Nerves are taut over at Warner Brothers, where executives are enduring all manner of gossip about their fearless leaders, Barry Meyer and Alan Horn.

The indignity of chairman Meyer and president Horn’s being offered a mere two-year contract offer -- after decades of service at the studio -- is the talk of the town.   “It’s bothersome to all of us,” said one annoyed executive. “They’re beloved at this company.”  

It seems that quiet communications have restarted between that rapacious takeover king Carl Icahn and the plucky but still vulnerable Lions Gate Entertainment.

What gives? Here’s the lay of the land: Barely two weeks ago, Icahn began rattling his saber, tendering an offer to buy $325 million in debt from Lionsgate bondholders, with a gimlet eye on exerting more control over the company.

Hollywood used to have big, colorful characters like Joseph Helfgot. He ate too much, he drank too much, he used foul language and threw out Yiddishisms with the authority of a man raised on Streit’s matzah, which he was. (His mother worked for the company.)

It’s the morning after the day of the long knives at Variety, Part II, and I find myself thinking about the interview publisher Neil Stiles’ gave TheWrap yesterday, and another that editor Tim Gray gave TheWrap last week.

Updated on Friday afternoon:

The new agency is meant to be a William Morris spin-off, by agents furious at Jim Wiatt and Dave Wirtschafter for considering letting go of the Morris name in the pending merger with Endeavor.

Options are running out for takeover king Carl Icahn.

Lionsgate's activist shareholder has extended his offer to buy the company's $350 million in convertible debt until May 1 after his initial bid only attracted $8.9 million worth of bonds.

That offer, which expired Monday afternoon, would have only covered about 2.8 percent of $316 million in total outstanding debt, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

They filed quietly out of the building after lunch on Tuesday, all 20 or so of the William Morris Agency board members:

Top dogs Jim Wiatt and Dave Wirtschafter; the music department Peter Grosslight, Marc Geiger, David Snyder; the gals from New York Cara Stein and her literary crew Jennifer Rudolf Walsh and Suzanne Gluck; and the TV department, Aaron Kaplan, John Ferriter, Mark Itkin.

Let’s not write off the adult action drama quite so fast.
 
There’s deep thinking going on around town in the wake of the weak performance of “State of Play,” Universal’s grown-up thriller set in Washington. The film has taken in a mere $16 million since opening last weekend -- despite a star-studded cast led by Russell Crowe and the pedigree of having been an extremely popular British series that got a good amount of buzz when it played on BBC America.
 

The William Morris-Endeavor merger, producing the new company named WME Entertainment, will be announced on Monday, according to an individual close to the situation.

The upper crust of Hollywood swirled about the vestibule and dining room of Arianna Huffington’s Brentwood mansion on Friday night at a party for author Kathy Freston, and to kick off this weekend’s L.A. Times Book Festival. (More on this later.)