Sharon Waxman, is the founder, CEO and Editor in Chief of TheWrap. She is an award-winning journalist and best-selling author, and was a Hollywood correspondent for The New York Times. Twitter: @sharonwaxman
Experience:
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Dubai Journal
When you get off the plane in Dubai, they hand you a map of the city. It's a pretty simple urban plan, with the city concentrated around its origins of a broad creek, and arrayed against the blue coastline of the Arabian Gulf. Then you look more closely at the map and you see a…
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Opie and the Fonz Dress Up for Obama
In the waning days of this election campaign, what won't Hollywood do to boost their friend Barack Obama? They will shave on camera, put on a goofy wig and regress about 30 years into American tv history. Ron Howard offers up a heartfelt plea to American voters to vote for Obama, and apparently he thinks this plea…
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Anand Jon Update: Defense in Full Swing
The defense has been putting on its case. Detective Cranham of the Beverly Hills police department was called to the stand and questioned as to whether she had interviewed the rape victims, or alleged ones, in person or by phone. It emerged that some were only interviewed by phone. The defense is also trying to…
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Round-Up: Relativity and Rogue in Business
Yea, though I am far away, feel the need to note the newsworthy development of Relativity, run by Ryan Kavanaugh, being close to buying Universal’s Rogue Pictures, the genre division started in 2004, for $150 million. What does this mean for genre studios within the major movie companies? In today’s L.A. Times, Patrick Goldstein questions…
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Hollywood Steps Lightly: Spielberg and Soft Diplomacy in the Middle East
A major milestone quietly passed last weekend: the first major Hollywood film in decades filmed in the heart of the Middle East. “Transformers II” turned its cameras at the Pyramids in Egypt, and again in the upper Egyptian town of Luxor, near the famed Valley of the Kings. This is significant for many reasons but…
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Dubai: Money and Momentum in a City of Diversity
Here’s something I didn’t expect about Dubai: it doesn’t feel very Arab. Most of the faces you see on the streets and in the malls are non-Arab. My cab driver is Ethiopian. My waitress is Philippine. The hotel security guard is Pakistani. Only every so often do you see a figure in a flowing white…
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The First Excerpt from “Loot,” at The Daily Beast
The first excerpt from "Loot" is up on "The Daily Beast," ahead of publication on October 28. Here’s how it starts: One thing stood out about the Getty Museum, and that was the sex. Numerous current and former Getty employees describe the atmosphere from the 1970s onward as convivial in the most carnal sense of…
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Madonna & ‘Rocknrolla’: Guy Ritchie’s Bad Week. Joel Silver’s Bad Year.
It’s hard to tell who’s having a worse time at the moment: Guy Ritchie, whose wife, Madonna, publicly dumped him at the very same time as his latest film has opened in the U.S. like a snail in a tar pit. Or Joel Silver, the producer of said snail-movie, “Rocknrolla,” who is struggling to avoid…
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Weekend Box Office – Max Payne Wins the Weekend; W. Not a Hit
Looks like Lions Gates’ fears that it’s too soon to laugh over George W. Bush and too late to cry were realized in the box office performance of "W," Oliver Stone’s heavily-promoted new film about our lame duck prez. The film, rolled out in 2,000 theaters, took in just $10.5 million, according to both Media…
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Winging my way to the desert
Traveling to United Arab Emirates for the coming week on assignment for ARTnews Magazine; will be blogging from Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Qatar. Looking forward to sharing my impressions on this first trip to a new world of burgeoning media, entertainment and finance. Watch this space for updates.
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Lootbook.com is Live
To fans and readers: We now have a sister site, Lootbook.com, where you will find all things related to my new book, "Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World." (With sincere thanks to Tim Doyle for design and execution.) Hope you will check it out, order the book, and participate in…
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Paramount Tightens its Belt. Blame DreamWorks.
Original Post: Only in Hollywood can you buy a company and not actually own it. That’s the bottom line from a close look at the power shift in Hollywood this month, with DreamWorks closing its deal with Reliance ADA, and Universal nabbing distribution rights to their movies. Over on the Paramount lot this week, some…
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New “Loot” review: Book Page Likes It.
The fight to reclaim stolen artifacts By Angela Leeper In her evocative new book, Loot: The Battle over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World, Sharon Waxman travels to Egypt, Turkey, Greece and Italy to investigate the persistent tribulations of looting and restitution. Presenting more questions than answers, Loot reveals that there is no easy…
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Universal Announces Pact with DreamWorks; Geffen Retires. (Seriously?)
Now it’s officially official. As we told you last week, DreamWorks and Universal have agreed to get back in business together. The two companies announced a seven-year distribution deal today, in a press release. In the release, Spielberg said: "Universal has always been my home base so this agreement starts a new chapter in what…