ICM, Endeavor in book battle
Agency says Abate under binding contract
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Days after Endeavor formalized plans for Richard Abate to steer the agency into the author representation business, ICM is crying foul.
The agency filed a complaint in Federal Court, Southern District of New York, seeking to stop Abate from working for Endeavor on the grounds that he remains under a binding contract that prevents him from working for a competitor.
Abate and Endeavor's plans to start a new author representation were revealed by Daily Variety earlier this week.
According to the filing, ICM claimed that it hired Abate in 1996 from a publishing house job that paid $20,500, and that in ten years he was making over $200,000 and received a bonus last December of $85,000.
While ICM tried to renegotiate and extend Abate, the agency halted that upon learning he'd negotiated a deal with Endeavor, informing ICM on Feb. 9 that he wanted to leave.
He did so, according to the complaint, before a resolution of his non-compete pact could be negotiated.
Neither the agency nor Abate would comment. Abate hasn't yet been served, but a hearing is expected to occur as early as March 19. The current complaint is strictly about stopping Abate from working for Endeavor. There is no specific request for damages yet.
There is a long history of agents who exit to work for competitors. Most wait until their contracts are expiring.
And most times, agencies find a way to settle disputes, but occasionally, dealmakers have been forcibly "beached," a term that refers to agents who are essentially sent to sit on the beach when it is clear they will leave upon the expiration of a deal. That rare occurrence happened both to Beth Swofford and Josh Donen when they decided to leave WMA for CAA.
Swofford, who headed the lit department, was shunned from meetings but still showed up and sat in her office each day. Donen, who ran WMA's director department, cooled his heels outside WMA headquarters until his deal expired and he joined CAA.
The complaint marks the latest example of a long contentious relationship between ICM and Endeavor, which ironically was rumored to have gotten hot and heavy in merger talks last year. Acrimony between the percenteries goes back to the night when ICM agents like Ari Emanuel and Tom Strickler left to form Endeavor. More recently, Endeavor poached the prominent director agent Robert Newman, who left when his contract expired.
More often than not, agencies find a way to settle disputes over agents in a financial exchange, and many agency observers predicted this will go in a similar fashion. The tone of the complaint indicates that ICM brain trust was angered by what it considered a brazenness of Abate's exit and what was characterized as a disregard for his contract.
Lawsuit illuminates Endeavor, ICM clash
By Josh Getlin
Times Staff Writer
March 10, 2007
NEW YORK — It's a case of life imitating "Entourage." When Richard Abate, a prominent New York literary agent, made plans to leave ICM and move to the Endeavor Talent Agency, he had no idea the transition would unleash so much drama. Not only has he become the target of internet gossip and speculation, he's also been slapped with an ICM lawsuit alleging that he violated the terms of his contract — which runs through the end of this year — by moving to an arch-competitor ahead of time.
The lawsuit, reported Thursday on Gawker.com, asks that Abate not be allowed to work for Endeavor through December. And the case, headed for a hearing this month in Manhattan federal court, underscores the highly competitive, often backstabbing world of super-agents who leapfrog from one agency to another, taking prized clients and contacts with them. Abate and his Rolodex, ICM charges, could do irreparable harm to the firm's book division by setting up shop this year with Endeavor.
But the stakes are also high for Abate, whose more than 50 clients include Dale Peck, Evan Wright, James Swanson, Ian Kerner, Yiyun Li and Lisi Harrison. He is expected to dramatically boost the literary clout of Endeavor — whose founder, Ari Emanuel, is said to be the real-life model for Jeremy Piven's über-agent character on HBO's "Entourage."
The Los Angeles-based agency had previously brokered book-to-movie projects by dealing with independent literary agents and representing their clients with Hollywood studios, much like United Talent Agency and Creative Artists Agency. Now Endeavor plans to compete as a full-service agency handling all aspects of such deals — including signing its own authors and handling film and television rights — like ICM and the William Morris Agency.
Neither Abate nor officials at Endeavor or ICM would comment on the matter. But other New York agents, although they asked not to be identified, seemed fascinated by the clash, which has also been followed closely by Variety and the Galleycat.com publishing industry website.
"This kind of lawsuit normally doesn't happen in the publishing world unless you're playing at a very high level in the business," said one veteran agent. "Usually these disputes get settled quietly. But when you're a big agency and you're threatened by the loss of clients, you don't just take it sitting down. You have to make a statement — and that's what this is really all about."
The lawsuit offers some juicy details about Abate's rise at the agency, beginning with his hiring in 1996. At the time, he had been working as an assistant with a book publisher for $20,500 a year. Since then Abate's salary has soared tenfold, to an average in excess of $200,000. Abate's good fortune "is in large measure the result of the business training and confidential contacts provided to Abate by ICM," the lawsuit said.
Endeavor gets bookish in Gotham
Agency creates publishing division
Richard Abate
By MICHAEL FLEMING
The move puts Endeavor in league with ICM and WMA, Hollywood agencies that have full-service publishing businesses. Abate spent the past decade working alongside Esther Newberg and Sloan Harris at ICM, which has long run a very successful operation that makes publishing deals for swarms of bestselling books, and then feeds them to ICM West Coast agent Ron Bernstein, who turns many into film and TV deals.
Like UTA and CAA, Endeavor rarely brokered publishing deals. Instead, it formed alliances with independent author agents who made the book deals and turned to their Hollywood counterparts to shop manuscripts for film deals. Endeavor's co-agent business has long been handled by Brian Lipson, who will continue to manage Endeavor's West Coast lit operations.
The goal of Endeavor's expansion is not only to turn a profit by brokering book deals, but also to put the growing agency on the ground floor of film-friendly literary material that can be serviced to movie and TV clients and be the catalyst for packages.
The move doesn't come without a challenge, however.
Several independent lit agents were troubled by the expansion plan. The earth is still scorched from the time that Mike Ovitz started a lit division at AMG and then, after making some film deals for Tom Clancy, poached his book deal business from William Morris.
That led independent agents to shun him from opportunities to co-agent properties generated by their author clients. Most lit boutiques are propped up by a few core author clients, and those agencies are wary of bringing them into a big agency if poaching is a possibility.
Sources at Endeavor tried their best to allay the fears of the lit agent community. Abate, they said, has a long classy track record as a book agent, which is more civil and less predatory by nature than film and TV agent counterparts in Hollywood. There is an unwritten code, they said, that agents do not poach authors from book agents who entrust them to make movie deals.
Abate, who left ICM three weeks ago, will bring with him a list of about 50 authors, and has plans to grow a full-fledged business that will likely be staffed by at least five agents. Abate's personal list includes longtime author clients like James Swanson, Evan Wright, Yiyun Li, Lisi Harrison, Dale Peck, Anthony Bozza and Ian Kerner. Abate, who has a doctorate in American Studies from New York U., began his career at Random House.
Lipson, who has made film deals for such authors as Stephen Ambrose, Brad Meltzer, Joyce Carol Oates and Jonathan Lethem, selectively made book deals as well, for Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne, Ambrose, Sharon Rocha (mother of murder victim Laci Peterson), and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy."
Endeavor's Gotham headquarters house several film agents, and a marketing division.
