• Brad Pitt will produce and may star in an outer space version of The Odyssey for Warner Bros., and the studio is looking to sign George Miller as director. It is indeed an interesting project for Pitt since he also starred in Troy, which was kind of an adaptation of Homer’s The Iliad. But even more interesting is the fact that this isn’t the first Odyssey in space movie announced this week. On Monday, Ridley Scott described his next project as “The Odyssey by way of Blade Runner.”
• Pitt may also play Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (labeled one of the “New Einsteins” in the latest Mental_Floss) in an adaptation of the nonfiction book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game from screenwriter Steve Zaillian (American Gangster) and director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada).
• Star Wars geek Kevin Smith is at last making his own sci-fi movie, a father-son comedy set in outer space that “will reference other sci-fi movies.” Hopefully it will be as good as Spaceballs and Galaxy Quest, but looking at both the history of sci-fi comedies and the Bluntman and Chronic stuff at the end of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back leaves me thinking it will be more 2001: A Space Travesty.
• It’s that time of the year when studios decide if their Oscar hopefuls are ready or not. Dimension is currently weighing the possibility of The Road being pushed to 2009, and now Paramount has announced that expected contender The Soloist won’t be released until March while Defiance will barely make the calendar cut with a limited drop on December 31.
• On this crowded news day, here are some other notable bits: David Bergstein is consolodating several companies, including THINKfilm and Capitol Films, for a new venture headed by former New Line exec David Tuckerman;  F. Gary Gray replaces Frank Darabont as director of Law-Abiding Citizen; Bourne 4 moves ahead with a screenwriter; Max Payne is expected to be #1 at the box office this weekend, unless of course some figures from Florida are miscounted permitting Oliver Stone’s W. to win the top spot.

The headline to this Hollywood Reporter story is pure provocation: “Has ThinkFilm Lost Its Mind?” The three pages that follow offer little in the way of analysis of the sanity of the studio’s recent moves; instead, Alex Ben Block contrasts angry accusations from filmmakers who claim to have been wronged by the distributor, with defensive statements from Think/Capitol Films head David Bergstein.

The big takeaway (beyond Betstain’s annoying insistence that “he has image problems because nobody in Hollywood really knows him”) is his repeated claim that he’s not really concerned with the short term  profits and losses associated with theatrical releases (which probably won’t sound like news to certain filmmakers he’s worked with over the past year). Instead, he’s got his eyes on building a digital rights library that can be leveraged when the current modes of distribution and consumption become extinct. “Our business plan is not so much about the movie business,” he told Block. “It’s really to build a global digital distribution business. It’s based on the expectation that in the not too distant future most content will be delivered digitally and on-demand.”

And apparently, he’s perfectly content enraging filmmakers and creditors today in order to come out ahead of the flop on a longer timeline. More details––including details on Bergstein’s future acquisitions plans, the status of David O. Russell’s beleaguered Think production, and testimony from apparently the only Think-associated filmmaker willing to come out and defend the company’s leader––after the jump.

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Anthony Kaufman brings news that THINKFilm has given up distribution rights on Azazel Jacobs’ Momma’s Man to Kino International. THINK announced their acquisition of the film in early March, about six weeks after the film was unveiled at Sundance.  Just last week, THINK’s Mark Urman told Kaufmann that they planned on going through with the release of both Momma’s and Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, saying that if the company “didn’t think we could get what they deserve, I wouldn’t be proceeding with them. These films are not cash-intensive films. These films will get everything they need.” No word yet on whether or not the troubled company still thinks they can give Marina Zenovich’s doc what it deserves.

• Nailed, that David O. Russell film that keeps having to halt production because of THINKFilm’s financial troubles, has shut down for the fourth time. Meanwhile, yesterday THINK closed its Toronto office, which housed 25 employees as recently as the end of 2007. Randy Manis, VP of acquisitions and a co-founder of the company, is one Toronto-based exec cutting ties with the company;”It has not been the easiest time in the company with so many people we worked with wanting things,” he told Variety.
• The apparent unwatchability of Hancock is a big topic of conversation here in Los Angeles this week. Todd McCarthy at Variety is the first to go public with his distaste; he warns, “Although it will inevitably open very large, this odd and perplexing aspiring tentpole will provide a real test of Smith’s box office invincibility.”
• 96 countries have been sent entry forms for the Best Foreign Language Oscar nomination.
• X Files creator Chris Carter is apparently directing a secret movie starring David Cassidy’s daughter and rapper Xzibit. It may be secret for a reason.

Yesterday, I posted about Jamie Stuart’s In Spring, a video which had the filmmaker visiting the offices of THINKFilm and turning an interview with Werner Herzog (ostensibly occasioned by the impending release of Encounters at the End of the World) into––I thought––a brilliant piece of satire on the current state of indie film distribution in general and, unavoidably, the rumored struggles of THINKFilm in particular. It was also, on a not entirely subtextual level, about the thorny relationship between journalists and their subjects. Stuart has been doing meta festival coverage for awhile, but In Spring felt like a giant leap forward in his critique of the press process. In my post, I wondered how he was getting away with it. “What does he tell publicists he’s going to do?” I wrote. “Will any of them ever let him do it again?

By the end of the day yesterday, Stuart had removed the video from his website. He replaced it with a short video response, in which he explained that although THINK had no legal recourse against him, when they asked him to take the video down he complied based on the inference that somebody’s job was on the line.

I was away from the computer for most of yesterday afternoon and was kept abreast of the ongoing status of In Spring via emails and IMs on my phone. It wasn’t until today that I noticed that around the same time that Stuart was being pressured to remove the video––and just about when a FILMMAKER Magazine blog post about Spring was being removed––another blog post popped up, defending THINK’s right to protect themselves from negative reporting. Or, “reporting.”

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Can he do this? Is this legal? How does he do it? What interview questions does he ask? What does he tell publicists he’s going to do? Will any of them ever let him do it again?

All of those questions, and surely more, are sparked by Jamie Stuart’s latest video, In Spring. Described as a tribute to Bunuel and Dali, it’s a highly stylized document of Stuart’s visit to the New York offices of embattled distributor THINKFilm to interview Werner Herzog about his latest film, Encounters at the End of the World. Except Herzog is playing “Gunter Merkwurdigeliebe, THINKfilm Chairman, CEO and President.” Except I don’t think he knows that. After the interview, Stuart’s voiceover inform us, his “crew took part in snorting lines of Grade A Bolivian cocaine with the executives,” an experience which led them to conclude that “the film industry is as solid and secure as ever.” Well, after all that, who wouldn’t?

Watch it here.

Above is a screencap of a ScreenDaily headline as seen in my Google Reader yesterday. I don’t actually subscribe to ScreenDaily, so I couldn’t read the story, but it appears to indicate that troubled distributor ThinkFilm’s international sales division has taken on the job of repping the troubling Down and Dirty Pictures, as well as the latest film from the guy who made Il Postino, for sale in Cannes.

This *could* be part of the answer to the question posed at the top of AJ Schnack’s second post today on THINK’s troubles: “What is Mark Urman doing in Cannes when the company has no money to pay anyone?” But it seems like the situation has become a little too dire for THINKFilm to bail themselves out on a couple of commissions.
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• The Variety headline: “Production Resumes on [David O'Russell's] Nailed,” which had been shut down due to the production company’s failure to pay union fees last week. The real story: ThinkFilm, and its financial backers, Capitol Films, are having trouble paying the bills. Not only did Alex Gibney threaten a bankruptcy lawsuit after a promised bonus for his Oscar win for Taxi to the Dark Side never materialized, but the mini studio is apparently in a such a cash crunch that they’re having trouble paying for newspaper ads for their current releases, and are expected to stay out of the buying fray at Cannes.
• Another day, another sign that I should stop eating bagels whilst reading the trades, lest I choke to death: The Weinstein Company is making a live-action feature version of Fraggle Rock.
• Steve Martin has sold a pitch to Paramount for a comedy called From Zero to Sixty, which would star he and Diane Keaton. Also, Pink Panther 3 is coming! You can exhale!

• The Cannes Film Festival will show a classic Warner Brothers film every night of the fest, including I am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang and Dirty Harry, as part of a tribute to the studio’s 85th anniversary. Also on tap: film critic Richard Schickel’s doc, You Must Remember This: The Warner Bros. Story.
• John Waters is making a Christmas movie! And it’s gonna star Johnny Knoxville and Parker Posey! The film was reportedly once setup at New Line; this Hollywood Reporter story implies that it was abandoned during that company’s mom and dad took its keys away, and that ThinkFilm “is said to be in talks to come aboard.”
• On Tuesday, Variety negatively reviewed the new Broadway musical Glory Days, pejoratively likening it to a certain “digital revolution”-enabled movie movement that has “democratized the filmmaking process, opening the floodgates for kids straight out of school with no life experience and no stories to tell to start making navel-gazing movies.” Today, the trade reports that Glory Days has ended its run after one show.

I’ve been tracking the odd pop cultural situation that awaits this month’s release of The Tracey Fragments for awhile now. The film, which I’ve written about before, stars Juno phenom Ellen Page; it premiered at Berlin in 2007 and played tons of festivals, but by year’s end had failed to secure U.S. theatrical distribution. Then, in February of this year, when Page was at the peak of her powers as a precocious Oscar nominee and face of one of the biggest “surprise” hits in recent memory, Tracey was picked up by ThinkFilm for domestic distribution.

This is a film which, despite positive reviews and an award from Berlin, went almost completely unnoticed when it screened at Toronto in September, largely because it didn’t have a distributor that could afford to hire track suited boys to pass out branded Tic Tacs on its behalf. And yet, as soon as ThinkFilm put out a new trailer for the film, it promptly attracted a bunch of negative blog attention, ranging from unfair to inaccurate.

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• IFC has acquired Ballast for day-and-date release in a deal apparently worth “a six-figures…plus gross participation and a real P&A commitment.” Lance Hammer’s excellent drama premiered last month at Sundance; see my review here and Kevin’s interview with Hammer and the film’s cast here.
• Diane Garrett says reporters at yesterday’s Oscar nominee’s luncheon tried to keep the conversation light––what are you wearing, etc––but stars like Viggo Mortensen, George Clooney and Michael Moore kept returning to the issue of the writers strike. Everyone agreed that unless the strike is full resolved by Oscar night, AMPAS can throw whatever kind of alternate event they like, but not a single SAG or WGA member will show up.
• Beastie Boy Adam Yauch has hired two former ThinkFilm employees, David Fenkel and Dan Berger, to help him start a “a full-service film distribution company” called Oscilloscope Pictures. Fenkel’s summing up of the curation strategy: “We do the films we want to do.”

• The MPAA has rejected a proposed one-sheet poster for Alex Gibney’s documentary Taxi to the Dark Side. The original design incorporated an image from a news photo, of a hooded detainee flanked by two soldiers. The MPAA says since they won’t allow hoods on posters for torture porn, they can’t allow similar imagery to promote a torture doc. Distributor ThinkFilm plans to appeal.
• Brad Pitt is in talks to replace Heath Ledger, who was previously cast opposite Sean Penn, in Terrence Malick’s upcoming drama, Tree of Life. There are still few details to report about the project itself, although I guess we can reasonably deduce that whatever character Ledger was going to play has suddenly become about 14 years older.
• Midwestern exhibition chain Marcus Theaters has declined to book Sweeney Todd on any of its 49 screens, on the grounds that Paramount is asking for too much money for the prints. This seems like a late-game decision, considering the film is scheduled to open semi-wide on Friday, but Paramount says the release will be unaffected.
• Nancy Buirski is stepping down from her role as head of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, in order to create and manage “a fund to incubate and produce independent docus and fiction films.”

• J.J. Abrams says he will “honor his contractual obligation to work as a director” on his upcoming Star Trek reinvention, but will also serve some time in the picket lines outside Paramount, where writers are apparently chanting things like “Who’s got more money than they can count? Paramount!” (There’s no indication as to who raised their pencil to write that one.) Also seen on picket lines yesterday: James L. Brooks, Tina Fey, and the writers of Lost.
• Meanwhile, Hollywood’s two most beloved presidential candidates both issued statements yesterday in support of the writers. Barack Obama characterized the fight as “a test of whether media corporations are going to give writers a fair share of the wealth their work creates or continue concentrating profits in the hands of their executives.” Hillary Clinton was, predictably, a little less acerbic in her criticism of those executives. “I support the Writers Guild’s pursuit of a fair contract that pay them for their work in all mediums,” Clinton said. “I hope the producers and writers will return to the bargaining table.”
• American Film Market is the last event where indie producers can close projects that will be wrapped before the SAG and Directors Guild reach their own pre-strike deadline in March, and so far it looks like slow going. Said Mark Urman of ThinkFilm: “Actors normally on a one on/one off indie/studio film schedule now are looking for big paydays in big, stupid Hollywood movies.”

• It’s official: The Writers Guild will strike, as soon as Monday morning. It still seems like the impact will be focused on TV, at least for the time being. Les Moonves insists that CBS doesn’t need writers to make it through the season (although he didn’t comment on how the strike will effect late night shows like David Letterman’s). SAG is pledging solidarity, but has advised its members that if they’re under contract, they must go to work. The Teamsters say they won’t cross picket lines, to which ABC responded: “If you make a decision not to cross a picket line by another union such as the WGA, know that you are refusing to perform your duties on a day that you have a call and that the Studio has the right to replace you.” More on this clusterfuck as it unfolds.
• Natalie Portman has signed a two-picture deal for her production company with Jeff Skoll’s Participant Productions. She’s separately setting up her feature directorial debut, an adaptation of Amos Oz’s memoir A Tale of Love and Darkness. The script will be written by Naomi Foner, who is the mother of Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal.
• David Fincher will direct an adaptation of the graphic novel The Killer for Paramount.
• Variety confirms a rumor that was in the NY Post a couple of days ago: THINKFilm has shelved a planned theatrical microrelease for Bordertown, and will only distribute the film on DVD. It’s the reteaming of Jennifer Lopez with her Selena director, Gregory Nava, and it was allegedly booed at the Berlin Film Festival.