HOLLYWOOD - A King Kong exhibit and the set from the Back to the Future movies were among the film gems destroyed by the fire that raged through Universal Studios in California on Sunday.
The fire also destroyed a huge video archive of Universal movies and TV shows, but bosses insist the film is replaceable.
Studio boss Ron Meyer [...]

HOLLYWOOD - TUESDAY 11:00 p.m. (Pacific): Sex and the City (Warner Bros) continues to attract solid weekday business with an exceedingly strong $5.45M on Tuesday. I am told that 50+ women, adverse to opening weekend crowds, have been primary ticket buyers Monday and today as the film adaptation of the HBO series has pushed past $68M domestic. [...]

HOLLYWOOD - 2007 was a remarkable year for Paramount Pictures. Fueled by lucrative titles, many from the pipeline of Dreamworks, the studio reached $1 billion in domestic box office for the calendar year on July 9, earlier than any distributor ever surpassed that threshold. That amazing run was led by Shrek The Third, Transformers, Blades [...]

HOLLYWOOD - Classic kids-cartoon characters the Smurfs are coming to life in a new live-action/animated movie.
Shrek 2 and Shrek the Third writers David Stem and David Weiss are set to pen the screenplay after bosses at Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures bought the rights to a Smurfs movie.
The Smurfs first appeared in 1958, when they were created by [...]

HOLLYWOOD - Universal Studios in California is facing devastation after a huge fire ripped through the iconic set of buildings on Sunday.
According to TMZ.com, the Los Angeles City Fire Department sent 40 squads of firefighters to try to tackle and contain the blaze, which is believed to have started at 5:15 a.m.
The fire has destroyed [...]

HOLLYWOOD - Matt Damon will join Morgan Freeman in the Clint Eastwood-directed rugby drama The Human Factor. Variety reports that Damon will play rugby star Francois Pienaar, who created, with Nelson Mandela, an event that gave South Africans a common cause to rally around as the country was trying to heal from the wounds of apartheid.
Freeman will play [...]

HOLLYWOOD - SATURDAY 12:00 p.m. (Pacific): Dreamworks/Paramount is reporting a $20M opening day for Kung Fu Panda, which is better than the $17.75M I reported last night. The studio is floating a $60M estimate for the three-day, and that generally means it will be something higher. I say that the final weekend take will be [...]

HOLLYWOOD - An actors strike this summer is looking more likely than ever after bosses of the two main unions turned on one another.
Actors are threatening walkouts at the end of June if talks between the unions and major film studios fail to resolve a dispute over pay and conditions.
But now a bitter feud has [...]