There appears to be no alternative ending for this Hollywood drama.
The feud between Nikki Finke, the founder of Deadline.com, the powerful Tinseltown website, and its owner, Jay Penske, appears headed for court.
Penske, the chairman and CEO of PNC, appeared to bar Finke access to Deadline on Friday afternoon, hours after Finke took to Twitter to attack Variety, a second PNC property, and to promote her exit from Deadline to her own NikkiFinke.com.
In one tweet, Finke said Penske had his lawyers demand that she delete the tweets.
That only seemed to embolden her.
“Earth to Penske: Hollywood tried and failed to intimidate me. Big Media tried and failed to intimidate me. I like to brawl, remember?” she then tweeted.
Finke has been boiling mad since PNC bought Variety and, in her opinion, supported it better than its did Deadline.
The dynamo has been threatening to leave, while Penske has maintained that she is under a long-term contract.
On Friday, she said she would unveil NikkiFinke.com early in 2014.
In the latest .com Score data, Deadline had 2.9 million unique visitors in September compared to Variety.com’s 2.1 million.
Meanwhile, Jahm Najafi, a part owner of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns and Resolution, a Hollywood talent agency, is trying to help Finke buy back Deadline or start her own site, sources said.
A deal to buy Deadline back would not come cheap.
https://twitter.com/NikkiFinke/status/393830400125980672
https://twitter.com/NikkiFinke/status/393840333592616960
https://twitter.com/NikkiFinke/status/393903677859049472
The once tiny website now has annual revenue estimated to be in the $12 million to $15 million range, sources said, and profit margins of
75 percent.
Some say the price tag could range as high as $120 million.
Penske insisted recently that nobody had approached him with a credible offer to buy back the site.
Each time she threatened to leave, she was apparently talked into coming back.
But the Finke-Penske bridge may finally be torched.
Friday, the lead story on Deadline was a post from Finke saying she wasn’t able to post anything.
“I have been locked out of the Deadline Hollywood site after founding it 7 ¹/₂ years ago. So don’t expect any more box office. I also just tried to post an exclusive involving Jeff Robinov and Sony Pictures and GK Films’ Graham King and Dune Capital Management Steve Mnuchin but only the alert went through. What an extremely sad day.”
Of course, some Twitter followers were quick to ask, “If she was locked out, how did she manage to post that?”
Penske, the son of racing legend Roger Penske, has spent the last several years building up a mini-media empire, hiring Bonnie Fuller to run Hollywoodlife.com.
He was not reachable via phone or email late Friday.
Finke did not return calls for comment.
The writer has been loathed by some but has delivered scoops large and small, often by striking fear into the hearts of the people she perceives to have slighted her.