Nikki Finke Gets Waxed?

TheWrap editor Sharon Waxman and her opposing number at Deadline Hollywood, Nikki Finke, have resumed a war of words – as if it had ever really let up – with Waxman’s June 2 report and email blast announcing Finke had been fired by her boss, Jay Penske of Penske Media Group.

Waxman reported late June 2 that “Nikki Finke has been fired from the blog she founded, Deadline Hollywood, and will be leaving the company as soon as this week, multiple individuals with knowledge of the situation have told TheWrap.”

TheWrap added that Penske allegedly made the move after Finke was said to have made an email threat to a source regarding a missed scoop that UTA is seeking another investment partner.

The denials came quickly – first from DH’s Michael Fleming and, the next morning, from Finke herself as she said she was preparing for a vacation. But neither aggressively defensive post did much to clear up Finke’s status, though she did promise TheWrap it should prepare to lawyer up.

The Los Angeles Times reported “the mercurial Finke has been telling people that she is looking to leave Deadline and go back into business for herself. While she was filing her box-office report for this weekend she told some people that it would be her last such piece for Deadline.”

The two inside-Hollywood blogs have had a very public, and often nasty, rivalry since The Wrap launched to challenge DH’s online supremacy in digging up industry dirt.