A Week In the Life of Indiewood, From Disney’s Buscemi to Lions Gate’s Leonardo

Flashback to April 15th, when Lions Gate made the DiCaprio announcement at Cannes. "Leonardo DiCaprio has agreed to play the lead role in Lions Gate Film recently announced feature "American Psycho"," a company press release confirmed, adding that the project would begin "principal photography this fall in New York and a major director is currently being sought." Word spread that the films original director Mary Harron and actor Christian Bale were out, as was the film's $6 million budget was tossed in favor of a reported $40 million price tag (half of which would go to DiCaprio). The actor was said to be surveying a short list of directors to helm the project.

Yesterday, Variety again led with a telling front page story on the saga -- "DiCaprio not quite ready to go 'Psycho'", the Hollywood trade headlined, as it reported the news from the DiCaprio camp that actor was by no means signed to star. An indieWIRE call to Lions Gate yesterday was referred to a Los Angeles public relations firm hired to handle company corporate publicity. The L.A. rep stood by Lions Gate production president Mike Paseornek's statement that seemingly contradicts the Cannes announcement, "We have always understood this to be a situation where Leo was attached to the movie based on the material. We never made claims that he has a deal with us at this point." Yet, when pressed for some sort of clarification, the publicist politely apologized and even joked that indieWIRE should call in with any information we might uncover.

As the week progressed, the business of Indiewood peppered Hollywood trade front pages, from an article about Australian filmmaker Robert Luketic's three picture deal with Miramax, to yesterday's announcement that producer Cary Woods has inked a five-year deal with New Line giving him $10 million in equity for a pact that offers the company theatrical, video, and broadcast rights to projects from the producer's "Independent Pictures" outfit. According to the one report, the total capital infusion into "Independent" could top $100 million.

If any further evidence was needed to prove that Indiewood means business, one would need look no further than the way that companies have chosen to unveil their latest Hollywood pacts. Even though Variety had already revealed the deal, in the case of Luketic Miramax slept on indieWIRE's request for a conversation with the filmmaker, ultimately referring the call to the filmmaker's managers in Los Angeles. Apparently gone are the days of accessibility and simplicity for the twenty-six year old filmmaker who ultimately spoke with indieWIRE by phone from Sydney. And in the case of Woods' "Independent" announcement, a call to the producer's L.A. office was referred back to the Manhattan office of arguably the largest and most influential entertainment public relations firm, PMK. A request for a press release detailing Woods' deal became an unreturned telephone message -- after all, this is Hollywood.

[EDITORS NOTE: Consistent with the way that we reported most business news during Cannes, beginning next week indieWIRE will publish most "Indiewood" biz news in a capsulized format. As always, press releases can be emailed to <news@indiewire.com>, or sent by FAX to the indieWIRE office at 212/581-1857.]