Word: paramount
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...gripe among disgruntled Hollywood screenwriters, but it took an outsider like columnist Art Buchwald to put the allegation to the test. In a star-studded courtroom drama, Buchwald cast a bright light on the machinations of Hollywood's power brokers. Last week a Los Angeles judge ruled that Paramount Pictures used Buchwald's script proposal as the basis for its 1988 blockbuster Coming to America and failed to pay him accordingly. Paramount plans to appeal...
...dispute goes back to 1983, when Paramount agreed to buy the rights to Buchwald's proposal It's a Crude, Crude World, a tale of an African royal who ventures to the U.S. and falls in love in a Washington ghetto. Paramount renamed it King for a Day and began developing it as a vehicle for Eddie Murphy, but abandoned the project two years later, having paid Buchwald a total...
...proposal. Murphy, who received screen credit as the creator of the story, testified in a written deposition last month that he conceived the idea for the film in the wake of a painful romantic breakup. But Judge Harvey Schneider ruled that the parallels were substantial and that Paramount and Murphy had known about Buchwald's original story, although he stressed that his verdict was in no way meant to "disparage the creative talent" of Murphy...
...Buchwald and his lawyer to find the profit. Joked Buchwald: "We suspect it's in Gloria Swanson's dressing room." Of the $300 million gross, half was kept by theaters showing the film. The rest went for shooting the picture (one cost estimate: $40 million), distribution fees charged by Paramount ($50 million), studio overhead ($5 million), film prints and promotion ($15 million), Murphy's salary ($8 million) and other expenses...
...former merchandising director for Penthouse, Steel rose to production chief at Paramount in 1985. At Columbia she fired a few blanks, notably the $23 million Casualties of War. But she scored major hits with When Harry Met Sally . . . (gross revenues: $92 million) and Ghostbusters II ($112 million), pushing Columbia from last place among the major studios in 1988 to No. 3 last year. Even so, Steel, 43, figured her job was in jeopardy when Sony bought Columbia last September and installed producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters as co-chairmen. She departs with a pay package said to be worth...