They bought it! At a closed-door hearing yesterday in front of a committee comprised of union actors and producers' reps, Jeremy Piven was able to convince his fellow thespians that he had no choice but to quit Speed-the-Plow last December because of dangerously high mercury levels. The five actors on the panel all sided with the Runaway Jury star, while the five members of the Broadway league agreed with the show's producers, who say Piven faked mercury poisoning because he was bored and wanted to get back to sunny L.A.
Jeremy Piven Avoids Penalties in Split Decision
End of WGA Strike Near?
Multiple news outlets are reporting that the WGA strike could be over with professional writers back to work as early as next week. Unnamed sources are saying that a tentative deal between the guild and Hollywood studios and producers has been reached. At issue was revenue sharing between writers and producers over content distributed over the Internet. Alternative distribution methods, like downloading and web-streaming, were leaving writers out in the cold and on the short end of the stick.
When The Lights Go Out In the City
It's finally come to this. The lights of the Great White Way have gone dark in a dispute between the theater stagehands of Local One and producers and theater owners. The labor dispute which has been simmering for months and left the stagehands without a contract for an equal time, resulted in a shutdown of Broadway shows on the verge of the theater district's most profitable season. The stalemate came to to a head after...

