Austin360 blogs > Out & About > Archives > 2009 > November > 30 > Entry
Austin Celebrity Roundup: Robert Rodriguez, Sandra Bullock, Luke Wilson
Hungarian director Nimród Antal may prefer full sets and live action to CG animation, but he and Austin producer Robert Rodriguez (a CG fan) remain in sync on the Austin-shot “Predators.” “(Rodriguez) is involved in the screenplay and we’ve had a lot of conversations, and any big decisions I want to make, I always speak to him about,” Antal told Coming Soon. “But he’s been very gracious and he’s been letting me do my thing. He’s really let me perform and he’s let me dance, so again, I’m grateful to him for that.” While using Rodriguez’s local crew, Antal brought along director of photography Gyula Pados, who worked with him on “Kontroll.”
Now they are talking Oscar. That’s right, for Sandra Bullock in “The Blind Side.” Say what you will, the Austin actress is proving box office gold this year. She landed “The Proposal” in part because she works cheaper that Julia Roberts, but it scored $164 million. Critically punished “All About Steve” only made $34 million, but “The Blind Side” has already grossed $100.3 million and is likely to top $200 million by the end of the year. That would mean Bullock’s films could reap almost $400 million for three fairly low-budget films.
Another Austin-linked name is enjoying a huge comeback. Frequent visitor and AT&T map pitchman Luke Wilson is involved in a “big-bucks marketing battle that’s already threatening to make the cola wars look like child’s play,” says industry follower Advertising Age. The combatants this war: Verizon Wireless and AT&T, the No. 1 and No. 2 U.S. wireless carriers. Wilson’s amiability has been drafted in the feud between the nation’s second-largest advertiser (Verizon’s marketing war chest is $3.7 billion) against the third largest (AT&T spent $3.1 billion last year).
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