The Week in Review

Marc Brickman Goes Renegade: In what we think of as the most interesting new hire of the week, Marc Brickman joined Renegade Management, the artist management division of Renegade Nation, as a full partner along with musician/actor/producer/all-around icon Steven Van Zandt. Brickman -- whose lighting and production design credits are too numerous to mention but include work with Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Barbra Streisand, The Black Eyed Peas, and Keith Urban, and who has created a number of dazzling light shows using the Empire State Building's new installation of Philips Color Kinetics LEDs -- is co-director and co-producer of The Rascals: Once Upon a Dream, which had a successful limited engagement on Broadway last spring and is now on tour. According to a release, "Renegade Management is unique in that it is able to utilize all the divisions of Renegade Nation to promote artists across both traditional and digital media platforms and helps create revenue for artists from all possible sources, including touring, merchandise, record sales, licensing, publishing, and more." Looks like a fascinating new chapter for one of the industry's most impossible-to-define talents. For more: http://plasa.me/q07nt.

Rebecca Aims for 2014 Broadway Opening: Don't stop the presses, but Rebecca, the endlessly troubled, litigation-riddled, scandal-plagued musical is now said to be targeted an opening on Broadway sometime in 2014. Ben Sprecher, the producer who failed to capitalize the production the first two times the show was announced, after having become ensnared in a bizarre scheme involving phantom investors, was set to lose the rights to the show if he failed to raise the money by the end of June of this year. That deadline has now been extended by the rights holder, VBW, so Sprecher, who said in April that he had $8 million of the necessary $14 - 16 million, now has more time. Meanwhile, Sprecher is continuing to pursue his (in our opinion, extremely ill-advised) lawsuit against the press agent Marc Thibodeau, whom he blames for scuttling the show's financing. Rebecca, which, which has book and lyrics by Michael Kunze and music by Sylvester Levay, is based on the classic Daphne Du Maurier novel of the same name. For more: http://plasa.me/40buc.

Matthew Loeb Reelected at IATSE: Last week at IATSE's 67th Quadrennial Convention in Boston, Matthew Loeb was re-elected president of the International. The vote was by acclamation, with more than 800 delegates from nearly 400 locals offering their approval. The union's general executive board was also reelected; this includes general secretary-treasurer James Wood, 13 international vice-presidents, and a delegate to the Canadian Labor Congress. According to a union release, "During the last four years, Loeb has engineered successful organizing drives across the seven departments of the IA, increased training, and emphasized the importance of safer working conditions, led the membership in supporting labor-friendly political candidates, and opened lines of communication through social media." We hear that Loeb has proven to be a dynamic and flexible leader. According to Variety, "Loeb has also improved coordination with the Intl. Brotherhood of Teamsters and craft unions. The 2011 - 12 round of negotiations marked the first time the unions had jointly negotiated with the West Coast locals of IATSE on a three-year healthcare deal, which expires in 2015."