Word: paramount
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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...
...buzz word for the 1990s, especially in the entertainment business these days, is global. Paramount Communications last week announced that it had taken a major step in that direction by purchasing a 49% stake in the British firm Zenith, Europe's leading independent television programmer. A subsidiary of Carlton Communications, Zenith last year produced such dramas as The Paradise Club and Inspector Morse in Britain, as well as the romantic comedy Finnegan Begin Again...
...Paramount declined to say how much it had paid for the acquisition, but Carlton's 1988 annual report put revenues for the production company at $95 million. "The Zenith acquisition represents our most significant entry into the international market," said Mel Harris, president of Paramount's Television Group. "By aligning ourselves with the United Kingdom's major independent producer, we are positioning ourselves for the 1990s and 1992, when Europe's trade barriers fall...
...that Murphy's worst idea is his own character. His box-office power having brought Paramount groveling to its knees, offering him any indulgence he wants, Murphy has come to fancy himself a killer, and that is the role he tries to play here: a psychopathic hit man. He is not a good enough actor for this particular assignment, nor has he the skill as writer and director to use cold-blooded murder (three times) as the topper for gag sequences. Once or twice his former sweet hipness glimmers through, and he has written a funny...