There's always something fun to pick apart on Nikke Finke's blog, and this past week has been no exception:

Director Quits Uni's 'Wolfman' Remake

That's right, quit. "He just blew the opportunity of a lifetime, which is mind-boggling," an insider tells me. The commercial and video director did the well received but small budget One Hour Photo and made the step up to a big studio pic with a budget of $100 mil (but the cost is only $85M to Uni because of the UK rebate). But then Romanek decided he couldn't make the film with just that dough. "He's a purist, an artiste, an exquisite craftsman, but he just had a budget schedule he couldn't accomodate," an insider explains. Talk about career suicide.

Not being an insider, I can't claim any special knowledge, understanding, or experience here, but something tells me that this guy is isn't going to drop off the map here. And seriously, Wolfman? Haven't we had enough of these remakes already? Stealing a bit from Kevin Smith here, haven't we said everything we need to say already?

This film doesn't rank real high for anticipation in any way whatsoever, and since directors are certainly important -- but not the most important factor -- I don't really see what the big deal is. I'd be far more worried about having a dynamite script that can take well traveled territory and do something new with it, than I ever would be with a director who has actually shown signs of having integrity.

In fact, I'd be pretty upset and nervous if I were Universal, that I just lost an up-and-coming director because he knew there was no way he could fit all the likely unnecessary special effects into a $100m budget. That kind of shit ought to set off alarms right away that either the budget has to come up, or the effects have to be thinned out. Apparently the choice was neither, so this guy left so that he wasn't partially responsible for the result.

Career suicide? Talk about a guy I would burn the town down in order to work with. You can't buy that kind of integrity, and people who aren't totally useless "insider" leeches know that.

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Toss in more rumors from the blog that said back at the beginning of November that "a deal was basically done" and would be signed, sealed, and delivered within a couple of days -- that was nearly two months ago -- apparently things were very "urgent" and optimistic on the 25th of January, there was more progress on the 29th, but we could very well still be weeks away from an actual deal.

This, unlike what the DGA did, is actual bargaining. This, unlike the AMPTP, is what the WGA has wanted from the very beginning.

These rumors, unlike actual news, are unsubstantiated in every way possible and should probably be dismissed and ignored as such. I've linked to them so you can judge for yourself, the value of this stuff.

Meanwhile, with these talks still going on, Peter Chernin is going out of town instead of staying and actually working for a living to get his company back in business, his employees back to work, and the town back on its feet after costing the local economy over $1.5 billion. Could there be any better example of why this strike wasn't settled months ago? Could this country have any better example of how uncaring and what complete failures corporate CEOs have become in the United States?