March
5 "GR" update; WP on Virgin; LAT sheds strips

* "Ghost Rider" was dethroned at the box office this weekend by another biker film: "Wild Hogs." "GR" dropped to third place behind David Fincher's "Zodiac" with a gross of $11.5 million. So far, "GR" has grossed $94.7 million and seems assured to break the $100 million mark rather easily and in spite of negative reviews.

* The Washington Post ran a story from NYCC that focused on Virgin Comics and two of its "guiding lights,"  Deepak Chopra and director Shekhar Kapur, who gives the following succinct justification for the company's model of getting filmmakers to create stories that can be tested in the comicbook market and then taken to Hollywood:

"I as a director have so much more control if it's first in a comic," says Kapur, talking from London. "It's my idea. A studio can look at it, and I can tell them, 'It's gone this far,' and that way I'll keep my vision, much more so than I would if I went to a studio and said, 'Let's make a movie about a snake woman.' "

Another note of interest in the piece is word that Chopra has written a screenplay based on the Virgin title "The Sadhu," that has attracted the interest of Nic Cage even though no deals have been signed and no studio yet on board.

* And major changes awaited readers of the Los Angeles Times' comics pages, which have lost a few strips in the paring back of the Kids Reading Room feature, which now runs only on Sunday. The paper dropped four daily strips, including "La Cucaracha," "Mallard Fillmore," "Candorville" and "Mr. Boffo," all of which still will continue to run Sundays. Personally, I will be glad to be rid of "Mallard," but "La Cucaracha" and "Candorville" will be missed. The revamped page crams the remaining strips together very tightly, and feels very claustrophobic. "Doonsebury," which had been running slightly larger than the other strips, is now at "regular" size.