An Oscar season war has broken out between Relativity and Paramount over the “The Fighter,” the film that had a sneak screening at the AFI Festival on Tuesday night, TheWrap has learned.
Relativity was furious to be informed only late Tuesday afternoon that there would be media invited to the screening, and that it would be labelled a “world premiere.”
Paramount contends that Relativity was told of the screening at a meeting on Oct. 29 attended by Tucker Tooley, the president of production, and should have been prepared.
But Relativity had its own pre
miere of “Skyline” on Tuesday night; top executives were all occupied with that event and unable to attend ‘The Fighter,” according to executives involved.
Mark Wahlberg who presented the film at the AFI event, was said to be surprised not to see any Relativity executives present.
The dispute boils down to an escalating conflict between rivals and partners Ryan Kavanaugh, who runs Relativity, and Paramount COO Rob Moore.
Relativity has been concerned that Paramount was not devoting sufficient attention to “The Fighter” in the Oscar season — and instead focused on its own produced films for the Oscar season, “True Grit,” “Waiting for <leo_highlight id=”leoHighlights_Underline_0″ leohighlights_keywords=”superman” leohighlights_underline=”true” leohighlights_url_bottom=”http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsBottom.jsp?keywords%3Dsuperman%26domain%3D” leohighlights_url_top=”http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsTop.jsp?keywords%3Dsuperman%26domain%3D” onclick=”leoHighlightsHandleClick(‘leoHighlights_Underline_0’)” onmouseout=”leoHighlightsHandleMouseOut(‘leoHighlights_Underline_0’)” onmouseover=”leoHighlightsHandleMouseOver(‘leoHighlights_Underline_0’)” style=”border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 150); background-color: transparent; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 50%; -moz-background-size: auto auto; cursor: pointer; display: inline; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;”>Superman” and “Shutter Island.”
The indie producer has started taking its own awards season campaign to make sure the film got exposure among Oscar season voters.
But tension ratcheted up further last month when Relativity plucked Steve Bertram, Paramount’s head of home <leo_highlight id=”leoHighlights_Underline_1″ leohighlights_keywords=”entertainment” leohighlights_underline=”true” leohighlights_url_bottom=”http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsBottom.jsp?keywords%3Dentertainment%26domain%3D” leohighlights_url_top=”http%3A//shortcuts.thebrowserhighlighter.com/leonardo/plugin/highlights/3_2/tbh_highlightsTop.jsp?keywords%3Dentertainment%26domain%3D” onclick=”leoHighlightsHandleClick(‘leoHighlights_Underline_1’)” onmouseout=”leoHighlightsHandleMouseOut(‘leoHighlights_Underline_1’)” onmouseover=”leoHighlightsHandleMouseOver(‘leoHighlights_Underline_1’)” style=”border-bottom: 2px solid rgb(255, 255, 150); background-color: transparent; background-image: none; background-repeat: repeat; background-attachment: scroll; background-position: 0% 50%; -moz-background-size: auto auto; cursor: pointer; display: inline; -moz-background-clip: -moz-initial; -moz-background-origin: -moz-initial; -moz-background-inline-policy: -moz-initial;”>entertainment, to be its new COO.
Paramount had no official comment. Nor did Relativity.
The Tuesday screening was just the latest blow-up.
The screening took place at Grauman’s Chinese theater. Paramount put out a news blast late Monday about the screening. Oscar bloggers scrambled to get there, and indeed, nearly every Oscar blogger was present.
Pete Hammond called it a “world premiere” in his blog post, and Anne Thompson called it a ”’secret’ screening at AFI Fest (revealed via Paramount press release Tuesday morning).”
The point was to generate positive buzz for the film, and that seems to have been accomplished.
Read also: AFI’s Stealth World Premiere for ‘The Fighter’: a Knockout
There is also tension over who should take credit for the film.
Paramount says that it developed the screenplay with Wahlberg, and as the distributor and marketing partner, has main bragging rights. Paramount is handling marketing and the awards campaign.
“It is Paramount’s movie,” said one senior studio executive. “Ultimately, the person responsible for any movie is the marketing and distributor.”
But Relativity says that it bought the rights to the film from Paramount, which had let the project go fallow, and then fully produced and financed the movie.
Indeed, Relativity is paying Paramount a fee to distribute the film. Relativity is using its Netflix deal for the pay television release slot.
Tuesday night’s screening only aggravated ongoing tension between the two companies over the David O. Russell film, which stars Mark Wahlberg as a comeback-kid boxer, and Christian Bale as his brother.
The buzz has the film in contention for a possible Best Picture slot, and Bale rumored as a strong candidate for a best supporting actor nomination.
