movies

Andrea Eastman Dead: ‘Godfather’ Casting Director, ICM Agent Was 86

Published

2 hours ago

August 27, 2026

Andrea Eastman, who as the head of casting at Paramount Pictures brought Ali MacGraw to Goodbye, Columbus and James Caan to The Godfather before serving as a manager and longtime ICM agent, has died. She was 86.

Eastman died Wednesday in her sleep at her home in Santa Barbara, publicist Jill Fritzo told The Hollywood Reporter.

A real straight-shooter, Eastman discovered Jaclyn Smith, got Steven Spielberg and Roy Scheider together for Jaws (1975), managed Sylvester Stallone in his Rocky heyday and talked Rob Reiner into hiring her client — and his best friend — Billy Crystal for When Harry Met Sally … (1989).

With a long stint at ICM in Los Angeles and New York, she also repped and/or managed Barbra Streisand, Burt Reynolds, Peter Boyle, Chevy Chase, Henry Winkler, Jamie Lee Curtis, Christopher Reeve, Katharine Ross, Christopher Plummer, James Brolin, Dustin Hoffman, Dyan Cannon, Gabriel Byrne, Brenda Vaccaro, Richard Gere, Kim Basinger, Kathleen Turner, Stockard Channing, Tony Danza, Wes Craven, Katherine Heigl, Katie Couric, Elle MacPherson, Marshall Brickman and Charlie Rose, among many others over the years.

Eastman fought to cast MacGraw, then a 30-year-old photographer’s assistant and model new to acting, for the role of the younger Jewish-American princess Brenda Patimkin opposite Richard Benjamin as her romantic interest Neil Klugman in Goodbye, Columbus (1969), directed by Larry Peerce.

Natalie Wood had already turned down the part, and the studio had looked at hundreds of other actresses before MacGraw came aboard. (The year the movie hit theaters, MacGraw wed Paramount Studios chief Robert Evans.)

Eastman initiated the casting for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather (1972) and worked with Fred Roos to hire actors for the eventual Oscar winner for best picture.

“You make endless lists when you are a casting director,” she said in 2023. “When you do a movie, you try to think out of the box. For The Godfather, it was endless casting. We worked seven days a week. I was dreaming of Italians all night every night.”

Eastman thought Italian producer Carlo Ponti would make a great Vito Corleone before Godfather author Mario Puzo came up with the idea to cast Marlon Brando.

Caan had excelled in his screen test for the film and was slated to play Michael Corleone opposite the hulking Carmine Caridi as Sonny Corleone (Coppola had offered him the role in a bar). But when Al Pacino was hired to play Michael, Caan was out of the movie.

Caridi “was a big guy but not menacing. He was like a big Saint Bernard,” Eastman said. “Luckily, he’d never formally signed a deal, and Coppola trusted me. He was leaving for Sicily [to scout locations], so he told me, ‘Just cast my fucking movie!’”

After getting Charlie Bluhdorn, head of Paramount parent Gulf + Western, and Evans to sign off on Caan as Sonny and Pacino as Michael, Eastman hurriedly got Caan to sign a contract before someone changed their mind.

“We all worked as a team, but I am responsible for Jimmy Caan getting the part of Sonny,” she said. This era was the happiest time in her career, she often noted, but she would quit the studio in early 1973.

Born on June 15, 1940, Eastman grew up in Westport, Connecticut, where she attended Staples High School. She graduated from Ohio State University and married producer and backgammon expert Bruce Becker; after they divorced, she moved to California.

In summer 1968, she was working as an assistant for $150 a week for Paramount head of casting Joyce Selznick when the niece of Gone With the Wind producer David O. Selznick was fired. Eastman, then 28, took her place and made $300 a week.

She first spotted Smith when both were in the audience at the stage musical Hallelujah, Baby! “She was gorgeous,” Eastman said in an interview last year. “I walked up to her and gave her my card. She looked at me like, ‘Who is this person? She’s my age.’ And then I brought her in and she met Charlie Bluhdorn and Bob Evans and we put her under contract.” (Smith would play as a wedding guest in Goodbye, Columbus.)

Eastman’s tenure at Paramount also saw the release of such notable films as True Grit (1969), Downhill Racer (1969), the box office sensation Love Story (1970), Catch 22 (1970), T.R. Baskin (1971) and Play It Again, Sam (1972).

She said she quit Paramount when Frank Yablans, who had recently replaced Stanley R. Jaffe as studio chief, threatened to fire her if she attended the 1973 Academy Awards, where The Godfather was nominated for 11 Oscars.

She took a job at double her previous salary as an agent at International Famous Agency; her clients back then included Ross, Boyle, Curtis, Benjamin and Paula Prentiss.

She left to become Stallone’s manager, and that led to her agreeing in 1977 to form a joint personal management company with Jeff Wald, Ron DiBlasio and Herb Nanas. But soon after introducing Stallone to Wald, she was told by DiBlasio that “we don’t want to go forward with you, Jeff’s going to have his own company,” she recalled in 2023.

She said she was offered $25,000 but turned that down, and she would file a $1 million suit against Wald and DiBlasio for damages. She formed her own company, Andrea Eastman Management, before joining ICM in 1983.

She said Spielberg offered Scheider the role of police chief Martin Brody in Jaws at one of her dinner parties and that Reiner gave Crystal his script to When Harry Met Sally at one of her weddings. Later, she convinced Streisand to appear in an unglamorous role in Meet the Frockers (2004).

Eastman moved to Bozeman, Montana, full-time in 2005 and retired from ICM in 2010.

Survivors include her husband, attorney Richard Wilsker; she earlier was married to Paul N. Lazarus III (Westworld, Capricorn One).

In the 2022 Paramount+ miniseries The Offer, Eastman was portrayed by Stephanie Koenig. She said she did not appreciate that she and Godfather producer Al Ruddy were depicted as having a one-night stand when it fact they had love affair that lasted more than a year.

She established a sanctuary in Montana near Big Sky Resort dedicated to rescuing, rehabilitating and sheltering maltreated, abandoned and abused horses and dogs, and her impact as an animal advocate was chronicled in Jill Rappaport’s 2004 book, People We Know, Horses They Love.

In the late 1990s, she enlisted Robert Redford’s help in getting the nation’s first state initiative to ban the slaughter of horses for human consumption passed.

She spent three months in 2020 at the Beverly Hills Hotel recovering from open-heart surgery. Her late golden retriever had the run of the place, which was operating at a limited capacity during COVID, and a kids picture book written from the pooch’s perspective, Trooper at the Beverly Hills Hotel, was published in 2022.

After some tough early years in Hollywood, Eastman proved to be as tough as they come. “One of the things [you learn] being an agent is you don’t give up,” she said in 2014. “You never take no for an answer.”

movies

Alliance Cinema Backs David Mamet’s ‘Speed The Plow’

Published

19 minutes ago

August 27, 2026

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EXCLUSIVE: LA and Germany-based producer-financier Alliance Cinema, whose credits include My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Dark Tide, has joined David Mamet’s Speed The Plow as an equity financier.

Speed The Plow, currently in post-production, marks Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright David Mamet’s return to directing. Adapted from his acclaimed Broadway play, the feature stars Anthony Mackie, Ben Mendelsohn, Sharon Stone, Emily Alyn Lind, Chris Bauer, and Rebecca Pidgeon.

As we told you earlier this year, the new film will diverge to an extent from the play and will be set at the fictional American Prestige Studios, where junior executive Bob Grant (Mackie) is appointed to a head of production role. Grant is emotionally and philosophically unsuited to a job overseeing the production of schlock, but is aided, or impeded, by a studio time server, Charlie Fox (Mendelsohn); an office temp, Karen (Lind); and crazed movie star Gemma Speed (Stone).

The film, which also had help from A.I. on its journey through production, is produced by Tyler Payne, together with Douglas Riggs (Steak & Rosé), Jiarui Guo (Incandescent Productions), Vince Jolivette, and Richie Hill of Filmopoly. International sales are being handled by The Solution Entertainment Group, while Milestone Studios will oversee U.S. sales.

Separately, Alliance Cinema’s Jeanette B. Milio and her producing partner Iris Ramos have secured the exclusive worldwide adaptation rights to the Brazilian novel Diary Of A Weird Girl, written by author Thalita Rebouças and published by HarperCollins Brazil.

The plan is for the YA novel to be developed as a TV series for global audiences with Alliance now deciding on the best creative team to take it forward.

The book follows Carol, a 13-year-old girl who feels “weird” and navigates the ups and downs of pre-adolescence. The story takes in first crushes, school pressures, friendship conflicts, parental separation, and loneliness.

“We’re thrilled to bring one of Brazil’s most beloved young adult novels to television,” said Jeanette B. Milio. Iris Ramos added. “Thalita Rebouças has created unforgettable characters that resonate across cultures, and we look forward to introducing this inspiring story to audiences around the world through a high-quality international television series.”

Thalita Rebouças commented: “The love that Brazilian readers have shown Diary Of A Weird Girl has been the greatest gift. Some stories are simply meant to travel, and I’ve always believed this was one of them. I’m delighted to be partnering with Jeanette Milio and Iris Ramos to bring the novel to the international screen, and I can’t wait for audiences around the world to meet her.”

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André 3000 & Cathy Moriarty Join ‘Scooby-Doo: Origins’ Netflix Series Cast

Published

25 minutes ago

August 27, 2026

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EXCLUSIVE: André “3000” Benjamin (High Life; Jimi: All Is by My Side) is returning to the Scooby-Doo franchise with a recurring role on Netflix’s upcoming series Scooby-Doo: Origins, which is currently filming in Atlanta. Cathy Moriarty also will recur on the live-action series, which has been garnering strong buzz internally ahead of its 2027 global release.

Scooby-Doo: Origins, from Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, is the second live-action take on the beloved Hanna-Barbera cartoon after the 2002 movie. Benjamin is bridging the two; He and Big Boi’s OutKast, along with Killer Mike and Sleepy Brown, co-wrote the song “Land of a Million Drums,” for that film, which spawned a 2004 sequel.

Benjamin and Moriarty join previously announced Scooby-Doo: Origins leads Mckenna Grace as “Daphne Blake,” Tanner Hagen as “Shaggy Rogers,” Abby Ryder Fortson as “Velma Dinkley,” Maxwell Jenkins as “Fred Jones,” and of course, Scooby-Doo himself, along with Paul Walter Hauser, Rusty Schwimmer, Peter Macon, Jona Xiao, Dani Deetté, Elysée Sanvillé, Alex Isles, Avery Kristen Pohl, Pamela Mitchell, Ross Kimball, Sara Gilbert, Wynn Everett, Sauriyan Sapkota, and Bruce McGill.

Scooby-Doo: Origins is a described as a modern reimagining of the iconic mystery-solving group of teens and their very special dog. During their final summer at camp, old friends Shaggy (Hagen) and Daphne (Mckenna Grace) get embroiled in a haunting mystery surrounding a lonely lost Great Dane puppy that may have been a witness to a supernatural murder. Together with the pragmatic and scientific townie, Velma (Abby Ryder Fortson), and the strange, but ever so handsome new kid, Freddy (Maxwell Jenkins), they set out to solve the case that is pulling each of them into a creepy nightmare that threatens to expose all of their secrets.

Josh Appelbaum and Scott Rosenberg serve as showrunners, writers, and executive producers. Greg Berlanti, Sarah Schechter, Leigh London Redman (via Berlanti Productions and its overall deal with Warner Bros. Television), André Nemec, Jeff Pinkner, and Adrienne Erickson (via Midnight Radio), and Toby Haynes (EP/Episode 101 Director) also executive produce. Warner Bros. Television is the studio.

André 3000 starred as Jimi Hendrix in the 2013 film Jimi: All Is By My Side, for which he earned an Independent Spirit Award nomination. He also appeared in the films Four Brothers, High Life and White Noise, among others.

Oscar-nominated for her role in Raging Bull, Moriarty recently appeared in guest-starring roles in Will Trent and Elsbeth among others.

movies

‘Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip’ Sees Huge Audience Boost

Published

39 minutes ago

August 27, 2026

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EXCLUSIVE: The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th is off to a, well, roaring start on Bravo.

The premiere welcomed 2.5 million total viewers across platforms in its first week, marking a 112% increase over the previous season premiere, per a combination of Nielsen data and internal NBCUniversal streaming numbers.

Per Nielsen, the episode was up 97% on Bravo linear. On Peacock, NBCU says that the premiere was up 110% to achieve a streaming series high for Ultimate Girls Trip franchise. The episode also ranks as Bravo’s No. 6 biggest season premiere in Peacock history after seven days, the media company adds.

The growing audience is also fueling buzz on social. The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th has tallied 97 million impressions to-date, NBCU says.

The Real Housewives franchise appears to be firing on all cylinders, lately. The Real Housewives of Orange County Season 20 debuted to 2.4 million total viewers across platforms, which is a 15% increase season-over-season. Through 13 episodes, The Real Housewives of Atlanta is averaging 2.6 million total viewers across platforms after 35 days. That’s a 5% increase overall, but the show is up 22% on Peacock specifically.

Celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Real Housewives franchise, Season 5 of Ultimate Girls Trip features Teresa Giudice, Luann de Lesseps, Kyle Richards, Vicki Gunvalson, Gizelle Bryant, Porsha Williams, and Lisa Barlow. Throughout the season, the women are traveling to some of the iconic locations from the franchise’s history, starting in Orange County and visiting Beverly Hills, Atlanta, Miami, and New York City.

The Real Housewives Ultimate Girls Trip: Roaring 20th is produced by Shed Media with Lisa Shannon, Dan Peirson, Darren Ward, and Barrie Bernstein serving as executive producers. Andy Cohen also serves as executive producer.