Hollywood’s 25 Most Powerful Authors

“I don’t expect anything to be like ‘Twilight’ again,” says Stephenie Meyer, who joins J.K Rowling, E.L. James and Suzanne Collins on the list of writers who have the industry hanging on their every word.

When THR contacted James Patterson about being on its inaugural list of the 25 most powerful authors in Hollywood, he scoffed. “Power list? More like powerless list”

But while conventional wisdom puts writers far down the totem pole, the truth is that from The Hunger Games to the upcoming The Hobbit, books remain the most durable source of content for films and TV.

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Final “Hunger Games” film to be split in two parts

“Mockingjay,” the final film installment of the blockbuster book series, “The Hunger Games,” will be split into two parts, with the movies to be released in 2014 and 2015, the Lionsgate studio said on Tuesday.

Lionsgate, a unit of Lions Gate Entertainment, said “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1″ will hit theaters on November 21, 2014, and “Part 2″ on November 20, 2015.

“The Hunger Games” film franchise is based on a best-selling science-fiction trilogy by author Suzanne Collins and follows the story of rebel heroine Katniss Everdeen, who tries to fight the oppressive regime ruling the nation of Panem.

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Sex fixer to the stars lifts lid on scandal in Hollywood’s golden age

Scotty Bowers' book Full Service: lurid disclosures, unflinchingly detailed

Scotty Bowers has kept quiet for 60 years but now, at 88, he’s talking about bedding the biggest screen icons of the day.

By Joanna Walters

Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn had just one thing in common – apart from being movie superstars.

But that one thing wasn’t the fairytale romance that Hollywood falsely spun for the public to keep their images clean, apparently.

They both used a handsome young gas station attendant for sex – in Tracy’s case personally, and in Hepburn’s case to procure her gay lovers, up to 150 of them over a lifetime.

This is just one revelation in a controversial memoir to be published later this month by an old man called Scotty Bowers, who was that gas station attendant, but also a gigolo and sex fixer to the stars during Hollywood’s golden age.

He has kept his mouth shut for 60 years but now, at 88, he’s talking. And how.

The result is a list as long as it is glittering of the screen icons he says he bedded and liaisons he arranged – both gay and straight – for the movie business elite in Los Angeles.

Bowers’s book unveils secrets involving Vivien Leigh, Laurence Olivier, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, Cole Porter, Rock Hudson and Bob Hope for starters, followed by Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson, Cecil Beaton, Tennessee Williams, Somerset Maugham and, more obscurely, Edith Piaf and Brian Epstein.

His book is calculated to shock. Some of the sensationalist tales seem incredible, while the many lurid disclosures are unflinchingly detailed.

Rumours of his work as a gigolo and a pansexual, post-war version of Hollywood madam Heidi Fleiss have done the rounds for years and been exchanged faithfully in industry gossip circles.

And though such scandal might have been ignored by the establishment, Bowers has been lent credibility by the New York Times and Gore Vidal.

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Audible Gets Hollywood Stars to Read Audiobooks

 

Audible.com, the provider of digital spoken-word entertainment, is introducing a line of audio performances by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Underscoring what Audible says is its global mission to establish the audiobook as a mainstream form of interpretive art on a par with theater or film, the new line will feature a roster of celebrated actors narrating distinguished works of literature that each star has helped select. The first of these new productions is scheduled to be released by Audible early in 2012. Actors slated to perform include:

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