Josh Dickey - FishbowlLA

Dickey, Sneider Cut the Ribbon at TMZ, TheWrap

Richard Horgan — Tue, 09 Apr 2013 07:30:01 +0000

For Josh Dickey, Day One as managing editor of TMZ.com involved among other things the business of another Jenna Jameson arrest. In the case of his recent Variety charge Jeff Sneider, who officially returns next Monday to former employer TheWrap, the purview is much closer to the one he used to patrol at 5900 Wilshire Blvd.

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TheWrap Hiring Spree Continues with an Old, Familiar Name: Jeff Sneider

Richard Horgan — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 12:15:20 +0000

If you’d told us 18 months ago that all four Hollywood trade publications would be flush in the spring of 2013 and raring to (still) go at each other, we would have laughed the way Nikki Finke does when someone brings up the name Jeff Sneider. But lo and behold, that is indeed the case, with the former Variety film reporter today tipping these unlikely scales.

Sneider has rejoined his old outlet TheWrap, moving to the same general geographical neighborhood that his former Variety editor Josh Dickey will soon be occupying for TMZ purposes. (Sneider back at TheWrap… Dickey at TMZ… OK, that may actually be more surprising than what we just referenced above.) From Sharon Waxman’s announcement:

“I once acknowledged that ‘second chances are rare in this business,’ and I’m grateful to TheWrap for believing in me and offering me this exciting opportunity,” Sneider said. “I’ve been impressed with how TheWrap has grown since I’ve been away and I look forward to returning to this top-notch team of entertainment journalists.”

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Variety Film Editor Josh Dickey Heading to TMZ.com

Richard Horgan — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 16:20:04 +0000

Big news this afternoon on the Hollywood trades front. And it’s Nikki Finke once again letting the Variety cat out of the bag.

Film editor Josh Dickey, who recently lost his pit bull reporter Jeff Sneider, has accepted a job with TMZ.com. He will be the site’s new managing editor. From Finke’s brief dispatch:

Dickey will become TMZ’s managing editor after giving his notice at Variety where he was film editor. Variety’s New York editor Jill Goldsmith was let go on March 8th as was Variety’s creative director Paula Taylor more recently.

This is a huge score for Harvey Levin. Dickey, formerly of TheWrap, is leaving the trade quadrangle for a site that sometimes spends a little bit too much time in the sensational gutter. Hopefully, he can temper that. For example, TMZ.com recently got a lot of flack from the family of a Hollywood nightclub shooting victim for airing full cell phone video footage of the crime.

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Todd McCarthy Uncorks the Mother of All Rhetorical Questions

Richard Horgan — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 06:35:28 +0000

We agree with Variety film editor Josh Dickey. The opening sentence of THR critic Todd McCarthy’s review of the Warner Bros. fantasy film Jack the Giant Slayer is one for the ages:

When will all the dead-serious $200 million battle-centered giant-infested similarly cast rousingly scored fabulously rendered 3D fairy-tale reimaginings all finally merge together into one enormous Anglophilic fantasmagoria of monarchical order and virtue so we can all be done with this for the time being?

We’re talking: 44 glorious words, four of them hyphenated; a French-leaning spelling of phantasmagoria (for le extra oomph?); and an audacious disregard of the comma. In this brief moment, McCarthy has recast himself as Todd the Run-On Sentence Slayer. Bravo.

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@TheInSneider is Suddenly a Variety Outsider

Richard Horgan — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 16:00:36 +0000

Like so many things involving feisty Variety film writer Jeff Sneider, the info was divulged suddenly and without warning via Twitter:

Then came a story on TheWrap about Sneider’s dismissal, written by Alexander C. Kaufman with input from Sharon Waxman. The article gets a critical fact wrong; a tweet referenced was not connected to Robopocalypse but rather was the sixth and final component of Sneider’s rapid-fire expression of dismay on Twitter when he learned he had lost an entirely different long-simmering scoop to The Hollywood Reporter (about Christopher Nolan planning to direct Interstellar).

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Fizziology Stirs Hollywood A-Lister Drink with Expansive Social Media App

Richard Horgan — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 09:45:28 +0000

This is fascinating stuff. Variety film editor Josh Dickey got a first-hand look at a social media intelligence tool of a kind that we will be hearing a lot more about in the coming months and years.

CastTyper comes from the good folks at Fizziology, a leading entertainment market research firm. It goes a little deeper by categorizing info shared about actors on social media into the groupings of “physical appearance, emotional resonance, intellectual prowess and power of personality.” Of the four examples Dickey was shown, he says the one that resonated most involved Brad Pitt‘s Moneyball co-star:

Fizziology found that as audiences focused on Jonah Hill‘s weight loss and dramatic acting chops, they lost sight of his lovable personality… Some fans even openly complained about Hill’s weight loss, saying it would make him less funny and lovable; others felt offput by watching a skinny Hill promote Moneyball, in which he was still seen as overweight.

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Awards Pundits Cast Their Votes for Most Egregious Golden Globe Snub

Richard Horgan — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 09:50:54 +0000

There was no HFPA silver lining this morning for Robert De Niro. Deadline Hollywood awards expert Pete Hammond thinks he knows why:

The omission of Silver Linings Playbook’s Robert De Niro [from Best Supporting Actor] was among the most surprising snubs to me but clearly those two Django co-stars DiCaprio and Waltz rode in and stole his thunder (he also was too busy working to do the all-important – in terms of nominations – HFPA press conference).

Over at TheWrap, Steve Pond leads off his analysis with a look at how the lack of a Beasts of the Southern Wild Best Drama nod underscores the starry-eyed HFPA ballot view:

How else to explain the way the Globes voters ignored Beasts but nominated Nicole Kidman for the laughably trashy The Paperboy? And not only did they go for Kidman in that potboiler, but they gave her a second nomination for her performance in the TV movie Hemingway & Gellhorn.

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HOLDJA Horses! Penske Reportedly Back in Lead for Variety

Richard Horgan — Tue, 25 Sep 2012 08:50:45 +0000

The ominous, bizarre, hilarious specter of Mike Fleming and Jeff Sneider working for the same parent company has reared its head again. This time in the form of a Monday afternoon LA Times report by Ben Fritz:

Penske Media Corp., the owner of Deadline and six other online properties, is now the leading bidder for Variety, partnered with private equity fund Shamrock Capital Advisors, according to two knowledgeable people not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The company, led by Jay Penske (pictured), the 33-year-old son of automobile magnate Roger Penske, could close a deal to purchase the paper in the next three weeks for around $30 million, one of the people added.

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Mike Fleming Curses Out Variety Ben Affleck Item

Richard Horgan — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 09:30:08 +0000

The highly competitive rivalry between Deadline’s Mike Fleming and the film reporting crew at Variety has taken a contentious new turn. Reacting on Wednesday to a variety.com item by Jeff Sneider and Justin Kroll (with help from Marc Graser) about Warner Bros.’ pursuit of Ben Affleck as a possible director for a Justice League movie, Fleming lost it:

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff lately that has been of questionable substance, and I’m calling bullshit on this big Variety scoop today that implies Warner Bros. will get Ben Affleck as director of its Justice League film. This is a story I checked out days ago, and didn’t run when Affleck’s reps stated that it was not going to happen with him…

Just because the studio wants Affleck doesn’t mean he will do the movie, and several sources tell me he might take a meeting, but that’s it.

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Variety Breaks Toronto Film Festival Embargo

Richard Horgan — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 06:55:44 +0000

Early this morning, Variety threw a major wrench into the 10 a.m. ET press conference plans of Toronto International Film Festival artistic director Cameron Bailey:

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Patrick Goldstein Takes a Kick at Variety Can

Richard Horgan — Thu, 19 Jul 2012 11:30:54 +0000

It didn’t take long for the folks at Variety to react to LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein‘s article about the trade’s current on-the-block fortunes. Tweeted film editor Josh Dickey:

Goldstein says he spent a week working his network of Hollywood contacts to take the trade’s current temperature. Here is some of what he was told:

A surprising number of subscribers said they get the paper just to keep tabs on the awards-season ads.

As one studio marketer told me: “I only subscribe out of habit. I can’t remember the last time I read anything in the paper when I didn’t already know the information from somewhere else.”

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Trade Wars: Fifty Shades of Grey Edition

Richard Horgan — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 00:30:04 +0000

Late Thursday afternoon, Variety’s film editor tweeted out a biting pronouncement:

This was quickly followed by a tweet from his colleague at variety.com:

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THR Toots Alan Horn ‘Excusive’

Richard Horgan — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:15:21 +0000

It wasn’t quite on the level of Mitt Romney’s “Amercia.” But yesterday, when The Hollywood Reporter rushed to beat its competitors with a Kim Masters item about the announcement of Alan Horn stepping in to take over Disney Studios, the headline blared out a memorable typo:

The flub, jokingly tipped on Twitter by Variety film editor Josh Dickey, was of course quickly fixed. But it was ironic that this new, would-be slang was attached to a story that others – like TheWrap media critic Lucas Shaw – viewed as a very poor excuse for an “exclusive:”

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A Picture Worth a Thousand Bylines

Richard Horgan — Tue, 15 May 2012 09:30:10 +0000

Since launch in 2009, TheWrap has proven to be a fertile training ground for entertainment journalists. Among the earliest examples of reporters who worked under Sharon Waxman before moving on to other outlets are Amy Kaufman (now with the LA Times), Josef Adalian (Vulture), Hunter Walker (New York Observer), Josh Dickey (Variety), Jeff Sneider (Variety) and Dominic Patten (Deadline).

Still, with the recent departure of Jason Scoggins, Cindy Kaplan and Joshua L. Weinstein for Film Funds LLC, the following photo now stands as a rather graphic representation of the kind of turnover Waxman (and others in the space like The Hollywood Reporter and the LA Times) must sometimes deal with. Of the ten people flanking Waxman in this April 1, 2011 birthday celebration snapshot obtained by FishbowlLA, only one person remains employed with the start-up company today.

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BlogDogger Barks at Nikki Finke’s Sundance Coverage*

Richard Horgan — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 16:15:00 +0000

A few weeks ago, we picked up a report from Variety‘s in-house BlogDogger, which claimed that the time-stamp for a Deadline.com item about an Emma Stone movie project had been falsified to match the 3:00am PT January 5 mark of a similar report on Variety. On behalf of Deadline, Nikki Finke responded a few days later, without—as Variety film writer Jeff Sneider and others subsequently tweeted—addressing the core issue of an apparent magical time-stamp. She explained that Deadline.com reporter Mike Fleming had been working on the same Stone news for several days beforehand, and this, apparently, justified whatever may or may not have followed.

Well, here we go again. According to BlogDogger, after Variety posted an item by Sneider and Josh Dickey on Monday night at 7:37 p.m. PT about the Sundance sale of The Surrogate, the article was followed in short order by similar items at LATimes.com and HollywoodReporter.com. Then, once again, a Deadline.com Fleming item appeared with a time-stamp that BlogDogger alleges was illicitly tweaked to cozy up to that of THR‘s third-place report posted at 8:19 p.m PT/11:19 pm ET.

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