As long as Adam McKay is deciding the fate of the comedy universe (or so it seems), he’s going to enjoy it.
The writer-director of “Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy” and “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby” — and the product of a formative time in Milford — has worked his collaborations with Will […]

MoviesOnline sat down with screenwriters Jonathan Nolan and David S. Goyer to talk about their new movie, “The Dark Knight,” directed by Christopher Nolan. The follow-up to “Batman Begins” stars Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Gary Oldham, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman.
(Movies Online)

A man opens a “spiritual business” where people call to get issues off their chests.
A successful life coach who preaches selfishness and greed ruins the lives of those around him.
And a divorced woman gives questionable advice on her “chocolate powered relationship recovery” talk show.
These scripted shows are among the 40 short Web films, written and […]

Read it aloud, make sure there’s a favourite bit - and don’t fall into the ‘German funk trap’. Frank Cottrell Boyce who scripted 24 Hour Party People and A Cock and Bull Story, lays down his screenwriting golden rules.
(The Guardian UK)

Showtime has ordered 12 half-hour episodes of “The United States of Tara,” a comedy from Oscar-winning “Juno” screenwriter Diablo Cody.
Toni Collette stars as a wife and mother with dissociative identity disorder. John Corbett plays her husband.
Story lines will examine how a dysfunctional family copes with the various identities that might appear on any given day […]

Talk about your high-concept lowbrow humor.
In the big-budget action-comedy “You Don’t Mess With the Zohan” (which arrives in theaters Friday), Adam Sandler portrays the titular Zohan, an ultra-lethal Israeli counterterrorist operative who tires of his part in his country’s war on terror, fakes his own death and comes to New York in pursuit of his […]

 
It’s not so surprising, really.
Celebrated hyphenate David Mamet - playwright, screenwriter, movie director, TV show creator, sometime actor, academic, author, essayist, etc. - had a fight film in him. Naturally it’s a poetic-sounding one with perfect meter. But there’s plenty of blood, too. No one walks away from Mamet’s arena unscathed.
“Redbelt” focuses on the world […]

 
One day in the mid-’90s, the lanky and sometimes manic James Ellroy walked into the brownstone New York office of his publisher, Otto Penzler — the two were going to a fight that night — and broke the news: He had just sold the film rights to his novel “L.A. Confidential.”
“We were laughing so hard […]

 
Abby Mann, writer of socially conscious scripts for movies and television and winner of the 1961 Academy Award for adapted screenplay for “Judgment at Nuremberg,” has died at 80. if(window.yzq_d==null)window.yzq_d=new Object(); window.yzq_d[’yayar0LEYrQ-’]=’&U=127hbtc8h%2fN%3dyayar0LEYrQ-%2fC%3d-1%2fD%3dRMP%2fB%3d-1′; if(window.yzq_d==null)window.yzq_d=new Object(); window.yzq_d[’yqyar0LEYrQ-’]=’&U=128q8o0jh%2fN%3dyqyar0LEYrQ-%2fC%3d-1%2fD%3dSIPR%2fB%3d-1′; if(window.yzq_d==null)window.yzq_d=new Object(); window.yzq_d[’xayar0LEYrQ-’]=’&U=13bhajse8%2fN%3dxayar0LEYrQ-%2fC%3d619213.12054948.12500301.1442997%2fD%3dLREC%2fB%3d4919452′;
Writers Guild of America spokesman Gregg Mitchell said Mann died Tuesday. […]

The wave of euphoria that swept over Hollywood following the end of the WGA strike has been replaced by a whole new set of emotions: anxiety, depression, fear, nervousness — and anger.
One month after scribes put down their pickets, a March malaise has set in, with folks in town wondering when — or if — […]