ABC Series Mistresses Casts 2 Of Its Leads

Rochelle Aytes (ABC’s The Forgotten) and up-and-comer Jes Macallan have landed two of the four leads in Mistresses, ABC’s drama recently greenlighted straight to series for a summer 2013 launch. The soap, written by KJ Steinberg based on the British format, is described as a provocative thrilling drama thatfinds four women, two of them played by Aytes and Macallan, with scandalous romantic lives, caught in storms of excitement and self-discovery, secrecy and betrayal, and at the mercy of the complex relationships theyve created. Aytes, repped by Innovative and Zero Gravity Management, will play April, a recent widow raising two daughters and running a high-end linen shop on Robertson Boulevard. Coincidentally, Aytes also played one of the 4 leads in the previous U.S. Mistresses adaptation, a 2009 Lifetime pilot penned by Melissa Carter. In her first series regular role, Macallan, repped by Luber Roklin, Momentum and attorney Lev Ginsburg, will play Josslyn, the youngest of the quartet of close friends, a real estate broker, and an unapologetically sensual woman. UTA-repped Cherie Nowlan is set to direct the pilot for the ABC Studios series, executive produced by Steinberg, Bob Sertner, Douglas Rae and Rina Mimoun.

Here Comes the New Men in Black 3 Trailer (To Underwhelm You)

Sony's got quite the job ahead of them selling the mega-budgeted sequel Men in Black III, due in May, if the new trailer is any indication: See Will Smith drop lines like "I don't have no problem pimp-slapping the shiznit outta Andy Warhol" and be transported to a futuristic time-traveling retro '60s that looks and sounds a lot like the one Austin Powers came from. I guess the '90s are the new '80s, but this is just lazy. The new sequel follows alien-hunting Agent J (Smith) into the past to save Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones) by teaming up with a younger version of K (Josh Brolin doing his best Tommy Lee Jones impression). Look forward to the usual broad aliens-among-us gags and that mind eraser schtick that audiences loved in 1997! Smith bemoans that he's "getting too old for this," and I'm inclined to agree. Aren't we all? Verdict: Looks tired. Insert mind eraser joke here.

Ann Hathaway Exits CAA Follows Agent Serta Aloni Wherever He Goes

Surprise: Ann Hathaway’s Agent Serta Aloni Fired From CAA EXCLUSIVE: Ann Hathaway just left CAA, inside the wake in the firing of Serta Aloni. An origin near the situation notifies me that Nolan and also the producer/wife Emma Thomas, will probably be going wherever Aloni lands. This makes Aloni a great commodity in the marketplace, whether he visits a business like WME or becomes a supervisor. I broke the story earlier today when CAA abruptly fired Aloni, for that reason he didn’t mesh while using agency’s culture. Nolan directed the three Batman films additionally to Beginning. More youthful crowd produced Superman film Guy of Steel. He’s a large director that any agency would kill to represent. I’d heard early today that although CAA attempted to keep Nolan inside the fold, the organization virtually expected this might happen. The organization arrives about $12 million in commissions from past and approaching film deals brokered for Nolan, which padded the blow somewhat. Just what a crazy development it's been. Nolan’s move underscores a few things i’ve discovered Aloni: he or she is a prick with co-employees, but he kills for his clients and they are loyal as a swap. I’m waiting to determine if Aloni’s other clients have a similar.

'Wicked' Continues Its Box Office Reign Over 'Lion King'

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Pre-packaged films find greenlight

Steve Carells involvement with 'Crazy Stupid Love' helped sell it to studios, which are increasingly emphasizing tentpoles, like 'Transformers Dark of the Moon.'Hollywood's obsession with franchises and recognizable brands has caused a quiet power shift in the film biz, with the decline in development budgets at the major studios whetting appetites for prepackaged, ready-to-shoot projects. The result: Producers and filmmakers now have more control at the mid- and small-budget levels.With faster greenlights as the prize, filmmakers have new incentives to fully develop their ideas before taking them to the studios. Agents and managers, meanwhile, are attaching talent to projects earlier in the process -- a shift that, as any one of those players will attest, beats fighting with studios for approval."It's really more about making (movies) and less about developing them in today's marketplace," says one lit agent.As one manager puts it: "Companies like Relativity only want packages they can pull the trigger on. They don't have the time or attention span to develop something from scratch. They assume that's your job, and it's why you're bringing a script to them in the first place."None of that is expected to change, as the corporatization of Hollywood has made studios less likely to take risks on unproven projects, and instead turned their attention to big-budget tentpoles that can perform as franchises at the box office and in retail aisles. Since the 2007 writers' strike and the 2008 recession, the studios have felt more pressure to appease parent companies that have become more cost-conscious and profit-hungry. They increasingly need to produce content that moviegoers will instantly recognize and embrace. Last summer alone saw the studios focused on familiar properties like the Transformers, the Smurfs, Thor, Green Lantern, Captain America and Planet of the Apes.But even as they devote their development dollars largely to tentpoles, studios still have distribution pipelines to fill. They need to feed the megaplexes year-round, even if they're not directly creating that product.That's opened the doors for producers to put together the rest of the studios' slates with original fare."Ten years ago, studios would take a package, but they weren't necessarily looking for them," one top agent at a tenpercentery tells Variety. "Now it's more of a priority. Studios see them as an opportunity to put money into something that they know is going to happen instead of paying a couple million on developing something that will never happen."That doesn't necessarily mean it's easier to get a greenlight. Tenpercenteries need to assemble packages that grab the attention of studios bosses and are easily marketable to moviegoers.The packaging process, in fact, is now being discussed before scripts are shopped to the studios, and agents and managers are being trained to do the extra legwork to make projects salable.Warner Bros.' "Crazy Stupid Love" was a spec that several studios were high on when it was put on the auction block a couple years ago. What helped attract attention to the romantic comedy wasn't just its scribe, Dan Fogelman -- hot off Disney's "Cars" and "Tangled" -- but the attachment of Steve Carell as its star. Having set up a number of high-profile videogame and comicbook adaptations at the studios, Adrian Askarieh has moved to take the independent route to package his own projects, such as "Alien Sleeper Cell," an alien invasion pic that Morgan Davis Foehl will write and Bill Block ("District 9") will produce through QED Intl. Askarieh is taking a similar approach with "Just Cause," an adaptation of Eidos' hit vidgame -- with Michael Ross ("Turistas") scripting and Eric Eisner's L+E Pictures co-producing -- in order to retain more creative control and speed up the development process.Most recently, even the music industry has gotten involved: ICM has begun packaging a narrative-style pic revolving around music by the Grateful Dead, after being granted unlimited access to the band's music catalog.Another package that drew attention was Universal's deal to buy an R-rated college-based comedy that will star Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, based on a script by Andrew Cohen and Brendan O'Brien. Rogen will produce with Evan Goldberg through their Point Grey Pictures shingle.The commitment of additional talent early in the process has helped boost the pricetag of such deals, reps say, doubling or even tripling what they might have landed for a traditional spec sale in the past.In the Rogen-Efron deal, the scribes pulled in seven figures and the thesps pocketed higher-than-usual quotes along with backend fees after a bidding war took place to secure the project. Rogen will earn $8 million on top of a seven-figure producing fee.Locking down talent, however, can prove just as difficult as selling a project to a studio. Just getting talent to read the material can hold back a package, reps say. But it doesn't stop there."It's one thing to get the right talent to like the material and come onboard. It's a completely other thing to get that director or actor to read it," says one lit agent. "Sometimes it takes three days, other times it takes them three months, so a lot of the issues we run into come down to timing."The involvement of multiple agencies can also cause delays, considering that each has its own idea regarding who is right to topline a particular piece of material.For the raunchy college comedy set up at Universal, UTA and Principal repped Rogen. The tenpercentery also repped Goldberg. Efron's deal was handled by CAA and Alchemy, while the scribes are also repped by CAA. Financing is a key factor that often comes into play when packaging such projects before they get their footing at a studio.A handful of auteurs got their projects up and running thanks to the Annapurna Pictures banner, headed by Megan Ellison.Over the past year, Ellison has come onboard to finance pictures such as Paul Thomas Anderson's "The Master," "The Wettest County" and Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal's untitled project about the hunt for Osama bin Laden. And last May, Creative Artists Agency attached "Fast Five" helmer Justin Lin and producer Robert Cort to the two-picture "Terminator" package that sold to Annapurna for around $20 million in an auction at the Cannes Film Festival. In almost every case, Annapurna has come onboard as part of the packaging process before any of these projects were brought to a studio. (Ellison's brother David, by contrast, has made a name for himself by boarding studio tentpoles, such as "Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol" and the "Star Trek" sequel, at the financing stage.)Outside financing has fostered other nontraditional development.India's Reliance Group invested $325 million in DreamWorks, and gave CAA clients Brad Pitt, Jim Carrey, Brett Ratner, Jay Roach and Julia Roberts $2 million each to develop films. It provided $5 million to Imagine Entertainment to launch an inhouse writers lab to produce scripts. These development funds, however, have yet to yield any projects.Though it may feel like fewer specs are being sold to studios these days, some reps believe the majors are still willing to take on such work if the material feels right, as it was with Fox's "Chronicle," a low-budget horror pic that's already passed $50 million at the domestic box office. And at least one lit agent is adamant that spec sales aren't dead, and that the reason so many go unnoticed is because a simple pitch with no one attached doesn't arrive with the same fanfare that a pedigreed package typically does."Packages just jump out more in the media because of the talent attached," the rep says. "Let's say I sell a pitch for $375,000 but then someone else sells a pitch with Tom Cruise attached. That just makes a bigger splash." What: Studios see pre-packaged projects as more efficient, less costly.The takeaway: Packaging gives filmmakers more control over mid-range budget pics.Return to Movies & Money >> Contact Justin Kroll at justin.kroll@variety.com

New Two Days In New York Teasers Online

And the possibility of another SunriseIt's always a happy day when there's Julie Delpy news, so to send you glowing into the weekend, here are two teaser trailers for Two Days In NY.Following 2007's Two Days In Paris, we now find Delpy's Marion living in the Big Apple, juggling a career and the child she had with Adam Goldberg's Jack (who's now off the scene, sadly).The first of the clips sees her discussing her rather detailed relationship woes with new paramour Mingus (Chris Rock), and the second doesn't feature Delpy, but does feature her father Albert, reprising his role as the irascible Jeannot, grilling a struggling Rock about his politics and career.The film premiered at Sundance last month to a warm reception, and gets a full release in France on March 28.Savour it, because Delpy has intimated that it may be her last acting role, and that she'll concentrate on writing and directing from now on. There's still the possibility of a third Before Sunrise though.Ethan Hawke revealed to Allocine in November that "All three of us [Hawke, Delpy and director Richard Linklater] have been having similar feelings that we're ready to revisit those characters. There's nine years between the first two movies and now it's nine years again, so we really started thinking that would be a good thing to do."Delpy later confirmed to EW that "We're thinking about it," but qualified that with a cautious "I don't think we would do it if we couldn't find the right thing to say. If the third one's not good, it's not good for the two before. We're careful."

Fox moves more Major league baseball games to primetime

Attempting to begin a bigger baseball beachhead on Saturday nights, Fox stated it might broadcast Major league baseball games in primetime for eight consecutive days, the network's most ever. The games is going to be regionalized, beginning May 19 with five options including Boston against Philadelphia and Chicago's Whitened Sox versus. its Cubs. Every team within the U.S. can look a minimum of two times throughout the run. "We are pleased that people had the ability use our partners at Mlb to build up our most extensive primetime schedule yet," stated Fox Sports co-prexy and COO Eric Shanks. "Our hope would be to increase viewership by featuring a lot of teams, create additional exposure for that game's many stars so that they be familiar to some larger group of followers.Inch Fox started experimentation with regular-season Saturday evening broadcasts this year, most particularly in a game title between your NY Yankees and also the La Dodgers that June. Last year, three baseball Saturday nights in May averaged roughly 4.two million total audiences. While ESPN has lengthy offered weekly primetime games -- "Sunday Evening Baseball," for instance, has been around place in excess of 2 decades -- this is the greatest primetime effort with a broadcast network for Major league baseball regular-season games in a single season because the shortlived "Baseball Network" that ABC and NBC combined to try in 1994-95, an attempt which was short-circuited simply through the 1994 players' strike. Before that, you'd have to return to the eighties -- just before ESPN's initial cope with Major league baseball in 1989 -- to locate regular primetime Major league baseball game coverage on the broadcast network. Fox's new schedule could impact local cablers and tv stations, who aren't permitted to broadcast Major league baseball games throughout Fox's Saturday window. Typically, teams have moved non-Fox games from the mid-day window in to the evening, but most probably would need to reverse course throughout this eight-week stretch. Contact Jon Weisman at jon.weisman@variety.com