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Catfight at Weekend Box Office
 Cats
and Dogs and Scary Movie 2 battled it out over the weekend
for the top box office position, but the animatronic live-action film
beat its competition by a hair. The Warner Brothers pic unleashed
a total of $22 million in tickets, or $36 million since its Wednesday
release on July 4. Scary Movie 2 barked its way to $21 million
for the weekend, and $34.5 million since its opening two days earlier.
It was a disappointing performance for the Miramax film since the
original, released last summer, grossed a surprising $42.3 million
in its opening weekend. Scary Movie 2 had been projected to
be the favorite, but Cats and Dogs owned a broader audience.
Ibero-American Fest Gets Bizzy
This year's Ibero-American Co-Production Forum, the biggest annual
industry event for developing production deals between Spain and America,
will take place this year at the Ibero-American
Film Festival of Huelva. Activities at the Forum will focus on
prepping joint projects so that they can tap into the Ibermedia film
fund for co-production and distribution. The Forum will benefit from
Huelva's history as the oldest fest in the world uniting Spanish and
Latin American interests. The festival runs November 10 to 17 with
the Forum between November 10 and 13.
Consumer Group Plans Friday the 13th Nightmare at Box Office
An online consumer group, running through the website WeCanDoThis.com,
is encouraging consumers to boycott movie theaters this Friday the
13th to protest the high cost of movie tickets. Spokesman Mark Jonathan
Davis says, "We control out entertainment dollars, and we don't want
to spend $10 at the box office. There's not a lot of options, and
prices seem to have been fixed." The group is spreading its message
for a National Ticket Picket through email, and says that thousands
of people have visited the website since it launched this week.
Creative Coalition Appeals to Bush
In a reaction to the legislation sponsored by Senator Joe Lieberman
holding Hollywood accountable for advertising to audiences outside
its age-restricted ratings, the Creative Coalition is appealing to
President George Bush to oppose the legislation. The Creative Coalition
is an advocacy group of entertainers and artists headed by William
Baldwin. A letter Baldwin sent to the president claims that the proposed
bill would go against the First Amendment. Other Hollywood notables,
including MPAA president Jack Valenti, have voiced their opposition
to the legislation, saying that it will encourage movies to not use
ratings in order to avoid liability.
Tax Proposed on Runaway Films
The Film and Television Action Committee is urging the government
to impose a tariff on US films made in Canada using the tax break
scheme. Called runaway productions, more films are being made across
the border because of financial incentives, but the Hollywood-based
organization says local jobs are being sacrificed. The committee is
proposing that films coming back into the US be charged a tariff at
the border to counterbalance the Canadian tax break. A spokesman for
the advocacy group said, "More than half the people in the film business,
which is about 270,000 people in the United States, will have signed
or in some way attested to the fact that they've been hurt -- extremely
-- by what has happened in the last three-and-a- half years since
[Canadian] subsidies were installed."
Miramax Expands Apocalypse Market
 Apocalypse
Now Redux, the new version of Francis Ford Coppola's 1979
classic that premiered this year at Cannes, will be released in the
UK, Italy, Latin America and Australia by Miramax. The studio already
secured distribution rights for North America where it will open on
August 3. Miramax secured the deal from Studio Canal who hold the
international rights. The film runs an additional 53 minutes and includes
reworked sound and music.
Taormina Bumps Up Calendar
The festival director for the Taormina
Film Festival will change the event's dates for the third year
in a row in an effort to use the fest as an opening event for the
lucrative summer film season. Each year, the dates are scheduled earlier
and earlier: next year's fest will run June 8 to 16 compared with
this year's dates of June 29 to July 7. The director Felice Laudadio
said, "I want Taormina to become a reference point for big summer
releases, but I also hope that Italian distributors will finally realize
the importance of releasing Italian films during the summer months
and not just the big US films." |
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