hollywood-spatwatch

Catching Up With The Feuding Redstones

mark · 10/01/07 12:55PM

With the once-boiling conflcit between cold-hearted Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman and the insufficiently treasured DreamWorks team he offended with those two now-infamous little words (indeed, "completely immaterial" will soon totally replace "fuck you" in the Hollywood vernacular) momentarily reduced to a public simmer, there's now time to check in on the status of another intramural corporate spat that recently made headlines. According to today's LAT, Sumner and Shari Redstone, the feudingist first family in all of show business, called a truce in their ongoing succession battle long enough to celebrate a happy occasion over Labor Day:

Paramount's Brad Grey Also Refuses To Admit That Losing Spielberg Will Emotionally Cripple Him

mark · 09/21/07 01:30PM

The emotional feud touched off when Viacom CEO Phillippe Dauman tried to preemptively break Steven Spielberg's heart by telling the world that the national treasure's possible departure from Paramount would not send the executive into a Valium-overdosing tailspin of despair (and which incited outraged DreamWorks partner Jeffrey Katzenberg to publicly attempt to claw out Dauman's eyes) spills into the pages of today's LAT, where studio emperor Brad Grey was induced to comment on HolyShitWhatIfSpielbergLeavesUsGate. For his part, Grey—who convinced boss Sumner Redstone to buy DreamWorks in late 2005 so that his studio might actually have some movies to release the following year—seems to be toeing the company line:

Dauman/Katzenberg Feud Over Spielberg Officially Upgraded To Catfight

mark · 09/20/07 10:51AM


We know that we already mentioned Var's item about DreamWorks Animation romantic enforcer Jeffrey Katzenberg's response to Viacom CEO Phillippe "Just Fucking Try And Give Me The 'It's Not You, It's Me' Conversation, I Dare You" Dauman's thoughtless comments that the possible end of Steven Spielberg's relationship with Paramount would be "immaterial" to his heart's "bottom line," but the dramatic headline hanging over the story in today's print edition has suddenly reframed Katzenberg's retort.