How I Met Your Mother

EXCLUSIVE: As the Cannes Film Festival announces the winners of the fest’s competing films, the big winner in the market portion of the festival is Harvey Weinstein, hands down. Weinstein has just closed two more acquisition deals, leaving Cannes with six films under his arm, and another two for his multi-platform arm Radius-TWC. The Weinstein Company has completed a deal for U.S. distribution rights to Carol, a film that shoots in the fall, directed by Far From Heaven helmer Todd Haynes for HanWay Films. TWC has also just completed the acquisition of U.S. rights to The Young And Prodigious Spivet, the 3D film that reunites Weinstein with Amelie helmer Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Carol stars Cate Blanchett and Mia Wasikowska and is based on a Patricia Highsmith novella adapted by Phillis Nagy. It tells the dual stories of two women: a twenty-something woman working in a department store hoping for a better life; and a wife trapped in a loveless marriage, afraid for her daughter if she bolts. Helena Bonham Carter heads the cast of Jeunet’s 3D film, about a 12-year-old cartographer who secretly leaves his family’s ranch in Montana where he lives with his cowboy father and scientist mother, to travel across the country on board a freight train to receive an award at the Smithsonian Institute. CAA brokered the latter deal. While the pace of buying ... Read More »

A look at key moments this past week in the wrongful death trial in Los Angeles between Michael Jackson's mother, Katherine Jackson, and concert giant AEG Live LLC, and what is expected at court in the week ahead: