Hollywood should take a moment to regret the retirement this week of Gordon Crawford of Capital Research and Management, one of the wisest, most influential and most successful investors in media and entertainment of the past several decades.

Crawford (pictured above with Rupert Murdoch and below with Peter Chernin) sent out a note to friends on Wednesday -- on which were copied a Who’s Who of leaders in entertainment and technology (no, I’m not sharing) -- titled “My Retirement,” in which he writes with typical understatement:

“This Friday, December 21, I head down the elevator for the last time at Capital. I have been blessed to spend 41 years...

Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola is moving back to his creative stomping ground of the 1970s, taking offices on the Paramount lot starting next year, TheWrap has learned.

“As of 2013, Francis Ford Coppola will open offices and work out of the Paramount lot. He and Paramount go way back, and he is thrilled to be back there,” said his publicist Leslee Dart in an exclusive statement to TheWrap.

An individual close to Coppola said he was looking to get “creative” and would be moving into the Lubitsch building on the lot. Studio chief Brad Grey welcomed an overture to bring Coppola back to the lot, the individual said.

Also read:...

With the Tribune Company nearing the end of its interminable bankruptcy and Peter Liguori poised to become its new CEO, the question arises of what he will do with the reborn media company.

From what my sources tell me, most likely he will oversee much of its dismantling.

An insider close to Tribune leadership tells me that Liguori has for some time been designated as the CEO-in-waiting, reporting to Edgar Lee of the private equity firm Oaktree Capital Management, the creditor who is now running the show.

They have a plan, I'm told. ”They’re going to liquidate as much as they can,” said this senior insider.

Also read: FCC Approves Tribune Co. Bid to Transfer Print/TV Ownership (Updated)

On Friday, the...

Alex Gibney is ready to take on the Pope in his new documentary, "Mea Maxima Culpa:  Silence in the House of God," which opens this weekend.

Gibney, who has taken on hot topics from lobbyist Jack Abramoff to biking champion Lance Armstrong to Enron, digs into a new aspect of the sexual-abuse scandal in which deaf children in Catholic boarding schools were preyed upon by pedophile priests.

One of those children, now grown, has sued the Pope. The film raises the tantalizing question of whether private individuals can sue the Vatican, which is a sovereign country. 

"So you can understand the magnitude of this scandal, it’s a concerted systematic...