EXCLUSIVE: With allegations of at least $1 million for a Bruce Lee movie going in the wrong pockets and supposedly shady foreign distribution deals, former QED CEO Bill Block has been slammed with a trademark infringement and unfair competition complaint by his old company. Instead of performing his executive…

EXCLUSIVE: John Friedberg, EVP of International Sales and Distribution at QED, has just resigned the company which has been losing or laying executives over the past year. Friedberg oversaw sales and all aspects of the international distribution business for the company with responsibilities that crossed into…

CEO Bill Block is officially leaving QED International as his exit strategy clearly came last fall when he and PalmStar Media Capital CEO Kevin Frakes joined with Raj Singh’s Merced Capital L.P. to launch Merced Media, a new development, production and financing vehicle they said will invest $500 million in a…

QED International has laid off five employees (which includes support staff and a junior lawyer) three weeks after the disastrous opening of Sabotage, directed by David Ayer and led by aging action star Arnold Schwarzenegger. The bloody pic flopped and is hanging on by its fingernails in the Box office Top 20 — it’s…

Bill Murray, aka “The Murricane,” is blowing through Berlin this week on what’s become a sort of one-man comedy tour — and a fun distraction from a thus-far quiet market. Yesterday, he was out in support of Wes Anderson’s opening-night film The Grand Budapest Hotel, riffing that he worked for “low wages and stale bread…

EXCLUSIVE: Jason Bateman, who made an auspicious feature directorial debut with the Toronto festival smash Bad Words, next will direct Nicole Kidman in The Family Fang, the adaptation of the Kevin Wilson bestseller. Bateman will also star in the film. The script is by David Lindsay-Abaire, who adapted his Pulitzer…

Lava Bear and QED International will finance and co-produce Intrusion, a thriller to be directed by David Bruckner from a script by writer L.D. Goffigan that got a rewrite from Amy Herzog. Quadrant Pictures' Doug Davison will produce the project with Tariq Jalil, Lava Bear, and QED’s Bill Block. QED’s John Hegeman…

EXCLUSIVE: QED International's Bill Block has made a pre-emptive acquisition of 19, a pitch that will be written by Jim Agnew & Sean Keller. The intention is to turn this into a trilogy. It involves zombies, but takes that genre in a new direction, in that everybody over the age of 19 turns into a walking corpse. That…

As EVP of International Sales John Friedberg will lead QED’s sales efforts at Cannes, working closely with CEO Bill Block who announced Friedberg’s promotion today. Friedberg’s responsibilities will include spearheading distribution strategies for the company’s film slate, as well as managing relationships with QED’s…

EXCLUSIVE: Brad Pitt is in final negotiations to star in Fury, the David Ayer-directed drama that will start production in September. This is the Ayer script that Bill Block's QED International paid $1 million to acquire back in February. It was QED’s biggest spec deal ever, and when an indie company hooks a star like…

QED International and Groundswell Productions have joined forces for Birth Of The Dragon, which will focus on Bruce Lee's career-defining 1965 no-holds–barred TKO battle with kung fu master Wong Jack Man. Written by Oscar nominees Christopher Wilkinson and Stephen Rivele, the film focuses on the Oakland fight that…

QED International announced today that it will handle non-North American distribution of Drake Doremus' Sundance Film Festival title Breathe In. President of international sales Daniel Diamond negotiated the deal with UTA Independent Film Group, which represented the filmmakers. “We responded to Breathe In…