Was Anthony Pellicano keeping a dossier on film director Ron Howard and his producing partner Brian Grazer? My sources say yes, indeed he was, and not just because he thought "Howard the Duck" was a bad movie.
Few people recall this now, but back in 2000, Pellicano was hired with much ballyhoo by someone who was sued by Howard and Grazer over an aborted project.
That someone was none other than actor-writer Mike Myers. It was in 2000, after the second "Austin Powers" movie, that Myers sold Imagine Entertainment his script for “Sprockets,” a feature length version of his "Saturday Night Live" sketch starring Dieter.
I actually broke that story. Myers told me about his plans to write “Dieter” as it was first known, with pal Jack Handey, back in 1998. He sold it to Imagine in 1999 as “Sprockets” and the project had everyone who was involved excited. Then, suddenly, Myers wanted out. He told Universal that the script, which he’d written and approved, was no good. And that’s when the trouble started.
"I cannot, in good conscience, accept $20 million and cheat moviegoers who pay their hard-earned money for my work by making a movie with an unacceptable script," Myers reportedly said. After the successes of the “Wayne’s World” and the “Austin Powers” films, “Sprockets” would have earned Myers' first $20 million advance.
In July 2000, Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment filed suit against Myers. They hired Bert Fields. He was represented by Marty Singer and Brian Wolf.
It was a little like an MTV "Celebrity Deathmatch," or the final scenes in “Lord of the Rings.” Everyone suited up in armor. And then, out of nowhere, Myers — who has been always been known as a man with a pleasant disposition — was revealed in a story in the trade paper Variety to have hired Pellicano.
So, follow this: Pellicano, who worked for Fields on most cases, was now working for Singer, Fields’ opponent. It got ugly fast. My sources tell me that Pellicano quickly worked up files on Howard and Grazer.
You’d think it was close to impossible to find dirt on Ron Howard, because outside of Tom Hanks, he is the nicest guy in the film business. And Grazer has a stellar reputation. Together they’ve made “Cocoon,” “Apollo 13,” “A Beautiful Mind” and “The Da Vinci Code,” among many others. Their work truly represents their personalities.
Did Myers know what Pellicano would do when he hired him? Probably not.
And also in Variety, Myers and Singer declined to confirm or deny their hiring of Pellicano.
The case progressed through the summer of 2000 until, as the story goes, Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg, of Dreamworks, intervened and negotiated a settlement.
No one knows the details. But Myers went right into a new phase of his career that left him working for Dreamworks — first in “Shrek” (2001) and then the very dreadful “Cat in the Hat” (2004), which was a triple play — produced by Dreamworks with Myers’ two former combatants: Universal and Imagine. Coincidence? Hmmm…
In the end, it should be noted that Myers’ Universal battle had a happy ending: he made a fortune from the “Shrek” movies just doing voiceovers.