Doug Wick and Lucy Fisher To Produce 'The Lone Ranger'

Sony's Columbia Pictures has ponied up for the rights to "The Lone Ranger," inking a deal said to be potentially worth $1.5 million if the project is produced.

First broadcast Sept. 15, 1949 on ABC, "The Lone Ranger" was one of the most popular TV shows of the 1950s, before it ended Sept. 12, 1957. The WB Network is currently developing a new take on the Ranger legend for fall 2002.

The 70-year-old tale (it had its start as a local radio show in 1933) will need some freshening, which Sony is ready to do. Studio executives see the picture's remake in the vein of Sony's 1998 Zorro update, the Martin Campbell-helmed "The Mask of Zorro." One wag predicted a lithe, buxom female might even play the part of Tonto. The budget is roughly $70 million, according to Columbia insiders.

The "Lone Ranger" tale is now classic: Left for dead in an ambush with five other Texas Rangers, lawman John Reid is nursed back to health by an Indian scout named Tonto. He then dons a mask to avenge the murders of his comrades and to foil evildoers, never accepting payment for his services. His gratis vigilantism is made possible by the silver mine he inherits from one of his slain brothers -- the same mine that affords him his endless supply of trademark silver bullets.

While it remains to be seen how the rest of the country will react to the developments, the move was greeted with jubilation in tiny Kerrville, Texas -- home to the Former Texas Rangers Foundation.

"I'd definitely go see it ... Everytime I here that song, it sends chills down my neck," said Joe Davis, president of the Foundation and himself a Texas Ranger for 24 years, "I get choked up just thinking about it." The last time the Western tale was tackled on the big screen was in 1981, when MCA/Universal released "The Legend of the Lone Ranger," an ill-fated adaptation remembered more for the legal battle waged by the TV series' star, Clayton Moore, to retain the character's famous mask than its take on the legend.

The new picture will be produced by "Gladiator" producer Doug Wick and his wife Lucy Fisher via their Sony-based Red Wagon Prods. Sony's deal was made with Gotham-based Classic Media, which controlled the rights.

Christina Ricci signs on To star in Woody Allen's untitled project

Christina Ricci will star in Woody Allen's untitled project, which will shoot in the spring. Allen also stars and will direct from his script, with DreamWorks distributing the final film.

The plot of the project is being kept under wraps, but it is known that it will revolve around three young adults, one of whom is Ricci. Jason Biggs also will star in the film, having signed on earlier in the week.

Following the completion of Allen's feature, Ricci plans on making her directorial debut on the dark comedy indie feature "Speed Queen," which she also will star in and produce through her Blaspheme Films.

Ricci, repped by ICM and attorney Melanie Cook, next stars and co-produces Miramax Films' "Prozac Nation." Other upcoming projects for the actress are starring turns in the HBO feature "The Laramie Project" and the indie features "The Gathering" and "Pumpkin," which she also produces

Hayden Christensen signed a production deal with New Line Cinema.

Hayden Christensen, who is on the cover of the March Vanity Fair in the character of his career-making role as Anakin Skywalker, the future Darth Vader in the "Star Wars" saga, has signed a production deal with New Line Cinema.

The actor recently starred in the studio's Kevin Kline starrer "Life as a House." Its two-year, first-look deal is with Forest Park Pictures, which Christensen runs with his older brother, Tove.

"(Hayden's) performance (in "Life") blew me away," New Line production president Toby Emmerich said. "By having a deal, my gut is that some really great things are going to come out of it."

The offices of Forest Park are based in Los Angeles, where Tove lives, but Hayden's home base remains the brothers' stomping grounds in Toronto.

Tove came to Los Angeles six years ago as a way to delay going to law school after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania. After flirting briefly with acting, Tove joined his brother in developing projects.

"Then Hayden got 'Star Wars,"' Tove said. "It both made things a lot easier and a lot more complicated. We're interested in developing character-driven material. We want to make movies that are more than a reason to go to the theater and eat popcorn."

A Sound of Thunder For Edward Burns

W.H. Auden said the sound of distant thunder was death, but for Edward Burns, it's a paycheck.

The thesp is in negotiations to star in "A Sound of Thunder," a project based on the 50-year-old Ray Bradbury short story of the same name, first published in his "R is for Rocket" (Doubleday).

Set in a future where time travel is recreational, people jump back on time "safaris" to hunt prehistoric wildlife. However, all participants make sure only to kill that which is meant to die, thus preserving the integrity of the timeline. But when a tourist unknowingly squashes a prehistoric butterfly, he sets in motion a series of "time waves" that will erase humanity from existence. Burns would play the lead character of Travis Ryer, an expert hunter who pairs with the time machine's inventor to locate and save the "dead" butterfly and return it safely to the past.

Directed by Peter Hyams ("End of Days"), "Thunder" will be distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures under its deal with the film's producer, Franchise Pictures.

Burns will shift to "Thunder" immediately after shooting the Lions Gate picture "Confidence" for director Jamie Foley, which is scheduled to wrap at the end of May.

In addition, "ER's" Ming-Na has been cast as the female lead in ABC's interracial-couple comedy pilot, as the networks continued finalizing pilot casting Tuesday.

Gary Fleder, Don't Say a Word in Runaway Jury

Gary Fleder, who most recently directed Michael Douglas in the hit thriller "Don't Say a Word," will bring John Grisham's "Runaway Jury" to the big screen. The courtroom drama is set up at Fox-based New Regency, which also produced "Don't Say A Word." As part of his deal, Fleder will bring his Mojo Films banner to the studio, having spent the last four years at New Line Cinema.

Fleder's attachment revives the costly project, which had been on track to go into production this month until Will Smith and director Mike Newell lost interest.

New Regency originally paid a whopping $8 million for rights to the novel, which revolves around a jury foreman steering a precedent-setting verdict in a tobacco liability case. The project was subsequently revised to substitute gun makers for cigarette makers, leaving the principal characters and the thrust of the story intact.

Dana Delaney Tops CBS' Presidio Med

Former "China Beach" star Dana Delaney has signed up for CBS' new hospital drama "Presidio Med," while "Saturday Night Live" alum Cheri Oteri has joined ABC's comedy pilot "With You in Spirit."

 Delaney, who stars in the on-hiatus Fox drama "Pasadena," will play pediatric doctor Dr. Julia "Jules" Keating in "Presidio Med," which has a 13-episode commitment from CBS. Its producers, John Wells and Lydia Woodward, were executive producers of "China Beach" when Delaney starred on the groundbreaking ABC drama.

Over at ABC, Oteri will play Montana -- aka "The Weather Girl" -- "With You In Spirit," which revolves around a recent college grad (Reid Scott) who gets a job as a reporter in the New Age town of Spirit, N.M.

Elsewhere at ABC, Ming-Na -- Dr. Jing-Mei Chen on "ER" -- will play a woman married to an African-American man, not yet cast. Under her deal for "ER," she has the right to do a pilot. If the project gets picked-up, she will exit "ER" and go ahead with the ABC series. If not, she'll remain with "ER."

Morpheus Users Move to Gnutella Web Music Network

Thousands of Internet users turned to the little-known Gnutella network over the weekend to download free music and movies, throwing up another possible roadblock for media companies fighting unauthorized downloads of copyrighted material. Makers of the popular Morpheus file-sharing software released an update Friday that switched from the Fast Track file-swapping network to Gnutella after a dispute over licensing fees with Kazaa BV, the Dutch company that owns the Fast Track network.

As a result, the Gnutella network nearly tripled in size over the weekend with an average of 353,000 users logged on at any time, said Redshift Research, a research firm based in Belmont, Massachusetts.

Traffic on the Fast Track network dipped slightly over the weekend as well, said Redshift analyst Matt Bailey. The move fragments the formidable Fast Track user base, but also places another hurdle in front of a music industry seeking to stamp out unauthorized file-sharing services, Bailey said.

Recording companies managed to shut down the wildly popular Napster service last July, and have since filed suit against Morpheus along with Kazaa and Grokster, two other high-profile Fast Track clients.

The music industry says the three companies should prevent users from trading copyrighted material, a request the companies say is impossible because they cannot control what is traded. A lawyer for the Recording Industry of America, a trade group representing the five major labels, said the move belied Morpheus' claims that they could not control their network.

"Their prior claim that they could not be shut down proved to be untrue. We are examining the current situation," said Matt Oppenheim, senior vice president for business and legal affairs at the RIAA. But even if the industry wins its case, it will face ongoing headaches as users migrate to new services, Bailey said.

"This is just another sign that the actual peer-to-peer file-sharing industry is so fluid ... that it's going to be hard to really stop," Bailey said.

GNUTELLA COMES OF AGE?

The move marks a coming of age of sorts for Gnutella, which has in the past been overshadowed by more efficient networks like Fast Track and Napster.

While Napster boasted 1.57 million simultaneous users at its peak last February, only 19,000 people on average were using Gnutella at any time last December, Redshift said.

Since then, usage has gradually grown to 91,000 simultaneous users as new services like Limewire have boosted sluggish download times, Bailey said. The head of Morpheus' parent company said legal concerns were not behind the switch.

"It was a business decision we made in an adverse time, but it had nothing to do with the lawsuit," said Steve Griffin, chairman and CEO of StreamCast Networks Inc.

StreamCast engineers were working on a way to incorporate both Gnutella and Fast Track in their software until a dispute over licensing fees with Kazaa BV forced Morpheus to go offline last week, Griffin said.

StreamCast has withheld $60,000 in licensing fees to Fast Track owner Kazaa BV since last October because Fast Track did not provide documentation with new versions of the network, Griffin said.

As a result, Kazaa did not provide StreamCast with a new version in February, creating technical conflicts with other network users. Griffin said he felt confident he would hold onto his user base when the company introduced an improved version of Morpheus in a few weeks.

But there were signs that at least one other file-swapping company tried to lure the Morpheus users who previously made up 60 percent of the Fast Track network. "Morpheus users come on over to our place ... you'll feel right at home," said the Web site of the Kazaa Media Desktop, a Fast Track service that is no longer associated with Kazaa BV.