SUNDAY AM: Disney / Pixar’s Ratatouille cooked up a winning recipe as America’s No. 1 movie, opening big with $47.2 mil this weekend from a bountiful 3,940 theaters. Surprisingly, it performed equally well on Friday as it did Saturday featuring the famed kiddie matinees. But Remy The Rat’s debut is still well below…

I didn’t know Joel Siegel personally until I started Deadline Hollywood Daily. So I was incredibly flattered when he emailed me one day saying he was a huge fan of the website, and loved reading my caustic Oscar commentary. Joel rightfully patted himself on the back for his own best line to describe how interminable…

FRIDAY AM: Yes, it’s the start of another nailbiter for gross receipts this summer weekend as blockbusters bust a move in movie theaters. Right now my box office gurus are saying the totals for both films by Sunday look neck-and-neck: between $40 million to $45 million. Naturally, Fox especially is trying to lower…

Jay Leno tonight speculated that the iPhone for sale Friday comes with “its own cappucino maker and nose hair trimmer”. I hear the Hollywood version has an assistant whacker. It’s no biggie if you score the Ultimate Hand Job tomorrow. Surest sign of showbiz status? Those who got their iPhones last week, last…

… According to the webzine produced by New York University’s Department of Journalism, DHD was one of the 20 “Blogs We Like” chosen for study by the undergraduate course “Digital Journalism: Blogging”. (Spring 2007. Instructor: Patrick Phillips, editor & founder of I Want Media). Here is journalism student Cristina…

All I can say is that I sincerely hope the future talk about United Artists is more focused on film profits than on Tom Cruise’s Scientology. (See my previous: Germany Bans Tom’s Latest UA Film.) According to a translated German newspaper article published today, Germany’s widely reported opposition to UA’s…

If you had trouble reaching a Wall Street Journal reporter this morning, that’s because many who belong to the union chose not to show up for work across the country until this afternoon. It’s been described to me as a “non walk-in”. First, because they feel the paper’s long tradition of independence is threatened…

EXCLUSIVE: I just confirmed that Sicko documentary creator Michael Moore was barred from making a scheduled media appearance inside the New York Stock Exchange today. His publicist says it was because he and a group of nurses intended to call for Wall Street investors and Main Street consumers to divest themselves…

Screenwriter/director Zak Penn (wrote and helmed Incident at Loch Ness, co-writer of X-Men: The Last Stand) has left Endeavor for CAA.

I know that Ed Limato’s negotiations with ICM are very fluid right now since his contract is up this month. But there’s an interesting push-pull surrounding this legendary motion picture agent. So consider this Part II to my original Rumor of ICM’s Limato To CAA ‘Ridiculous’ post. I hear that, despite the poker faces…

Ugh, the lamebrains who ask me for Hollywood info. The latest is the magazine 02138 — described as “devoted to, but not affiliated with, Harvard” — that’s compiling a supposed list of 100 Influential Harvard Grads including infotainment. But the mag seems totally clueless about Hollywood players, much less which ones…

I’m told Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner have completed that $500 million production financing arranged by Merrill Lynch for United Artists. (This had been in the works for months and months.) There should be an announcement before the end of June. As I first reported on Sunday, their new campaign to raise the profile of…