Entertainment Industry News

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - An insurgent faction within the Screen Actors Guild has launched a campaign to wrest control of the powerful union from leaders they blame for stalemated contract talks with major Hollywood studios.

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - News Corp's Twentieth Century Fox has reached an agreement in principle with a group of theater chains, paving the way for a long-delayed $1.1 billion digital cinema upgrade that Hollywood hopes will boost attendance and cut costs, sources familiar with the deal said on Thursday.

PARIS (Reuters) - France's first lady, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, shot to the top of the pop charts with her latest album in its first full week on sale, a music industry body reported.

SAN DIEGO (Reuters) - It was a veritable Geek Pride Day on Thursday as the 39th annual Comic-Con opened its doors to 125,000 comic book fans, many outfitted in superhero regalia, from masks and capes to Batman-themed yarmulkes.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Writer-director-producer James Gunn, actress Shawnee Smith and acting coach John Homa will serve as judges on VH1's upcoming reality competition series "Scream Queens."

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Two former members of the Smashing Pumpkins sued Virgin Records on Thursday, saying the label shut them out of profits after signing a deal with the rock band's frontman Billy Corgan.

-Yesterday's Winners: So You Think You Can Dance (Fox), Criminal Minds R (CBS)

Oxygen's Tori & Dean: Home Sweet Hollywood rose to 1.1 million viewers in the Tuesday 10 p.m. hour this week, making this the most-watched telecast in the cable net's history. Tori & Dean (a new addiction for Mr. TV, by the way, care of Virgin America Airlines) also reached a new zenith in adults 18-49 (791,000) and women 18-49 (591,000). Tori Spelling…your father would be proud!

On a belated note, I had to of course include an item on the passing of Golden Girls legend Estelle Getty, who died Tuesday at her Hollywood home after suffering for years from advanced dementia. She was 84.

NEW YORK (AP) — 50 Cent has sued Taco Bell, claiming the fast-food restaurant chain is using his name without permission in advertising that asks him to call himself 99 Cent.

LOS ANGELES - A judge's ruling has brought the organization that hosts the Academy Awards a step closer to discovering how tickets to this year's show got online.

NEW YORK - With the market for electronic books still relatively sleepy, Sony Corp. is trying a new tack: untethering the latest model of its e-book reading device from its own online bookstore.

-The Premise: Spun-off from Beverly Hills, 90210, this contemporary version looks at life in the famous zip code though the teenage eyes of Annie Mills (Shenae Grimes) and her brother Dixon (Tristan Wilds), whose family has moved to Beverly Hills to keep an eye on their troubled grandmother (Jessica Walter).

LOS ANGELES - More than 30 actors dissatisfied with stalled contract talks said Wednesday they have joined to campaign for seats on the Screen Actors Guild's board of directors, a move that could eventually break the stalemate with Hollywood studios.

Smack in the middle of the Summer TCA Press Tour are always the Primetime Emmy Award nominations. On that note, HBO leads the pack once again with a hefty 85 nominations. Next is ABC at 76, followed by CBS (51), NBC (50), PBS (33), Fox (28), Showtime (21), Sci Fi Channel (15), Bravo and FX Networks (11 each) and TNT (10). HBO miniseries John Adams is the most nominated individual program, with 23. ...

Rankings for the top 15 programs on cable networks as compiled by Nielsen Media Research for the week of July 14-20. Day and start time (EDT) are in parentheses:

ABC opened its second day of TCA with a Disney Channel session on those amazingly perky Cheetah Girls (Adrienne Bailon, Sabrina Bryan and Kiely Williams) in their latest original movie, The Cheetah Girls One World. Although you already know the plot -- they sing, they dance and they smile and giggle a lot, this time in India -- what set this panel apart from anything we have seen was the diversity of the panel. According to Disney Channel Entertainment President Gary March, who addressed the topic of diversity:

NEW YORK - The last baseball all-star game at Yankee Stadium and the most-watched midsummer classic since 2002 — at least through the first nine innings — helped Fox to a TV ratings victory.

-Yesterday's Winners: Wipeout (ABC), NCIS R (CBS), America's Got Talent (NBC), Hell's Kitchen (Fox)

Prime-time viewership numbers compiled by Nielsen Media Research for July 14-20. Listings include the week's ranking, with viewership for the week and season-to-date rankings in parentheses. An "X" in parentheses denotes a one-time-only presentation.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - Paramount Pictures and its art-house division Paramount Vantage will cut about 60 staffers as part of a consolidation announced last month, officials said Thursday.

It was a low-rated week of three-way leadership, with CBS first in households and total viewers, Fox No. 1 among adults 18-49 and adults 18-34, and NBC inching past Fox by one-tenth of a rating point in adults 25-54. ABC finished fourth in households and total viewers, third in adults 18-49 and adults 25-54, and second among adults 18-34 for the week of June 23, but the network grew year-to-year by margins of 10 to 27 percent thanks to positive starts for Wipeout and I Survived a Japanese Game Show. ...

LOS ANGELES - Bruce Wayne just keeps getting richer.

-New is Not Necessarily Better: American Gladiators (NBC), Nashville Star (NBC), The Mole (ABC)

LOS ANGELES - Batman's joust with the Joker has set another box office record. Stoked by fan fever over the manic performance of the late Heath Ledger as the Joker, "The Dark Knight" set a one-day box office record with $66.4 million on opening day, Warner Bros. head of distribution Dan Fellman said Saturday.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A musical publishing company that owns the rights to the Rolling Stones' song "Play With Fire" sued U.S. rapper Lil Wayne on Thursday, saying he released an altered version of the song without permission.

Program Partners, home of highly anticipated fall 2009 talk show Marie, hosted by Marie Osmond, has renewed off-net dramas Da Vinci’s Inquest, Cold Squad and ReGenesis for next season. Da Vinci’s Inquest will be heading into year four, Cold Squad year three and ReGenesis year two. Cold Squad and ReGenesis fall under the Crime Watch umbrella, and all three hours have been cleared in over 90 percent of the country for 2008-09.

WASHINGTON (AP) — During his tenure at the Federal Communications Commission, Jonathan Adelstein has been a fierce critic of government policies that allow big media companies to get bigger. So it came as a surprise when the Democratic commissioner put forth a proposal that would allow the nation's only two satellite radio companies to merge.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Commissioners at the Federal Communications Commission have reached an agreement to approve Sirius Satellite Radio Inc's purchase of XM Satellite Radio Holdings Inc, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday.