Paramount Classics, And Now ... Ladies and Gentlemen

Classics has picked up rights in all English-speaking territories to "And Now ... Ladies and Gentlemen," written and directed by Claude Lelouch.

The French-language feature, Lelouch's 38th, stars Jeremy Irons, Patricia Kaas, Alessandra Martines, Thierry Lhermitte and Claudia Cardinale in what Lelouch describes as "a love story between a man and a woman who have had it with love." The picture bows in France May 29.

Paramount will release the film in both subtitled and dubbed versions, with the five principal actors dubbing themselves into English, according to Lelouch's publicist.

Shot on location in Morocco, England and Paris, the picture is a romance-cum-thriller with elements of musical comedy, detective story and the supernatural.

Lelouch, who won two Oscars and the Palme d'Or at Cannes for "A Man and a Woman," negotiated the deal for his company, Les Films 13.

Kevin Bray will shoot 'Taxi'

Hot off his feature directing debut with New Line Cinema's "All About the Benjamins," Kevin Bray will shoot an English-language remake of the Luc Besson-produced action comedy "Taxi" for 20th Century Fox.

The original film was the story of a pizza delivery boy who puts his record for the speediest deliveries to use and becomes a taxi driver. Renowned for driving his fares at 135mph through 30mph zones, he's finally caught by the police. In hopes of not losing his license and his job, he agrees to help a loser inspector who's on the track of bank robbers.

In 1999, Fox and Besson agreed to develop an English-language remake of "Taxi," which was a hit when it was released in France in 1998. That picture, which spawned two sequels, was written and produced by Besson and directed by Gerard Pires.

Prior to "Benjamins," Bray shot music videos for the likes of Brandy, Ben Folds Five and Jennifer Lopez & Marc Anthony.

Producer Larry Kasanoff Has Bought Remake Rights To "Ninja Scroll"

"Mortal Kombat" producer Larry Kasanoff has bought all remake rights to the Japanese 1994 anime blockbuster "Ninja Scroll" with the intention of turning it into an f/x-driven live-action feature that will spawn television, live stage tours, video games and music.

Critically acclaimed as Kawajiri Yoshiaki's masterpiece, "Ninja Scroll" is a samurai sword-and-sorcery epic in which a masterless ninja for hire joins forces with a powerful female ninja after her team is destroyed by a powerful man-monster. They create a tragic love story that culminates with the overthrow of the Shogun government.

 "Anime is today what video games were seven years ago -- an entirely different style of entertainment that will be mainstream in the very near future," Kasanoff said.

Kasanoff is chairman and CEO of Threshold Entertainment, whose digital animation and effects subsidiary, will supervise visual FX for "Ninja Scroll," while another unit will create and manage the online presence of the brand.

Threshold also represents such entertainment properties as Duke Nukem, Mortal Kombat, Playboy, Hellraiser, Pepsi Co./Frito Lay and Ozzy Osbourne, developing brands for film, television and the Internet.

Sarah Polley and Mark Ruffalo Look at 'Life'

Sarah Polley and Mark Ruffalo are negotiating to star in "My Life Without Me," which begins shooting in Vancouver later this month.

 The indie picture, budgeted at roughly $3 million, centers on a terminally ill trailer-park mother (Polley) who decides to live life to the fullest along with her husband (Ruffalo) and two little girls without telling anyone that she is dying.

Isabel Coixet ("Things I Never Told You") will direct from her adaptation of Nanci Kincaid's short story "Pretending the Bed Is a Raft." Amanda Plummer, Alfred Molina, Deborah Harry and Maria De Medeiros will co-star.

Book Description Balls is the story of a college football coach, his rise, his fall, and his fallback position. You could say Balls is the story of a coach's kick-off, his first, second, and third downs...and his punt.

But Balls is a coach's story that belongs to the coach's wife. To her, and to his mother, his mother-in-law, his daughter, his assistants' wives, his players' mothers and girlfriends, and even his players' grandmothers. It's the women standing behind this handsome football hero who tell the story behind the headlines of Mac Gibbs, Birmingham University coach Catfish Bomar's star quarterback, who married Dixie Callaway, the beautiful homecoming queen.

Set in Alabama, home state of the legendary Paul "Bear" Bryant, Balls is told by 15 women and one little girl touched by Mac Gibbs's fall from game as a college quarterback to infamy as head coach of the Birmingham University Black Bears. It's told in those women's voices, from their seats in the stands. They watch the other women, worry when players are too slow to get up off the ground, pray when players are carried off on stretchers. They don't care much for the "science" of the game-or its brutality. They see football as it really is-sexy, dirty, sweaty, painful, empowering, corrupt. The story they tell is often funny and not always pretty, as the view from deep inside rarely is.

This is a novel that moves with the force of a fourth down charge, and shimmers with the tears of the women waiting outside the locker-room door when the game is lost. The author, twice a head coach's wife, knows whereof she writes so brilliantly. She also knows a lot about love. And Balls is, above all, a love story.

New James Bond Film To Called "Die Another Day."

The next James Bond film, featuring Pierce Brosnan in his fourth appearance as Agent 007, will be called "Die Another Day."

Filmmakers and fans had previously referred to the film as "Bond 20." MGM Studios revealed the new name on Tuesday.

Halle Berry plays Bond's love interest, Jinx, while Rick Yune ("The Fast and the Furious") appears as a North Korean villain named Zao.

The Bond films have a history of colorful titles, including "You Only Live Twice" (1967), "Live and Let Die" (1973), "Octopussy" (1983) and "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997).Brosnan starred in 1995's "GoldenEye," "Tomorrow Never Dies" and 1999's "The World Is Not Enough."

"Die Another Day," directed by Lee Tamahori ("Along Came a Spider"), is set for release Nov. 22. Locations for this 20th Bond adventure include Hawaii, Iceland, Spain and Cornwall, England.

Big studios have an eye on little animated films

The big animation studio of tomorrow is often making little animated movies today. Savvy animation fans know to pay attention to the Oscar-nominated animated shorts every year. Here's why:

• Long before Monsters, Inc., the computer-animation specialist Pixar won a 1988 Oscar for the short Tin Toy, which laid the groundwork for the Toy Story films. (The studio also won in 1998 for Geri's Game and is nominated this year for For the Birds, a short that played in front of Monsters in theaters.)
  
• Aardman, the British stop-motion unit, and Nick Park, the co-director of Aardman's Chicken Run, took Oscars for Creature Comforts (1990), The Wrong Trousers (1993) and A Close Shave (1995).
  
• Director Chris Wedge of Blue Sky Studios, which specializes in computer animation, won for 1998's Bunny. He has gone on to direct 20th Century Fox's Ice Age, opening Friday.
  
• Last year's winner, Father and Daughter, was directed by Michael Dudok de Wit, who was soon snapped up by AT&T to make a series of advertisements that are now running on TV.

''It's great for the filmmakers; everybody calls them,'' says Carol Crowe, president of Apollo Films, an international distributor that is releasing this year's nominated shorts, both animated and live-action, as a single movie program around the USA. (For theaters and details, go to apollocinema.com.)

Each year, studio bigwigs hobnob with the nominees when they come to the Oscars -- and often pounce on the latest and greatest talents there.

''As well we should,'' says Jeffrey Katzenberg, co-founder of DreamWorks, which has a five-picture partnership with Aardman. ''Chris Wedge is a brilliant artist and storyteller and showed extraordinary promise. The same with Nick Park and (Pixar's) John Lasseter.

''Working in that medium of shorts has been a fantastic showcase for great animation talent. Some come out of art schools, others come out the high-tech industries or advertising. Our job is to make sure doors are open. I hope there are a dozen more Chris and Nick and Johns out there.''

One interesting side effect is that some of the films become impossible to see after they are nominated, says Crowe, who tried to put together a ''past winners'' program of shorts only to find that some of these winners had been shelved because major studios were planning to turn them into features, use their technology for features or simply hold onto them for eventual inclusion as a DVD ''extra.'' Andy Seiler

Actors Union's Board to Endorse Talent Agent Pact

The board of directors for the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) on Tuesday said it would endorse a tentative pact enabling talent agencies to invest in film and television production companies.

The proposed agreement, which eases some Hollywood business rules dating back to the 1930s, was announced in late February between SAG, the Association of Talent Agents and the National Association of Talent Representatives (ATA/NATRA) following weeks of contentious discussions and years of wrangling.

A deeply divided SAG board voted 57 to 44 to approve the motion and recommend the pact to the union's rank and file.

A referendum will be sent to SAG's members on April 3 for return on April 18. SAG is the trade industry group that represents actors and actresses in the United States.

SAG said the referendum will also include a so-called minority report, detailing arguments made by the board members who voted against the pact, which indicated there might be some hurdles to getting the union to fully endorse the deal.

"I am pleased that the majority of the board of directors saw fit to give the entire SAG membership the opportunity to review and vote on this very complex agreement and allow each member to have a voice in this important decision," said SAG President Melissa Gilbert, who just days earlier won her new job in a rerun of last fall's presidential election.

The key points in the deal allow talent agencies to buy up to 20 percent of a movie or TV production company and sell up to 20 percent of their companies to producers and/or advertising agencies, according to published reports.

In setting the 20 percent ownership rule, the deal relaxes barriers put in place decades ago designed to curb conflicts of interests among agents by preventing them from having an ownership stake in companies for which their clients work.

For the agencies, the deal gives them greater ability to compete with rival talent managers in Hollywood who already can represent clients' interests and produce movies and TV shows.

KOCH Obtains Exclusive Licensing Rights to DIC's Master Recordings in the US and Canada

KOCH Entertainment and DIC Entertainment have entered into a three-year exclusive agreement for KOCH to manufacture, promote and market albums from DIC's music catalogue.

DIC has created more than 4000 original songs for the nearly 3000 animated episodes the company has aired on television since the company began operations in the United States in 1983. Under this agreement, KOCH Entertainment will release two CDs this year. "Madeline," DIC's hit series about a little French Girl, can be seen seven days a week on the Disney cable channels. The character created by Ludwig Bemelmans first appeared in an illustrated book in 1939. Each of the televised episodes and the direct to videos produced by DIC contained original songs performed by the Madeline cast and her friends. "Sing-a-Long with Madeline," the working title, will be the first CD to be released by KOCH in June.

Bob Frank, President of KOCH Entertainment says, "This partnership further entrenches KOCH in the children's market. DIC has built a wonderful catalog and we're privileged to join forces with them."

KOCH plans to release Sailor Moon as the second CD. Sailor Moon has had a long run in syndication and on the Cartoon Network, where it was a big hit in the Tunami block. The third release will be a "Strawberry Shortcake" CD. DIC recently concluded a deal with American Greetings for the video, broadcast and licensing rights for the character. Strawberry Shortcake has been a huge success, grossing over $100,000,000 in its first year.

Karyn Ulman, Senior Vice President of music for DIC Entertainment says, "This is a tremendous opportunity for DIC and KOCH. KOCH gets access to songs and master recordings that have been aired on popular television series, songs that are familiar to millions of fans, but up until now were not obtainable. DIC gets to have their recordings promoted and marketed by the best independent music company in the business."

KOCH Entertainment has the current largest market share of any independently distributed indie record company in the U.S.A. KOCH Entertainment, based in New York, operates its own record labels including KOCH Records, In The Paint (urban), Audium (country), and KOCH International Classics and has interests in other leading independent record companies.

DIC Entertainment is a leading children's entertainment company focused on developing, producing, distributing, and merchandising children's animated programming worldwide. DIC has produced over 100 series and 3,000 episodes, averaging over 145 new half-hour episodes per year for the last ten years. DIC's catalog is one of the largest and most valuable libraries of children's animated television programming in the entertainment industry, boasting beloved evergreen brands such as Inspector Gadget, Madeline, Sailor Moon, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Where on Earth is Carmen Sandiego? and many others. Approximately 25 million kids in the U.S. watch DIC's programs each week.

RealNetworks, Nokia in cellular pact

RealNetworks has taken a significant step toward a future in which people can use their phone to watch highlights of the World Series while their taxi is stuck in traffic.

That's just one example of the Internet content delivery company's vision, a concept that came a little closer to reality when RealNetworks and Nokia on Tuesday entered into what the companies characterized as a long-term, comprehensive relationship to bring audio and video to mobile devices.

"There are so many cell phones, far more than PCs," RealNetworks president and chief operating officer Larry Jacobson said in an interview. "This deal takes something that already exists and uses it to unlock the power of the Internet. It's good news for people who have content."

According to Nokia, there are more than 440 million of its mobile communication devices in use today. RealNetworks reports more than 250 million registered users of its media player products. Jacobson pointed to the pairing of these as a formidable potential market that would propel the industry's development.

"We believe the industry will look back on this announcement as a major milestone in the development of digital media services for mobile consumers," RealNetworks chairman and CEO Rob Glaser said. Besides being of immediate importance to the international market, Glaser said that this cooperative effort by two proven companies will accelerate the development of the U.S. market for mobile media services.

Specifically, the mobile version of the RealOne Player will be included as standard on all of the devices in Nokia's 2.5G and 3G Symbian product line. It will also be part of the Nokia Series 60 smart phone platform, which can be used on a wide range of wireless devices. Additionally, Nokia will resell RealSystem Mobile as its media delivery solution and provide technical integration support.

Carriers in the United States are not capable of the sophisticated services this deal heralds, Jacobson acknowledged.

"You have to get started," he said. "We're the leader in Internet delivery pairing with the leader in handsets and related technology. We have to work with the carriers, but this helps us work with them."

Jacobson predicted that networks will be live and offering these services to their North American customers before year's end. "The carriers are doing a great job of uplifting their capabilities," he said.

RealNetworks and Nokia will also work together on what Jacobson called "missing links," concerns that include rights protection and the convenient management of stored media.

A previous deal put Real Networks' media player on the Nokia 9210i Communicator, which Nokia plans to make available in Europe, Asia and Africa in the second quarter of 2002, and the Nokia 9290 Communicator, scheduled to be available for the Americas in the same quarter.

"Today's announcement is a significant landmark for the mobile industry," Nokia executive vp Anssi Vanjoki said. "We are confident that our joint efforts with RealNetworks will enrich the mobile consumer's experience while offering revenue-generating services for our mobile operator customers."

Also on Tuesday, Nokia said that it signed a multiyear agreement with Lucasfilm to develop mobile promotions for "Star Wars: Episode II -- Attack of the Clones." The companies will develop still and animated graphics, standard and polyphonic ring tones, MMS services and mobile games in conjunction with game studio LucasArts. These "Star Wars"-themed services will become available in Europe, the Middle East and Africa within the next two weeks and across most of Asia next month.

Latin music up, but piracy hurts

Despite meager record sales last year, shipments of Latin music CDs were up 9%, according to statistics released Tuesday by the Recording Industry Association of America. The dollar value of those CDs grew to $582.7 million in 2001 from $515.6 million in 2000.

However, the RIAA said that while the growth of Latin music has been steady during the past three years, shipments of CDs have not increased as quickly as expected. The RIAA attributed this slowing to the impact of physical piracy on the market.

"Although the Latin music market is vibrant, it's not immune to the forces of piracy harming the music industry today, particularly with physical CDs," RIAA president and CEO Hilary Rosen said. "Over 24% of the illegal product we seized in 2001 was from the Latin music genre. This number represents a share of piracy much larger than its own share of the legitimate market."

Shipments of Latin music DVDs declined last year by 16%, representing a dollar value decrease to $883,000 in 2001 from $1 million in 2000. Latin music cassettes also decreased in net shipments last year. In 2001, Latin music cassettes represented a $58.7 million value, compared with $91.2 million in 2000. Music video shipments declined last year to 22,000 shipped in 2001 from 39,000 shipped in 2000.

According to the RIAA's Latin genre breakdown, in 2001, regional Mexican, which includes Tejano, comprised 58% of all Latin shipments. Pop, which includes rock, was at 29%, and the Tropical genre reported 13%. Additionally in 2001, the RIAA certified 118 Latin music titles, including Intocable's "Contigo," Luis Miguel's "Vivo," Paulina Rubio's "Paulina," Banda Machos' "Mi Guitarra y Yo," Juan Luis Guerra's "Coleccion Romantica," Ricky Martin's "La Historia," Christina Aguilera's "Mi Reflejo" and Marc Anthony's "Libre."