Nikki Finke

National Lampoon is secretly readying a parody issue of The Hollywood Reporter for release any day. But how will we know the difference? Certainly not by spoofing the latest Vivendi Universal news. The last time Barry Diller and Marvin Davis squared off, singer Michael Jackson was raising bucks for “We......

THE NEW SUBSCRIPTION CARDS FALLING OUT OF Mother Jones magazine ask readers to check one of two boxes: "Yes (I'll gladly subscribe to a news source not owned by some huge corporation)." Or "No (I trust General Electric, AOL Time-Warner and Disney to tell me everything I need to know)."......

First, Los Angeles Times’ Calendar writer Anita Busch was nearly sleeping with the fishes. Now, the veteran reporter -- best known for fighting with bosses at Variety and the Hollywood Reporter -- wants to unhook herself from the newspaper. For months, Busch bombarded L.A. Times editors with e-mails about what......

Even by Hollywood standards, it was horrific treatment. At 2:30 p.m. last Tuesday, longtime Miramax president Mark Gill called his bosses, Miramax co-founders Harvey and Bob Weinstein, with some not unexpected news: Gill was leaving the company when his contract expired in three days to strike out on his own......

Packages wrapped in fuchsia tulle (”because pink was way too obvious“) began arriving around Hollywood by messenger. Inside was a videotape labeled My Dinner With Ovitz, a 12-minute homage to The Godfather, distributed in a limited edition of 75 by two L.A. 40-somethings, director-writer Steve Young and producer Denise David,......

NOT LONG AGO, JIM CARREY WISECRACKED THAT "NO actor had considered talking through his ass" before Ace Ventura. Maybe not, but now actors are acting like asses. That's the only reasonable conclusion given the current self-annihilatory conduct of the Screen Actors Guild. Think the baseball players' union is nuts? From......

NO WONDER THE REST OF THE country hates Hollywood. It doesn't take much to see that the entertainment industry's non-cash contributions to the post-9/11 world don't amount to a hill of beans, to use Casablanca's World War II­era parlance. Remember last September's celebrity telethon for the terrorist victims? It turned......

It wasnt’ long befor last Thursday‘s conference call between financial analysts and Pixar Animation Studios turned to negotiations on a very-much-in-doubt new deal with the Walt Disney Co., Pixar’s partner on huge hits like Toy Story, A Bug‘s Life and Monsters, Inc. ”Just give Disney hell, okay?“ goaded big -media......

  Hollywood has always had an infinite capacity for hypocrisy. But it still comes as a surprise when the entertainment industry hides behind loopholes and won‘t allow the prying eyes of its own nonprofit to monitor the welfare of all animal performers. Yes, our moral outrage might be best reserved......