With better CGI this time?
Underlining the fact that Playboy has, from the beginning, contained provocative material to read as well as look at, the magazine said Wednesday that it plans to produce several major motion pictures based on fictional stories that first appeared on its pages.
The new director's cut of Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 war drama Apocalypse Now, renamed Apocalypse Now Redux, is attracting sell-out crowds at virtually all the 19 theaters in which it is being shown in the U.S. and Canada.
'Twas the weekend before Christmas, and all through the movie house, all the kids were eager, to see the talking mouse. As usual, movie attendance was soft during the final holiday shopping weekend of the year. The box office was dominated by two rodents: one of them the little talking mouse who stars in Columbia Pictures' G-rated "Stuart Little," the other, the ubiquitous Disney mouse, which had three films in the weekend's top five. In its opening weekend, "Stuart Little," an adaptation of the popular, half-century-old book by E.B. White featuring the voice of Michael J. Fox as the titular creature, grossed an estimated $15.4 million in 2,878 theaters, and it had the highest per-theater average of any movie in wide release at $5,351. Although a $15 million gross won't set any records, studio officials are pleased that the film opened strong during the pre-Christmas wee
The PGA Tour has put together a new four-year deal (2003-2007) with three television networks and three cable outlets worth $900 million, a 55 percent increase over the current package, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Even if critics slammed the film as a dud, Pearl Harbor managed to capture the record as the second-highest grossing film for a four-day opening, taking in a healthy $75.1 million box office during the Memorial Day weekend. Industry experts had estimated a $100 million opening, but Disney predicted that the three-hour epic would gross between $45 million and $55 million.
The No. 1 spot is still held by The Lost World: Jurassic Park, which earned $92.7 million during the 1997 Memorial Day weekend. In comparison, other films in this Memorial Day league that came close to World were Mission Impossible 2's $56.8 million in 2000 and Star Wars: Episode I's $64.8 in 1999. Even the recently released The Mummy Returns gave these films a run for its money, opening with $68 million--on a regular three-day weekend.
HOLLYWOOD, Dec. 5, 2000 -- Julia Roberts has got clout. Just ask The Hollywood Reporter, who has voted the "Erin Brockovich" actress to the No. 3 spot on their annual 50 most influential women in show biz list, which comes out today. And what's noteworthy is that Roberts is the only actress to make the trade paper's titular power index -- which is commonly populated by largely unrecognizable entertainment suits and exec types -- in nine years. "We tend not to focus on talent (actresses) because the list was first created to turn the spotlight on women who are doing a great job and go largely unnoticed, but Julia Roberts is in a class by herself," the Reporter's editorial director of special issues, Paula Parisi, told Reuters. And the class that Parisi spoke of is Roberts' $20 million per picture salary (the highest for any and all actresses), her marketabi