Pictures sign pictures

EXCLUSIVE : Artists First on Friday announced its signing of boxing Hall of Famer, Sugar Ray Leonard . Leonard enjoyed an elite, 20-year career in the ring before being inducted into the International Boxing Hall Of Fame in 1997, winning three National Golden Gloves titles, two Amateur Athletic Union championships and the 1975 Pan-American Games crown. He first got into boxing at age 14 and turned professional after winning a gold medal at the 1976 Olympic games, in a last-ditch effort to help his family with medical bills incurred from his father’s hospitalization with meningitis. Leonard won his first professional fight at age 20, then going on to defeat some of the greatest boxers of the modern era, from Wilfred Benetiz to Roberto Duran, Thomas Hearns and Marvelous Marvin Hagler, from whom Leonard won the world middleweight title. His boxing career also saw him win world titles in the welterweight, junior middleweight, super middleweight, and light heavyweight division, … [Read more...] about Sugar Ray Leonard Signs With Artists First

Negotiators for a new SAG-AFTRA film and TV contract have wrapped their second week of bargaining with six weeks to go before the current pact expires and no sign of an early deal. This is the first film and TV contract the union has negotiated since SAG and AFTRA merged in 2012, and one of its key goals is to bring their old contracts into alignment. “That’s what everyone has been talking about,” said a SAG-AFTRA official. “We’ve got to combine the contracts.” Related: SAG-AFTRA Talks: What To Expect The union actually is negotiating two separate TV contracts with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers – one SAG’s and the other AFTRA’s, whose basic rates are 3.5% higher than SAG’s. “We want to bring the SAG contract up to AFTRA’s,” said the SAG-AFTRA official. “We certainly don’t want to lower AFTRA’s to SAG’s.” And that may just prove to be the toughest sticking point in these negotiations. Beyond that, most of the heavy lifting for a new actors … [Read more...] about Guild Official: Merging SAG And AFTRA TV Deals Key Goal Of Ongoing Contract Talks

Mafia Mamma and Knives Ou t star Toni Collette and Odessa Young ( The Staircase, Mothering Sunday, Shirley ) have signed to co-star in writer and director Nathan Silver’s twisted revenge thriller The Prima Donna . Collette and Young previously worked together on HBO’s award-winning series The Staircase . The drama revolves around dysfunctional family dynamics, the dangers of ambition, and the lengths we will go to make our mark on the world. Set in contemporary Rome, Collette will play a legendary opera diva who is about to step into the role of a lifetime just as her estranged daughter (Young) shows up at her doorstep, right out of rehab. An aspiring opera singer herself, the daughter summons up the courage to ask to be her mother’s understudy.  When her mother callously dismisses the suggestion, she snaps and starts mulling the ultimate revenge, igniting a cut-throat battle of wills. Silver, whose previous credits include Thirst Street, Uncertain … [Read more...] about Toni Collette & Odessa Young Reunite On Nathan Silver’s Revenge Thriller ‘The Prima Donna’; Cornerstone Launching At The EFM

SAG-AFTRA is working on what will be the first truly comprehensive picture of the employment landscape for women and minority actors and hopes to release it within a year. SAG used to release the reports annually, then in 2004 it started issuing them every other year. After 2009, it stopped releasing the reports altogether. The problem was that AFTRA never released comprehensive casting reports on actors employed under its jurisdiction – which included daytime soaps and some primetime and basic cable shows, and new pilots – so the employment picture SAG presented was never really complete. And in the years leading up to their 2012 merger, AFTRA launched a concerted campaign to sign more pilots and cable shows to its contract by offering more favorable terms than SAG’s – a move that sparked a bitter feud between the two unions. Related: SAG-AFTRA Sets May 5 For Start Of New Contract Talks With AMPTP As AFTRA’s share of the TV jurisdiction ballooned, the missing piece … [Read more...] about SAG-AFTRA Working On Wide-Ranging Report About Casting Diversity