGA and PGA awards. While Birdman is…

This morning's Producers Guild Nominees Awards breakfast at the Saban Theatre was more about congratulations than controversy. But panelist Clint Eastwood said his film American Sniper and other war films —  including his other favorite, Letters from Iwo Jima —  make “the strongest anti-war statement”  in…

EXCLUSIVE: Ben Affleck and David Fincher will reteam on a Warner Bros remake of the classic Hitchcock thriller Strangers On A Train. Gillian Flynn, who adapted her novel Gone Girl for Fincher and Affleck, is in talks to write the script. The film will be produced by Affleck under Pearl Street, the Warner Bros-based…

The authors and screenwriters of Gone Girl, The Imitation Game, Inherent Vice, The Theory Of Everything and Wild are finalists for USC Libraries’ 27th annual Scripter Award, which honors the year’s best adapted screenplays as well as the author or authors of the written work upon which the screenplay is based. Last…

Most film genres at the 2014 domestic box office saw big declines, so before you stop writing that comedy or drama screenplay, know that this trend is largely a result of the annual B.O. of $10.35 billion taking a 5.2% hit as reported per Rentrak Theatrical. That said, there were some interesting spikes in a swampy…

It was not a good day for the major studio entries in this year’s awards race. Snubs of two expected nominees, Paramount’s Selma and Universal’s  Unbroken — both, coincidentally, directed by women — lead the no-shows on this morning’s list of 10 contenders for the Producers Guild Best Picture prize, the Darryl F…

In the video above, I talk about the first part of my picks for the best films of 2014, with a war-minded bunch of movies coming in at Nos. 10 through 6. And it was a battle picking these, given the possibilities out there. We’ll have my final five in a couple of days, but in the meantime, take a look at this end of…