Richard Nanula Officially Out at Colony, Miramax

Richard Nanula is no longer on personal leave from Colony Capital, Miramax and other related companies. He has now completely severed his ties with the international investment bank, where he was a partner, and the movie company, where he was chairman, a spokesperson for Colony Capital confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday.

Nanula, who was once chief financial officer of the Walt Disney Co., has recently been linked to a growing sex scandal. It began when pictures were published about three weeks ago on the website The Dirty (and later elsewhere) of a man believed to be Nanula playing the male lead in a porn movie with adult-film actress Samantha Saint.

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Nanula has not responded to THR's request for comment.

It appears Nanula’s expensive sex addiction has a long history. On Sunday, the New York Post reported that around 1999, when Nanula was working for Amgen, he attended a sex-addiction therapy program at the Hoffman Institute in San Rafael, Calif., according to a 2005 divorce filing.

This story of his sex addiction was told in the divorce case involving his then-wife, Tracey Nanula. She said she had forced her husband to enter sex therapy after she found he had spent as much as $10,000 on a prostitute. She says he first learned the truth in 2001 from credit card bills and checks paid to escorts. Tracey had met her husband when both worked at Disney.

This comes only a week after revelations that Nanula was sued in a sex harassment suit filed against him personally and against Colony Capital on Jan. 30.

The suit was filed in L.A. Superior Court by Stephanie Shaw, who says she started as a temp at Colony Capital in February 2011. She was made a permanent employee in June and then the following Jan. 30, she says she was groped and sexually harassed by a male employee.

Nanula was her supervisor, and she charges he did not help her and that after she went public with her complaint, Nanula created a hostile work environment and is to blame for what she calls her wrongful termination.

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On Sunday, the New York Post reported that Ronald Tutor, the CEO of Tutor Perini construction, which recently won the contract to build the first leg of California’s high-speed rail system, is still an owner of Miramax along with Colony, its principal Thomas Barrack, the Qatar Investment Authority and The Weinstein Co.

That is incorrect.

Tutor, who also is involved in several federal and state lawsuits and a bankruptcy in association with his former business partner David Bergstein, sold his interest in Miramax in January. Tutor apparently continues to try and reduce his movie business interests.

Miramax is left with no chairman with Nanula gone and no CEO (since Mike Lang left in March 2012), but it has hired a corps of veteran executives to run the divisions charged with continuing to monetize the Miramax film library. That asset was acquired in December 2010 from Disney.

The buyers at the time included Barrack, individually and on behalf of Colony Capital, along with Ronald Tutor and, putting up the largest amount in the high-leveraged deal, Qatar Investment Authority. The joint venture, then called Filmyard Holdings, paid Disney $663 million.

Iconic Sci-Fi Author Richard Matheson Dies at 87

Richard Matheson, the author of classic sci-fi stories such as The Shrinking Man and many iconic episodes of The Twilight Zone, has died. He was 87.

Matheson died at his home in Calabasas, Calif., of natural causes.

Brooklyn-born Matheson graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism and moved to California in 1951, but he was already on the path of a fantasy and sci-fi writer: He sold his first story, "Born of Man and Woman," to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1950.

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Matheson became a master of the short story, penning dozens and dozens of stories during the course of his 40-some-odd-year career, including 1953’s Hell House and, later, 1971's Duel, which were adapted for big screens and small. (Duel, which like many of Matheson's stories he adapted himself, was the ABC telefilm that elevated a young Steven Spielberg and showed the suspense chops that he'd bring to Jaws.)

"Richard Matheson's ironic and iconic imagination created seminal science-fiction stories and gave me my first break when he wrote the short story and screenplay for Duel," Spielberg said in a statement. "His Twilight Zones were among my favorites, and he recently worked with us on Real Steel. For me, he is in the same category as Bradbury and Asimov."

In 1956, Matheson wrote The Shrinking Man, which was turned into the classic sci-fi film The Incredible Shrinking Man. The film also gave him his debut as a feature screenwriter. “My original story was a metaphor for how man’s place in the world was diminishing. That still holds today, where all these advancements that are going to save us will be our undoing,” Matheson told THR when MGM acquired the rights to develop a new movie. Matheson was writing the new screenplay with his son, Richard Matheson Jr.

Matheson’s work often has been adapted for the screen: Somewhere in Time, What Dreams May Come and Stir of Echoes have all been movies, but his sci-fi vampire novel I Am Legend was the basis for three different adaptations: 1964’s The Last Man on Earth, the 1971 Charlton Heston movie Omega Man and the 2007 Will Smith movie, I Am Legend.

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Starting in the late 1950s, he entered the television realm -- writing for series like Star Trek, Wanted Dead or Alive, Combat!, Kolchak: The Night Stalker and The Alfred Hitckcock Hour -- but it was with his 16 episodes of Twlight Zone that he influenced a future generation of storytellers such as Stephen King, Anne Rice, Damon Lindelof, Steve Niles and Seth Grahame Smith. (One of those episodes, "Steel," was expanded into the 2011 Hugh Jackman movie Real Steel.)

Among the episodes was the unforgettable 1963 installment Nightmare at 20,000 Feet starring William Shatner. Matheson talked about his inspiration for the story during a 2002 interview with the Archive of American Television.

“I was on an airplane and I looked out and there was all these fluffy clouds and I thought, ‘Gee what if I saw a guy skiing across that like it was snow?’ because it looked like snow. But when I thought it over, that’s not very scary, so I turned it into a gremlin out on the wing of the airplane.”

"We were all with him when he passed," said Matheson Jr. "It was very peaceful. Even though we were sobbing, it was beautiful in its own way. He was a majestic talent and he was every bit as wonderful as a father, a friend and a husband."

Lindelof, who co-created the TV phenomenon Lost, credits Matheson as a huge influence:

"Richard Matheson was a juggernaut of genre... But his writing never lost sight of the characters who inhabited the incredible worlds he created.  Every time I fly, I look out at the wing, just in case.  He will be profoundly missed."

 

Author Richard Matheson 'I Am Legend' Writer, Dies At 87

Author Richard Matheson, whose injection of humanity into science-fiction tales engaged audience for more than five decades, has died. Matheson's work included The Shrinking Man
, I Am Legend, and numerous other movie and TV scripts, including episodes of The Twilight Zone.
Matheson was 87. His death Sunday was announced online after his daughter, Ali, wrote of his passing. The genre website Shock Till You Drop quotes her, citing author John Shirley, who posted her statement on Facebook:

"My beloved father passed away yesterday at home surrounded by the people and things he loved...he was funny, brilliant, loving, generous, kind, creative, and the most wonderful father ever...I miss you and love you forever Pop and I know you are now happy and healthy in a beautiful place full of love and joy you always knew was there..."

Many of Matheson's stories placed otherwise normal people in extreme or fantastic circumstances — a hallmark of The Twilight Zone
, for which he wrote more than a dozen episodes. He also wrote a short story about a trucker tailgating a driver, which he then used to create a screenplay for the 1971 Steven Spielberg film Duel, starring Dennis Weaver.
At io9, Rob Bricken summarizes some of Matheson's other career highlights:

"Along with I Am Legend, Matheson

wrote What Dreams May Come, A Stir of Echoes, and The Shrinking Man, all of which became Hollywood movies (in the case of I Am Legend, more than a few times). He was also one of the original Twilight Zone's greatest screenwriters, penned the classic William Shatner-starring episode "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet." His Twilight Zone episode "Steel" became the basis for Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman."
Another film adaptation of I Am Legend
was 1971's The Omega Man, with Charlton Heston in the lead role. In 2011, NPR readers voted the novel No. 65 on a list of the Top 100 science fiction books.
Matheson also took up the essential questions of the human condition in his 1993 non-fiction book The Path,
based on the concepts of Harold W. Percival.
Member station KPCC reports, "Writers from Stephen King to Anne Rice cited Matheson as an influence. In 1984, Matheson received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement. In 2010, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame."

As for how Matheson viewed his work, Io9 pulled this quote from a 2007 interview with CinemaSpy:

"I think we're yearning for something beyond the every day. And I will tell you I don't believe in the supernatural, I believe in the supernormal. To me there is nothing that goes against nature. If it seems incomprehensible, it's only because we haven't been able to understand it yet."