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Who is Bruce Berman?

[4. wiki: "Bruce Berman": https://archive.is/wbGIP]:

Bruce Berman is an American film industry executive and executive producer. He is the chairman and CEO of Village Roadshow Pictures, a position he has held since 1997. His credits as an executive producer include American Sniper, The Lego Movie, The Great Gatsby, the Ocean's trilogy, Sherlock Holmes and its sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, Happy Feet and The Matrix trilogy.[1][2][3][4]

Berman is noted for his collection of contemporary American photographs. In 2004, he was listed among the world’s top 25 photography collectors by ARTNews.[5]

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Career

Berman began working with Jack Valenti at the MPAA while a student at Georgetown. After he received his degree, he was hired as an assistant to Peter Guber at Casablanca Filmworks. In 1979, he moved to Universal Pictures, where he worked for Sean Daniel and Joel Silver. Less than three years later, he was named vice president of production.[3][7][9]

In 1984, Berman was recruited by Warner Bros. Pictures as a vice president of production, and in 1987 was promoted to senior vice president of production. He was named president of theatrical production in 1989 and president of worldwide theatrical production in 1991. During his tenure at Warner Bros. he produced and distributed films including Goodfellas, Batman Forever, JFK, The Fugitive, The Bodyguard, and Driving Miss Daisy.[7][10]

In May 1996, Berman started Plan B Entertainment, an independent motion picture company affiliated with Warner Bros. In 1997, Warner Bros entered into a joint venture with Village Roadshow Pictures, and Berman was appointed chairman and CEO. Considered "one of the industry’s leading financiers and producers of studio released motion pictures," the Village Roadshow and Warner Bros. partnership was extended in 2012 to 2017. The company established a second joint partnership with Sony Pictures Entertainment in 2014.[11][12]

Noteworthy movies he has been involved with so far: _{(Actors pointed out in the following list are not necessarily suspected by me of wrongdoing - their names are simply repeating elements in my research)}

• JFK (1991 | Kevin Costner, Tommy Lee Jones)
• The Bodyguard (1992 | Whitney Houston, Kevin Costner)
• The Fugitive (1993 | Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones)
• Batman Forever (1995 | Jim Carrey, Nichole Kidman, Tommy Lee Jones)

Pressing on...

Let's take a quick look at films that Berman was the executive producer for, in the year of 2006; the year that Happy Feet came out.

[4]:

Filmography (as executive producer)

Year	Title	Notes
2006	Firewall
2006	The Lake House
2006	Happy Feet	Academy Award Best Animated Feature
2006	Unaccompanied Minors

[5. wiki: Firewall (film)]:

Firewall is a 2006 American-Australian crime thriller film directed by Richard Loncraine and written by Joe Forte.[4] The film stars Harrison Ford as a banker who is forced by criminals, led by Paul Bettany, to help them steal $100 million. The film was a box office disappointment and received negative reviews from critics.

[6. wiki: The Lake House (film)]:

The Lake House is a 2006 American romantic drama directed by Alejandro Agresti and starring Keanu Reeves, Sandra Bullock and Christopher Plummer. It was written by David Auburn. The film is a remake of the South Korean motion picture Il Mare (2000). The story centers on an architect living in 2004 and a doctor living in 2006. The two meet via letters left in a mailbox at the lake house they have both lived in at separate points in time; they carry on correspondence over two years, remaining separated by their original difference of two years.

This film reunites Reeves and Bullock for the first time since they co-starred in Speed in 1994.

[7. wiki: Happy Feet]:

This article is about the 2006 film. For other uses, see Happy Feet (disambiguation).

Happy Feet is a 2006 Australian-American computer-animated musical family comedy film directed, produced, and co-written by George Miller. It stars Elijah Wood, Robin Williams, Brittany Murphy, Hugh Jackman, Nicole Kidman, Hugo Weaving, and E.G. Daily. It was produced at Sydney-based visual effects and animation studio Animal Logic for Warner Bros., Village Roadshow Pictures, and Kingdom Feature Productions and was released in North American theaters on November 17, 2006. It is the first animated film produced by Kennedy Miller in association with Animal Logic.~

[8. wiki: Happy Feet (disambiguation)]

[9. wiki: Unaccompanied Minors]:

Unaccompanied Minors (also known as Grounded in the United Kingdom and Ireland) is a 2006 Christmas comedy film directed by Paul Feig and starring Lewis Black, Wilmer Valderrama, Tyler James Williams, Dyllan Christopher, Brett Kelly, Gia Mantegna, and Quinn Shephard. It is based on a true story by Susan Burton first told on the public radio show This American Life, under the title "In the Event of an Emergency, Put Your Sister in an Upright Position".[3] The film was released on December 8, 2006 by Warner Bros. Pictures, and grossed $21.9 million against a $26 million budget.

You may be wondering where I'm going with this, but, follow along with me; read everything ahead - it all circles back around on itself & connects to previous RoC entries.

Notable actors from Happy Feet, relevant to this entry([7]):

• Nicole Kidman
• Robin Williams
• Brittany Murphy

Let's not beat around the bush here, as I want to jump straight from Happy Feet into the life and death of Brittany Murphy:

[10. wiki: Nicole Kidman]

[11. wiki: Robin Williams]

[12. wiki: Brittany Murphy]

Brittany Murphy

[12]:

Brittany Murphy-Monjack[2] (born Brittany Anne Bertolotti; November 10, 1977 – December 20, 2009), was an American actress and singer. A native of Atlanta, Murphy moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and pursued a career in acting. Her breakthrough role was as Tai Frasier in Clueless (1995), followed by supporting roles in independent films such as Freeway (1996) and Bongwater (1998). She made her stage debut in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge in 1997, before appearing as Daisy Randone in Girl, Interrupted (1999) and as Lisa Swenson in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999).

In the 2000s Murphy appeared in Don't Say a Word (2001) alongside Michael Douglas, and alongside Eminem in 8 Mile (2002), for which she gained critical recognition.[3] Her later roles included Riding in Cars with Boys (2001), Spun (2002), Uptown Girls (2003), Sin City (2005), and Happy Feet (2006). Murphy also voiced Luanne Platter on the animated television series King of the Hill (1997–2009). Her final film, Something Wicked, was released in April 2014.

In December 2009, Murphy died of pneumonia at the age of 32. When her widower Simon Monjack died from the same illness five months later, the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services considered toxic mold in their home as a possible cause for their deaths, but this was dismissed by the Coroner's Office. In 2011, Murphy's mother Sharon filed a lawsuit against the attorneys who represented her in an earlier suit against the builders of the home where her daughter and son-in-law died.

[13. wiki: Simon Monjack]

Before we look closer at the deaths, let's take some time to look at other movies Brittany Murphy starred in during 2006:

[12]:

Filmography

Year	Title	Role	Notes
2006	Love and Other Disasters	Emily "Jacks" Jackson
2006	Happy Feet	Gloria	Voice role
2006	The Dead Girl	Krista Kutcher

Love and Other Disasters is quite interesting, because when reading about the distribution company, Europa Corp, we find ourselves looking at a connection to Lions Gate and thus Mark Amin & Harvey Weinstein -- these three will come up again later on.

More interesting than that -- in a morbid kind of way, though, is The Dead Girl. Looking at the plot for this movie(and having taken time to watch it), in retrospect, it reads almost as if a thinly veiled threat toward Brittany. If nothing else, it's a bit of a sick joke that the surname of the character she played(who ultimately is killed by a sex predator) is Kutcher -- keeping in mind that Brittany Murphy and Ashton Kutcher broke up approximately around April 2003. Incidentally, one source, supposedly close to Kutcher, allegedly claimed that Brittany's mother, Sharon Murphy, played a small role in the break up...

I'll cut this comment a bit short here, up next, we'll look closer at the two movies mentioned above.

Continued ahead in comment 2...