It's funny — we were just talking to someone last week about the slow decline of Lawrence Kasdan, who wrote and/or directed some of the '80s best films of their respective genres, including The Empire Strikes Back, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Body Heat, Silverado and The Big Chill. Little did we know how desperately he seems to regret not having a piece of the cult 1981 sword-and-sandals classic Clash of the Titans, a Kasdan-written, Louis Leterrier-directed remake of which is now on the way from Warner Bros.

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As first foreseen here last week, bad news rolled into Picturehouse HQ today in the form of a batch of pink slips. Warner Bros, is shuttering the art-house/indie/foreign distribution arm in the wake of its belt-tightening at Picturehouse's parent company New Line; we're a little more surprised, however, to read that Warners is also closing shop at Warner Independent Pictures. We knew Jeff Robinov and Alan Horn were unhappy with the boutique business, but Jesus. Picturehouse chief Bob Berney and WIP boss Polly Cohen, tagged for a possible (if implausible) power-sharing arrangement as recently as last week, are both being shown the door, as are both offices' staffs in New York and Los Angeles. We'll be following up later with word on that rumoured independent venture of Berney's, but in the meantime, the full press release from Warner Bros. follows after the jump.

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A tip into Defamer HQ suggests that today may be the last for the majority of remaining employees at New Line Cinema, the Time Warner subsidiary that has spent the last month transitioning from a stand-alone operation to a genre cog in the Warner Bros. machine. The speculation trickled down a little bit ago from a few private industry message boards; it would be the culmination of news expected since co-founders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne made their own departures public Feb. 28. Production head Toby Emmerich surprised most observers last month by staying on as president and COO, but he's in the minority likely to stay on as the labels consolidate. Let us know if you've heard the same — you know where to find us.

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Remember all that early speculation that New Line production boss Toby Emmerich's head wound bounce out the office door after the Great Warner Bros. Leash Yank of 2008, right behind those of co-founders Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne? Signs began pointing elsewhere not too long ago, and Claudia Eller confirms today that Emmerich is in fact staying on as New Line president and COO:

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In a savvy bit of viral marketing set to reclaim Warner Bros.' Dark Knight campaign from the near-disaster of votive-and-flower-ready Why So Serious? multiplex displays, Batman fans are encouraged to stopwhatthey'redoingRIGHTNOW and allay their post-Ledger apprehensions at IBelieveinHarveyDent.com. There, Gotham City district attorney Harvey Dent -- a/k/a eventual Caped Crusader nemesis Two Face -- exhorts visitors to join his campaign to "join the fight for Gotham."

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Is it 2009 yet? The hyperbolic rate in which bad news is proliferating through Tinseltown in the first nine days of 2008 is officially starting to freak everyone the fuck out. If it's not the Golden Globes cancellation putting a $100MM dent in local revenue, it's Warner Bros. getting ready to issue rosé slips to scads of employees. And then there's the sad story of Axium, the payroll company that shut its doors yesterday, leaving hundreds out of work and thousands without paychecks (tip: even if you got a paycheck from Axium, DON'T CASH IT -- chances are it will bounce higher than a superball). Tips have been flying into Defamer's virtual P.O. Box fast and furious; follow along for some of the lowlights, including a internal memo issued by Axium subsidiary Ensemble Chimes Global and a firsthand account of the goings-on in Burbank yesterday.

So there's that! And there's also this:

Hi fellow CoProers - I just wanted to share an account of what I experienced today when I visited Axium's office in Burbank.

Having no idea of what was going on, I stopped by there early this afternoon to personally drop off the last remaining timecards from a job I just wrapped yesterday. I live in the valley so I thought I'd save on a messenger and deliver them myself. When I got there, there was no one at the front desk and piles of unopened mail cluttered the space (including tons of envelopes from the EDD). After waiting a few minutes, a woman walked out and told me that if I was dropping off payroll I would need to take it somewhere else because the company went out of business. I thought she was joking. A week prior, we had turned in all the crew payroll for a commercial we had shot a few days before Christmas. We had even spoken to our paymaster yesterday morning who assured us that
the checks would be going out at the end of the day. Guess he didn't know he was about to lose his job.

More and more people starting walking out with their belongings and told me that they had received an email from the CFO yesterday afternoon telling them that they no longer worked there because the company had gone out of business. I was also told that I would not be able to cash the payroll check I had just received in the mail yesterday because their accounts were frozen and the check would be bounced back (along with a bank fee for attempting to cash a bad check). There were a few nice people who tried to gather up all the original timecards from my job so that I could process them at another company, but I was not able to get the ones in which a check had already been issued. Oh yeah, I was told that they were trashing all the timecards! Luckily I was able to get the majority of
mine back.

The moral of the story is... if you have recently received a check from Axium/Avalon DO NOT CASH IT or it will be bounced and you will be charged a fee. If you have already cashed a check, call your bank and see if it has cleared. If it has not - it won't, and the funds will be withdrawn from your account soon and they will charge you a fee. If you have recently submitted timecards to Axium/Avalon and your paymaster didn't think to take the originals home with him when he left, they are most likely garbage. I think we can expect this situation to screw up our Unemployment and our 2007 tax filing since the last of the employees were leaving today. This sucks!

Safely on the other side of the holiday season, when pink-slips tucked into stockings hanging above smoldering Yule logs would have put a further damper on an already gloomy Christmas in Hollywood (not to mention the SHITCAN CLAUS VISITS WARNER STAFFERS headlines in the trades that would've accompanied such a badly timed move), Warner Bros. has announced to employees that it will kick off the new year with a cheery wave of strike-related layoffs. In a legally mandated, but still heartfelt, letter to studio workers, a WB VP said that an unspecified number of cutbacks--the good news: they may be temporary! The bad news: Did we mention that "cutbacks" means we're firing a bunch of people?-- will go into effect by January 18th, according to Variety:

"We anticipate these cutbacks will be temporary, and that many employees will be called back to work once the strike concludes," she added. "We regret that we must take these actions; please know that we have delayed as long as we can. We appreciate the focus and teamwork you've all shown during this difficult time."

As if this development weren't depressing enough, Var notes employee-reduction initiatives at Walden Media and Innovative Artists (and more are sure to come now that Warner Bros. has broken the ice--get excited), and adds the fact that there's only one scripted television series still in production in L.A. Please join us in issuing a resigned sigh as we helplessly await the faint sound of the 2007 television season's soul-chilling death-rattle immediately following the final take of an October Road location shoot.

• Warner sets layoffs due to strike [Variety]

Tips began flooding the Defamer mailbox just minutes ago that Axium International, a leading entertainment industry payroll agency that works with Warner Bros. among other studios, shut their doors overnight and have apparently declared bankruptcy. We called their Los Angeles, Burbank and New York offices in an attempt to get comment, and all three calls went straight to the company voicemail (urging us to "call back during regular office hours"). One of our sources told us that Axium "fired everyone without warning" earlier today and is holding onto over $100,000 in payroll money recently deposited from the DGA. An email chain describing the situation that was sent to the LA Producers Yahoo group follows after the jump.

From: LAProducer@yahoogroups.com [mailto:LAProducer@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of [REDACTED]
Sent: Tuesday, January 08, 2008 1:36 PM
To: LAProducer@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [LAProducer] For those of you not on CoPros

Axium/Avalon closed this morning. Here are two emails that were on copros and since no one here is talking about it I thought maybe some of you might not know.

Hi, all.

I just spoke with Andre at Axium and it is true. They were told yesterday to remove their personal belongings and not do any more work. All the Axium offices worldwide (LA, NY, CHI, London, Mexico City, Canada) are shut down permanently, and the accounts have been frozen. It does not appear that the Axium employees are going to be
paid for their last week of work or any sort of severance, as it is indeed a bankruptcy.

---------------------------------

Hi, again.

Understandably, there is going to be some confusion over this for the next couple of days as the news filters out to the crewpeople who will be invariably calling you for these answers.

Andre has spoken with several of his clients at the accounting level of the production companies he deals with, and I imagine this is going on throughout the company as all of the paymasters ultimately have
solid relationships with their clients. At this point, you should talk to your company controller to see what action they have been told to make.

There are a few different scenarios but, rather than rumor-mongering, I suggest going through your company controller as they have probably heard from your paymaster already, or will within the next couple of hours.

More on this story as it happens.