Fox wins battle to build 'Bridge'
According to sources, the script went for $ 300,000 against $ 600,000, brokered by APA'S Jennifer Lewis and David Saunders, and attorney Jason Sloane of Hansen Jacobson Teller & Hoberman.
It's the first time those Fox-based producers have partnered in a script, but Joanna Miltern, who works for Schiff, and Jason Blumenthal, who works for Haines and Black, each were tracking the script separately. Because the producers had wanted to work together, they decided to bring it to Fox production executive Michael London in partnership.
They were hardly the only ones interested in Broder's latest, a quirky romantic comedy about a young Irish-American man who must conquer a centuries-old family curse to find his true love. The script was sent out early Thursday, and by the next morning, Fox was bidding against Universal and Warner Bros., emerging victorious in the afternoon. Given its subject matter, it becomes the latest project to be "just right" for Hugh Grant, who's in demand after his performance in "Four Weddings and a Funeral," though no offer has been made.
It's the second significant sale for APA client Broder in the last six months , after Hollywood Pictures purchased his last spec, "The Game."
WHILE BUSY DENYING a printed report that his script is an explicit tale about masturbation, former WB exec Lance Young is in the process of a startling return as a screenwriter-director. Young left the studio over a complaint that he sexually harassed an assistant while recovering from back surgery. Some in the industry wondered if the complaint was a convenient opportunity to oust an outspoken exec who clashed with the brass.
Young spent most of the past year in Mexico wondering if his career was over and working on a script. The result, "Bliss," is now the subject of a five-way bidding war.
The suitors for the film are Columbia, UA, New Line, Island World and Arnon Milchan's New Regency -- which finances its own projects but distributes them through the Warner Bros. pipeline.
Young wouldn't talk about his WB exit. But about his script, he said, "It's a love story about healing, involving two dysfunctional people. I'm sorry it has been construed as anything else."
According to sources, the script is reminiscent of "sex, lies and videotape," and explores the sexual awakening of a couple. The husband finds out his wife has been faking orgasms. Determined to please her, he becomes a student of an experienced sex therapist. But when he rises to the occasion, the experience unlocks a traumatic memory that threatens to end their relationship.
Two weeks ago, Young asked an old friend, ICM agent Steve Rabineau, to read the script. The agent quickly sent it out to a few producers. "It's an intelligent, funny and poignant movie, which has a lot to say about relationships in the '90s," said Rabineau, who hopes to close a deal shortly.
WHY SHOULD the great roles in Tennessee Williams' classic plays "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "A Streetcar Named Desire" be reserved for only white actors? Stephen Byrd left his post finding funding for entertainment industry projects at Goldman Sachs to start the American Cinema Group, which aims to produce and share the risk on crossover projects featuring black actors.
He scored a coup when, after pursuing the executor of Williams' estate, Maria St. Just, for three years, he convinced her to grant him the rights for stage and film versions of both projects featuring black performers. The deal was inked three days before her death in February.
"I wanted to go after classic projects, and among them were works of Tennessee Williams -- though when he was living, his attitudes were, to put it mildly, racist," Byrd says. "I went to Maria, and her position was that the definitive versions had been done. But I kept calling and suggesting that there was a way to broaden the audience, with ethnic versions with real money behind them."
"Cat" will go first. Byrd plans to bring the play to Broadway in January 1995 , and negotiations are under way with Tony-winning director Lloyd Richards (known for directing August Wilson's plays on Broadway). James Earl Jones is the first choice to play Big Daddy.
For more Buzzings, see this week's Variety.
