Matthew Weiner Say He Isn't Greedy; Toronto's Favorites
The latest in film and television includes: Matthew Weiner's response to the suggestion his "greed" hurt Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead and George Clooney finishing out of the money at the Toronto film festival.
Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner is shrugging off the comments Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter made on Twitter last month blaming the $30 million pact AMC signed with Weiner in April for the network's attempts to slash the budgets on Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead. "It's just not true," Weiner told Vulture at Entertainment Weekly's pre-Emmy party on Friday night. "[My] show is a billion dollar business, that's number one. Number two, they're in a business doing what they're doing. And my deal had nothing to do with it. They were trying to cut the budget on The Walking Dead before they were even negotiating with me." He added, "I don't know Kurt Sutter. It was strange to hear someone theorizing about it, but I don't know him." [Vulture]
Where Do We Go Now, a comedy set in war-ravaged Lebanon directed by and starring Nadine Labaski, won the audience award at this year's Toronto film festival, which wrapped up Sunday. According to a festival press release, Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation and Ken Scott’s Starbuck were the runners-up. Not in the money: director Alexander Payne's The Descendants, starring George Clooney, which came out of the Telluride Film Festival earlier this month with strong Oscar momentum. It still looks to be a contender, but the audience award in Toronto has been an indicator of Oscar success in recent years. As the AP notes, eventual Best Picture winners Slumdog Millionaire and The King's Speech both took home the award. [Collider and the Associated Press]
Eddie Murphy is hosting the Oscars in February and Paramount, for one, thinks that's a good thing, or at least a marketable thing. The studio has bumped the release of his film A Thousand Words back from January to March 23. The comedy, which centers on the not-so-funny-sounding concept of a man who can only speak 1,000 words before he dies, is Murphy's third collaboration with Brian Robbins, who also directed Murphy in the poorly-received Meet Dave and Norbit. [The Hollywood Reporter]
