News

Exclusive: Hollywood is littered with great scripts that never made it to the screen.

But a new podcast is offering writers a fresh chance for their story to be discovered. Table Read will give listeners the chance to discover never-before-heard scripts from industry players and award-winning talent.

Each episode features actors, comedians, musicians and influencers performing scripts from established writers and producers including The Vampire Diaries writer Sonny Postiglione, Bobby Smith Jr., writer of Jada Pinkett Smith-fronted film Jason’s Lyric, Peter Lefcourt, who wrote on Desperate Housewives and Pearse Lehane, who wrote on HBO’s Spanish drama series The Head.

The scripts, previously accessible only to studio heads and top agents, are brought to life each week by these showrunners, engineers and directors.

Table Read comes from exec producers Jack Levy, who produced iHeartMedia’s Kelsey Grammer-voiced series The Lower Bottoms, former MTV exec Mark Knell and Shaan Sharma,...

Exclusive: Universal Television, a division of NBCUniversal Content Studios, has optioned Peter Lefcourt’s novel, The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story, for development as a high-end television series.

Oscar and Emmy winner David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) is attached to direct and will co-write the pilot with Lefcourt. Frankel and Lefcourt are executive producers.

The acclaimed seriocomic novel, Lefcourt’s self-proclaimed “darkly comic look at homophobia in baseball,” is about a happily married, father of two, star shortstop Randy Dreyfus, who falls in love with his second baseman in the middle of a pennant race. Dreyfus’ affair creates reverberations for the World Series. In today’s world of sexual identity issues, that make headlines even on sports pages, the storyline is particularly relevant.

The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story was initially published in 1992 by Random House in hardcover, then in 1993 by Harper Perennial as a paperback (14 printings).

A prolific...

Exclusive: Vince Marcello, who adapted, produced and directed Netflix’s teen romantic comedy The Kissing Booth starring Joey King, has signed on to direct and produce The Royal Runaway, a movie adaptation of Lindsay Emory’s recently published romantic novel. The Gotham Group is producing in the pair’s second deal this month.

The plot centers on a modern-day princess who is forced to team with a roguish spy to find out what happened to the fiancé who left her at the altar, and in the process, chucks the rulebook to create her own happily-ever-after. The book was published this month by Simon & Schuster’s Gallery imprint in the U.S. and Hachette’s Headline in the UK.

Marcello earlier this month signed on to direct a film adaptation of Peter Lefcourt’s 1992 novel The Dreyfus Affair about a baseball star who falls in love with his second baseman.

Exclusive: Vince Marcello, who recently directed the Netflix original film, The Kissing Booth, has signed on to direct a film adaption to Peter Lefcourt’s Nyt bestseller, The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story. Published in 1992, the book centered around Randy Dreyfus, a baseball star who seemingly has everything, beautiful wife and family, fame, money. Things take a turn when, in the midst of a pennant race, Randy realizes he has fallen in love with his second baseman.

”In ”The Dreyfus Affair: A Love Story” Peter accomplished something extraordinary – a double play, in fact. With a skilled hand, he turned the spotlight on an aspect of human relationships, which before that time, was relegated to the shadowy corners of professional sports. He did this, however, with humor, heart, and humanity,” said Marcello. “I have always been a fan of the novel and I am now so delighted to be able to...

Deadline founder and former editor-in-chief Nikki Finke is up and running with Hollywood Dementia, a new website devoted to fiction showbiz stories written by Hollywood insiders. She tells me the site gets off the ground today with offerings from Hollywood lawyer Bertram Fields, David Letterman's head writer Bill Scheft, Antonia Bogdanovich (daughter of Peter Bogdanovich and Polly Platt), and TV and feature writers Peter Lefcourt, Cynthia Mort, Jay Abramowitz & Tom Musca…...

Updated With Corrected Membership Figures: TV writer and producer Shawn Ryan was the top vote-getter in the WGA West’s board election, which saw a turnout of 22.4% of the guild’s members casting ballots. Ryan, creator and showrunner of The Shield and The Chicago Code, got more votes than all of the incumbents in the race, with his name appearing on nearly 67% of the 1,835 ballots cast. The guild has more than 21,000 members, according to its latest filing with the Department of Labor. The guild said there were about 8,200 members eligible to vote.

All five incumbents — Chip Johannessen, Scott Alexander, Michael Oates Palmer, Katherine Fugate and Marjorie David — won re-election to two-year terms on the board. Fugate finished second in the voting, with her name appearing on 1,124 ballots (61.3%), followed by Johannessen (1,071, 58.4%); Alexander (965, 52.6%); Aaron Mendelsohn (964, 52.5%); David (952, 51.9%); Palmer (817, 44.5%); Jonathan Fernandez (722, 39.3%); and Peter Lefcourt, who was elected to a one-year term (648, 35.3%), filling the vacancy...

The WGA West has issued its final list of 18 candidates, including five incumbents, who will be competing for eight seats on the its board of directors in the September election. Incumbents Chip Johannessen, Scott Alexander, Michael Oates Palmer, Katherine Fugate and Marjorie David will square off against challengers Shawn Ryan, Chris Derrick, Cynthia Riddle, Peter Lefcourt, Shernold Edwards, Peter Murrieta, Doug Atchison, Stan Chervin, Jonathan Fernandez, Courtney Ellinger, Mark Amato, Aaron Mendelsohn, and Aaron Fullerton. The guild will host its annual Candidates Night forum, where members can grill the candidates, on September 3 at the guild’s La headquarters. Ballots […]...

Recent films about women's sexuality like The To Do List and For a Good Time, Call . . . have grounded their characters' sexploits with subplots about female friendship. But the quietly trailblazing Sweet Talk eschews such niceties, even to the point of neglecting character development. Instead, this extended erotic fantasy is single-minded in its exploration of what phone sex geared toward women's pleasure might look like.

Unfortunately, that's where writer Peter Lefcourt's imagination falters. His notions about female fantasies involve fur coats, ballrooms, and duels between men &mda...

At its recent annual general meeting the Writers Guild Foundation elected Barbara Corday as its new President. Corday, who with her writing partner Barbara Avedon co-created the groundbreaking television series Cagney & Lacey, was the first woman to become president of a major television production entity (Columbia Pictures Television); she later become head of prime-time programs at CBS, again the first woman to do so. Most recently she was chair of the Film and Television production arm at the USC School of Cinema and Television. Corday replaces Chris Brancato, who has served the maximum number of terms. The board also elected seven new trustees to the board. The new trustees are: publicist Craig Bankey, screenwriter Lowell Ganz, agent Nancy Josephson, and television writer-producers Marta Kauffman, Bill Lawrence, Jan Oxenberg and David Shore. Trustees are elected for three year terms. Most Foundation trustees are members of the Writers Guild of America, west.

Return with us again to Movieline's One-Page Screenplay project, which aims to transform Hollywood by producing scripts so brief, even a studio executive might finish them. The latest contributor to the series is the Emmy-winning Peter Lefcourt, who's currently a co-executive producer on Desperate Housewives and also has written for Cagney & Lacey, Remington Steele, Scarecrow & Mrs. King, and Showtime's Hollywood satire Beggars & Choosers, which he created.

In addition to his TV credits, Lefcourt recently wrote the William H. Macy film The Deal, and his comic novel The Dreyfus Affair (about a love affair between two Major League Baseball players) inspired one of Hollywood's most storied development histories. A revival of his play La Ronde de Lunch opens October 9 at the Skylight Theatre in Los Angeles; for now, though, we have his one-page screenplay, Sunrise/Sunset.

• Born from a festival that had everything to do with laughs and nothing to do with cinema, now in their 12th edition, the Just For Laughs Film Fest have pretty much developed their identity, attracted name films and talent. This year's fest will begin with a Bang! or I should say a Bong! with David Gordon Green and the Apatow team (Seth Rogen, co-writer Evan Goldberg, co-star Danny McBride) coming down with one of the rare advance premieres of Pineapple Express and a Q&A. Other special guests and accompanying films include: Father and son team of the Reitmans (Ivan and Jason for those coming out of a coma) presenting a Master Class on filmmaking on July 18. Sundance hit Baghead from Jay & Mark Duplass gets a screening on July 14th and the 20th studio fair with Rainn Wilson (The Office) starring in The Rocker. The Deal – a film adapted

...

Sundance Film Festival

PARK CITY -- Hollywood satires are always an iffy proposition. They can often seem too insular and inbred to capture a general audience. Yet there are classics in the genre, going back to "Singin' in the Rain." And the HBO hit series "Entourage" offers a lot of wickedly funny insider insights. But "The Deal", which had its world premiere here, is a wacky Hollywood satire that never catches fire.

The film began with a novel by Peter Lefcourt, who once toiled in Hollywood himself and has recently become better known as a novelist. But this is one of those outrageous comic tales that probably worked better on the page. When something is translated to the more literal medium of film, it needs a minimal grounding in reality, which this film lacks.

Here's the premise: Charlie Berns (William H. Macy) is a has-been producer on the verge of suicide when his nephew (Jason Ritter) comes knocking on his door with a new script based on the life of Benjamin Disraeli, the long-ago British prime minister. Sounds like a hard sell, but it turns out that Hollywood's top black action star, Bobby Mason (LL Cool J), has recently converted to Judaism and is seeking movies with Jewish themes.

The story of Disraeli might not seem like the easiest fit for Bobby, but Charlie has the idea of revamping and modernizing it. So it turns into "Ben Disraeli, Freedom Fighter", which allows for plenty of mayhem along with Hebrew blessings for the star to deliver while he kicks butt.

On paper, the story might sound amusing, but it is so far-fetched that we never buy into a minute of it. This might have been a lesser problem if the script were wittier, but the laughs are very intermittent, to put it kindly, and so we are left to contemplate the unlikeliness of all the plot developments. The film bears some resemblance to Steve Martin's "Bowfinger", another film about a failed producer trying to get into business with a successful black movie star. But that film, while equally far-fetched, was sidesplittingly funny thanks to splendid writing and acting.

Nothing seems even remotely plausible in "The Deal", which has been adapted by Macy and director Steven Schachter, long-term pals who worked together on several acclaimed television movies. The script's implausibility carries over to the central relationship between Charlie and a savvy studio executive, Deidre Hearn (Meg Ryan).

At first, Deidre is understandably skeptical of Charlie, but when she learns that her studio has been sold to a Canadian company, she gets drunk and jumps into bed with Charlie, a leap that is almost impossible to accept. But even small plot points defy credibility. When a studio suit arrives to shut down the production, Charlie decides to distract him with a hooker. We can accept that she might delay his visit to the set for three hours, but three days?

Macy does bring a lot of energy to his role, and Ryan also gives a shrewd performance when the script doesn't ask her to behave improbably. Most of the supporting players are rather flat, but Elliott Gould has an amusing cameo as Bobby's rabbi, hired as an associate producer on the film.

Much of the film was shot in South Africa, where the film-within-the-film goes to save money. No doubt that was the same reason for the location work on "The Deal". Technical credits are strong. Boxoffice prospects are dim.

THE DEAL

Peace Arch Entertainment

Muse Entertainment

Credits:

Director: Steven Schachter

Screenwriters: William H. Macy, Steven Schachter

Based on the novel by: Peter Lefcourt

Producers: Michael Prupas, Irene Litinsky, Keri Nakamoto

Executive producers: Gary Howsam, Lewin Webb, Jason Bark, Matt Lane

Director of photography: Paul Sarossy

Production designer: Guy Lalande

Music: Jeff Beal

Editors: Matthew Friedman, Susan Maggi

Cast:

Charlie Berns: William H. Macy

Deidre Hearn: Meg Ryan

Bobby Mason: LL Cool J

Lionel Travitz: Jason Ritter

Rabbi Seth Gutterman: Elliott Gould

Fiona Hicks: Fiona Glascott

Levi Rosenwald: Sharon Reginiano

Nigel Bland: John Carson

Grier Clark: David Hunt

Ian Chadwick: Jeremy Crutchley

Running time -- 98 minutes

No MPAA rating...

Production Weekly reports that William H. Macy and Lisa Kudrow are set to star in the romantic comedy The Deal. Macy reunites with Door to Door director Steven Schacter to adapt Peter Lefcourt's tome about a Hollywood production in Europe that gose horribly wrong. Macy portrays a washed-up film producer who hooks up with a struggling creative exec (Kudrow) to save his plagued-riddled film. Shooting starts October 9 in Romania.

NEW YORK -- Focus Features' Brokeback Mountain might not have earned the ultimate accolade of a best picture Academy Award, but with three Oscars to its name, including Ang Lee's win as best director, the film ultimately may prove to have more impact on Hollywood than any other of this year's nominees. Having already earned $127 million worldwide, Brokeback is expected to pave the way for more gay-themed films, and in its wake, other projects about gay characters that have long languished in development are suddenly looking more viable. " 'Brokeback' tells people who are risk-phobic that you can get good actors to appear in your film and you can make money," said novelist Peter Lefcourt, who is attempting to revive one such gay project. "If they're convinced of that, they'll finance the movie."...

A decision by the WGA West board to hold off on publishing a round-table discussion about the union's history led to cries of censorship by four of the participants. The interview of guild leaders took place in July and has yet to run in the in-house Written By magazine. It was originally scheduled to appear in the October issue. "Those who took part in the conversation are without any question being censored by the largest union of English-speaking writers in the world," said Larry Gelbart, who joined fellow panelists Lionel Chetwynd, Lynn Roth and Michael Russnow in issuing a statement Friday condemning the board's decision to hold off on publishing the article. WGAW spokeswoman Cheryl Rhoden confirmed that the board has decided not to publish the article at this time, adding that it was "being reviewed for future publication subject to editorial changes." Board member Peter Lefcourt moderated the panel, with the political spectrum said to range from Gelbart on the left to Chetwynd on the right. Topics included contract negotiations, strikes, past elections and current and past staff and officeholders. There has been speculation that, in addition to its sheer length, the discussion needed to be edited to remove some potentially defamatory comments about current or former union leaders. Guild officials declined to address those allegations.

Victoria Riskin has been re-elected to a second two-year term as president of the WGA West, defeating newcomer Eric Hughes. Also re-elected was WGA East president Herb Sargent. And while the guild decided not to publicly release the results of the voting -- a break from recent WGA election protocol -- it was revealed in the "members only" section of the WGA Web site that Riskin received 846 votes, while Hughes received 425. A total of 7,600 ballots were sent out, with 1,378 returned. Also re-elected to the WGA West leadership were vp Charles Holland (905 votes) and secretary-treasurer Patric Verrone (693 votes). Elected to the WGA West board of directors were Elias Davis (691 votes), Irma Kalish (664 votes), Peter Lefcourt (663 votes), Melissa Rosenberg (519 votes), Tim O'Donnell (466 votes) and incumbents Robert King (672 votes), Don M. Mankiewicz (500 votes) and J.F. Lawton (483 votes).