A look inside Hollywood and the movies : Roseanne, Tom and a Tale of Two Agencies

Boy, those wild and wacky Arnolds just keep on makin’ headlines, don’t they?

But what exactly was behind Roseanne and Tom’s sudden about-face to switch agency affiliations from the William Morris Agency to ICM and back to WMA within two weeks?

Last Wednesday both Hollywood trade papers reported that the high-profile media couple wouldn’t be making the move to ICM after all because they were legally bound to the Morris office for future financial commitments.

While it is true that the Arnolds are under contract to William Morris for another eight months, that hasn’t stopped talent before from leaving one agency to join another. For instance, when director Tim Burton left WMA last year to join rival Creative Artists Agency, his work was commissionable by Morris for at least two years.

It shouldn’t have mattered to ICM that it wouldn’t have been entitled to collect commissions on the Arnolds for eight more months, since the couple wouldn’t have been available to do a movie until next April, during their hiatus from the “Roseanne” series. Production on the ABC show resumes this August.

The Arnolds, through their publicist Pat Kingsley, claim that their decision to remain at WMA was purely emotional. “We simply came to the conclusion that we left a place where we had emotional ties and decided to return to the William Morris Agency,” the Arnolds said.

One source close to the Arnolds suggested that the pair’s decision to leave their Morris agent John Burnham after five years may have strictly been a “knee-jerk” reaction to recent back-to-back career disappointments.

The Arnolds announced they were departing WMA right after Columbia Pictures pulled the plug on their planned $16.5-million movie project “Car Picture” and not long after ABC canceled Tom’s “Jackie Thomas Show.”

Some sources believe that the Arnolds rethought their decision to leave WMA because the chemistry between the feisty couple and ICM’s no-nonsense chairman Jeffrey Berg just didn’t work.

A series of letters between the Arnolds’ lawyer and WMA and from the Arnolds’ lawyer to CBS, however, tell a somewhat different story. In strongly worded legalese, WMA senior vice president Steven Kram and the Arnolds’ attorney Michael Robbins dispute what fees WMA is due and whether WMA has the right to represent the Arnolds on certain projects, as well as possible breaches that WMA’s position on these matters might cause for the Arnolds with Capital Cities/ABC.

ICM officials said through a spokesman that after talking with its attorneys, it felt that litigation by WMA was imminent against it and the Arnolds.

WMA’s Burnham, however, insists that “we never threatened litigation.”

Burnham said the Arnolds called him Tuesday to say they had “terminated their relationship with ICM.” Stopping short of admitting how surprised he was to receive the Arnolds’ call, Burnham said, “Let’s just say I was totally thrilled!”