Nikki Finke

If you listen to Warner Bros.’ version of the back story behind The Hangover, this weekend’s No. 1 film and the third-highest R-rated comedy opening ever, it sounds so very simple, like a class in Hit Moviemaking 101. And, I’m assured, the total pay of all three lead actors doesn’t......

Beginning June 1, Hollywood’s newest talent agency, WME Entertainment, will hold a series of meetings to merge its two tenpercenteries Endeavor and William Morris. There’s even a meeting planned at the home of Ari Emanuel, Endeavor’s co-founder, and now WME co-president. But no one inside or outside the agency biz......

MGM Fights To Survive And you think your monthly credit-card payments are steep? Faced with $3.7 billion in debt due in July 2012, beleaguered MGM will pay $250 million in interest alone by April 2010. Just think if that money could be spent on actual film production. Shame on Harry......

Oh, sure, it looks like the start of a beautiful friendship now. On April 27, three of the Endeavor partners who will sit on the new William Morris Endeavor Entertainment board, Ari Emanuel, Patrick Whitesell and Adam Venit, were shaking hands with agents and staff at the William Morris offices......

Over the past week, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, the fourth in the Marvel/20th Century Fox franchise, was illegally pirated onto the Web and downloaded millions of times from file-sharing Web sites. “It’s been like Whac-A-Mole,” a studio exec tells me. “Every time we get it removed from one site, it pops......

The rumors of a William Morris-Endeavor merger had been around for months and months, and some phone calls between the two major agencies were exchanged after the end of the writers’ strike a year ago. But the reality is that these deals aren’t done overnight. Like everything in Hollywood that......

There’s more trouble for Jeff Zucker and Ben Silverman. NBC’s upcoming sitcom Parks and Recreation was supposed to be a real winner since the mockumentary comes from Greg Daniels and Michael Schur of The Office, and stars SNL alumna Amy Poehler. I say “supposed” because there are problems galore in......

Warner Bros.’ superhero doomsday thriller with no stars and lots of violence opened to a $55.2 million weekend. That’s lower than the $60 million–plus which the studio was hoping for Watchmen. Exit polling showed that the audience was overwhelmingly male and older. It also showed moviegoers didn’t necessarily like the......