Weintraub on Hammond

HAMMOND ORGAN: Ocean’s Eleven producer, Elvis Presley promoter and Frank Sinatra pal Jerry Weintraub is readying a film treatment about John Hammond, the Columbia Records executive, A&R man and record producer who famously discovered and signed Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan and Bruce Springsteen. Among others he’s worked with are Pete Seeger, Billie Holiday, Leonard Cohen and Stevie Ray Vaughan. The producer, who recently published his memoirs, When I Stop Talking, You’ll Know I’m Dead, has acquired the rights to Dunstan Prial’s biography of Hammond and hired Stanley Weiser, who penned Oliver Stone’s W, to write the script. Weintraub’s remake of The Karate Kid opens in June. (4/22p)