Leo vs Leo JULY 24, 2002 From www.creators.com BY MARILYN BECK AND STACY JENEL SMITH

MIRAMAX PITS LEO AGAINST LEO FOR CHRISTMAS/DREAMWORKS GOES FOUR FOR FOUR FOR BEST PIC Something's got to give -- or does it? As things stand now, Leonardo DiCaprio's "Gangs of New York" will go on the market in direct competition with Leonard DiCaprio's "Catch Me If You Can" on Christmas Day. "I'm sure they have a business plan that makes sense to them, but I don't understand it," says DreamWorks' Walter Parkes of Miramax's decision to put "Gangs" in direct competition with his company's "Catch Me." Adds Parkes, who is one of the heads of DreamWorks, along with his wife Laurie MacDonald, "In a standoff like this, someone usually backs off, but I can tell you that in this case, it won't be us." He says he's heard the Miramax period gangster film by Martin Scorsese is very good, but, he stresses, "Ours is a very entertaining movie, tailor-made for Christmas release. And that's where it's going to remain." Walter and Laurie, on vacation in Italy with their children, are keeping in touch with current box-office reports via e-mail -- and smiling a lot, with DreamWorks' "Men in Black II," "Road to Perdition" and "Minority Report" all burning up the box office. And they're looking ahead to a fall release schedule that seems equally as promising, with Jackie Chan's "The Tuxedo" action-comedy and "Ring" (a remake of a Japanese chiller) preceding "Catch Me If You Can" into theaters. MEANWHILE: Next year looks like it will be another big one for the studio, which has scored three consecutive Best Picture Oscar winners with "American Beauty," "Gladiator" and "A Beautiful Mind." On a fast track is an Abraham Lincoln biopic, which Steven Spielberg expects to direct, and the planned World War II movie about allied commandos fighting Nazis on a Greek Island. Both are being penned by "Gladiator" co-scriptor John Logan. If the current good times at DreamWorks seem particularly great to Parkes, it's because "At the beginning, people were impatient for us to get rolling." With Spielberg as co-owner of DreamWorks alongside industry moguls Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, he says, "The company was launched in 1994 with so much press attention that those of us in the trenches felt a bit of heat."

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