Don’t ever cross the British tabs. But Anthony Hopkins did anyway, and now he’s paying the price. The Oscar winner is the subject of some scathing headlines in his native U.K. today as news sinks in that Hopkins has renounced his birthright to become a U.S. citizen.
The actor, who was sworn in before buddies John Travolta and Steven Spielberg in Los Angeles on Wednesday, is being branded in the Brit tabs alternately as “Hannibal Traitor “and “Hannibal Defector” — nods, of course, to his Oscar-winning turn as the flesh-eating Hannibal Lecter in “The Silence of the Lambs.”
So far, Hopkins is acting very un-Hannibal and remaining tight-lipped as to his motives to go American.
‘MENACE’ TO DVD: The wait might soon be over. Online DVD news tracker The Digital Bits (www.thedigitalbits.com) said today that collectors and aficionados alike can expect “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” currently only available on video, to come out on DVD. The site cited the interview this morning on the Los Angeles radio station KROQ where George Lucas confirms that his team at Lucsafilm is indeed working on the DVD version of the film.
Though no official word on when exactly the DVD will come out, The Digital Bits did report that the DVD version will include several unfinished and deleted scenes and sequences that were not in the original film.
KEEP HOPE ALIVE: Writer Bret Easton Ellis tells the Phoenix New Times that Lions Gate Films wants to make a franchise of “American Psycho,” the controversial chick-slicing flick based on his unbeloved chick-slicing novel of the same name. “Psycho,” the movie, opens in theaters today.
DON’T MESS WITH THE SANDMEN: In San Francisco on Thursday, the hard rockers of Metallica filed suit against three universities (the University of Southern California, Yale and Indiana U.) for encouraging its students to trade their music on Napster software. Napster was also named in the suit.
FIDDLING WITH DIDDLEY? Blues icon Bo Diddley has filed a lawsuit of his own — this one against Nike. The guitarist accuses the ubiquitous sneaker people of misappropriating his image to sell their ubiquitous “You Don’t Know Diddley” T-shirts.
