Variety has unrolled its long-planned site redesign, signaling the change with a new, red logo (I always thought The Hollywood Reporter was red to Variety's green), more charts, and a fancy "Big Daddy" widget with more windows. Variety is trying to make easier navigating and finding pieces to read on the site--the more people find individual stories, the better.

Kim Masters revisits her old Hit and Run subject, ex-Columbia co-head Jon Peters, as he publishes a dishy new memoir.

Todd McCarthy lays out the likely Cannes lineup. Already confirmed is Pete Docter's Up as the fest opener May 13 and Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds. Also expected are Ang Lee's Taking Woodstock and Sam Raimi's Drag Me to Hell:

Other English-language fare will include Campion's U.K. production "Bright Star," a drama about the romance of 19th-century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, starring Ben Wishaw and Abbie Cornish; Cannes regular von Trier's "Antichrist," a horror drama with Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg as a couple who retreat to a secluded forest cabin after the death of their son; Loach's "Looking for Eric," about a troubled adolescent soccer fan who's counseled by former star Eric Cantona; prolific helmer To's French-financed "Vengeance," starring Johnny Hallyday as a hitman-turned-chef who heads to Hong Kong to avenge his daughter's death; and possibly English director Andrea Arnold's "Fish Tank," toplining Michael Fassbender in a tale of a 15-year-old whose life is turned upside down by her mother's new boyfriend. Pic looks to be in the Official Selection, although in which category remains uncertain.

Director Michael Bay says he is totally committed to messing up his next project, Thundercats.

Inevitably, in advance of Warner Bros.' May 21 release of the tentpole sequel Terminator Salvation, the two neophyte financeers at Halcyon, Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek (above) reached an "amicable" settlement with producer Moritz Borman, who sued to get the remaining $2.5 million payment of his fee. The suit was dismissed. Meanwhile, McG is already talking about a follow-up.

IAC mogul Barry Diller is rubbing his hands in gleeful anticipation of going on a low-ball acquisition spree:

Call it rookie producer syndrome. New kids on the block raise money and enter the entertainment business. They buy up a hot property. They think they will make a killing. They bring in experienced people to help them. And something goes terribly wrong. Veteran producer Moritz Borman (W.) doesn't just go and sue someone, long before a movie gets close to its opening date. But he is suing young producers Derek Anderson and Victor Kubicek of Halycon for fraud to the tune of $160 million, reports Variety.

I interviewed Anderson and Kubicek when production was just starting on Terminator Salvation. They were clearly excited newbies--who didn't understand why rating a Terminator movie PG-13 might be big news.

The Terminator rights are complicated. This will be interesting. The economy is putting extreme stress on movie financing structures. Borman is an industry insider with a long relationship with Warner Bros. (Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Alexander). The Halcyon guys are outsiders. And Warners will do what it must to protect this May 21 tentpole release. Judging from the early materials, filmmaker McG (who's trying to prove himself here) looks like he has knocked this dystopian actioner out of the park: Terminator Salvation could be huge. And its star, Christian Bale, is still playing Batman, one of Warners' essential franchises.

The Watchmen Duel of the Titans between Fox and Warners has been resolved.

Winners: Warners. They get to open the movie as planned on March 6. Fox is also a winner. It gets a back-end gross share of the movie. And gets rewarded for chasing after a legal opportunity. And the audience wins: they get to see the movie sooner rather than later.

Loser: Producer Larry Gordon, who lost face when the judge blamed him for not nailing down the rights; plus, he may have to give up some of his share of the gross, to make up for what Warner has to pay to Fox.

Christian Bale can rest easy and enjoy the success of The Dark Knight. British prosecutors say that Bale will not face charges from an alleged assault filed by his family after strong words broke out in the Dorchester Hotel on July 20, on the eve of the movie's premiere in London.

John Cusack sues for his pay-or-play fees on a cancelled movie. Money is running out of the indie sector faster than it's coming in. And pay-or-play deals may become a thing of the past. In theory, these deals nail down a star to commit a time slot to a movie--assuming the funds arrive.

J.J. Abrams has a new TV series coming up, written by Transformers writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, Fringe. It's due on Fox Tuesday nights in the fall. The two hour pilot alone cost $10 million.

It looks like Abrams could be going viral again to promote it. (Remember Lost and Cloverfield?) He's keeping folks guessing. UPDATE: The Fringe TV-press DVD screener has been leaked online.

Here's the nail-biting Fringe trailer (X-Files meets Lost meets Twin Peaks?):

Also coming up for Abrams, besides the reinvention of Paramount's Star Trek franchise (also with Kurtzman and Orci), is a project which the new John Lesher studio regime just scooped up, based on a NYT article published last Friday, writes Variety:

The studio has paid mid-six figures for a New York Times article written by Penelope Green about a Gotham home whose owners discovered secret panels and hidden clues that led them on a mystery-filled scavenger hunt.

Abrams will produce the film via his Par-based Bad Robot shingle. Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky have been tapped to write.

The Fifth Avenue home, described as a giant '20s-era co-op with Central Park views, was gutted several years ago at the behest of a couple, who later moved in with their four children. An architectural designer who oversaw the rehab job left behind a series of messages, games and treasures, unbeknownst to the family, who eventually unraveled a mystery that featured a poem, a book, a soundtrack and a host of historical figures.

The dispute over the HBO doc, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired, continues as director Marina Zenovich, who was asked by HB0 to rewrite the film's final "card" on the eve of its first broadcast June 9, tweaked the card again for its Saturday, June 14 airing. The question remains what the final card will read for its theatrical release by ThinkFilm on July 11th.

Finally, after all these years, it's still a case of he said, she said, as Zenovich makes tweaks and tries to keep her film's dramatic punch. And Polanski himself stays in limbo. (He finally saw the film in Paris just before he arrived in Cannes, where he lunched with Zenovich before the fest's closing night ceremony.)

The problem Monday was that the person talking was a Los Angeles Superior Court judge. HBO decided to back off the film's assertion that Judge Larry Paul Flider in 1997 demanded that any court hearing with Polanski be televised, should the exiled director return to the U.S. That's because right before the doc was due to air, L.A. court officials called the assertion "a complete fabrication." So Zenovich reworded the ending to say that the judge demanded an open court hearing.

Now the card refers to a dispute over what happened, stating: "the judge insisted the hearing be held on the record in superior court."

On Wednesday, in response to Monday's L.A. Superior Court statement and an L.A. Times story, former deputy district attorney Roger Gunson and Polanski's attorney Douglas Dalton, who are interviewed in Wanted and Desired, made a statement in support of the film's version of events--and talked to each other for the first time in a decade. "It is our shared view that Monday's false and reprehensible statement by the Los Angeles Superior Court continues their inappropriate handling of the Polanski case," they said.

(The full statement is on the jump; here's my prior story, Polanski Doc Wanted and Desired Changed for HBO. )

Doc filmmaker Marina Zenovich was struck when she read a 2002 article in the LA Times about whether director Roman Polanski would be able to return to the US if he were nominated for an Oscar for The Pianist. Of course he won--and watched the show from his bedroom in Paris. After Zenovich learned more about why Polanski was forced to flee the country rather than turn up for his trial for seducing a minor, she embarked on the long journey to get Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired made.

Patrick Goldstein writes about Zenovich's doc, which has earned rave reviews since its January debut in Sundance, where HBO acquired the film; it also fared well at Cannes. The movie aired on HBO Monday night after a brief run in NY and LA for Oscar consideration. Financially beleaguered distrib ThinkFilm is scheduled to release the film theatrically in July.

A sidebar explores why Zenovich was forced to amend the ending of her movie, an issue also addressed by Slate's Kim Masters. (See UPDATE below.)

Last year at Cannes, Shootout's Peter Bart and Peter Guber conducted a rare Polanski video interview-- Zenovich did not do fresh on-camera interviews with him for the doc, and he did not participate in its promotion. (He turned up in Cannes this May just for the closing night ceremony.) When Bart and Guber asked him last year how he felt about returning to L.A., he responded, "I have black memories of that time. People forget that when I was in my 30s I suffered a tremendous loss and tragedy."

More recently, Bart and Guber interviewed director Marina Zenovich on Shootout: "What mattered to me was what happened to him after he committed the crime," she told them. "So many people think they know what happened that night, why he fled the country. I was interested in getting the facts straight."

UPDATE: Here's a response to Monday's L.A. Superior Court statement and the L.A. Times story from former deputy district attorney Roger Gunson and Polanski's attorney Douglas Dalton, who are interviewed in Wanted and Desired:

June 11, 2008 In 1997, Douglas Dalton, attorney for Roman Polanski, and Roger Gunson, prosecutor on the Polanski case, met with Judge Larry Paul Fidler in his chambers to discuss the Polanski case. Mr. Gunson and Mr. Dalton advised Judge Fidler of Judge Rittenband's conduct in handling the case that is accurately captured in the documentary, Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. At the meeting, Judge Fidler advised Mr. Dalton that if Mr. Polanski returned to Los Angeles, that he, Judge Fidler, would allow Mr. Polanski to be booked and immediately released on bail, require Mr. Polanski to meet with the probation department, order a probation report, conduct a hearing, and terminate probation without Mr. Polanski having to serve any additional time in custody. That there was a deal worked out between Judge Fidler and Mr. Dalton was reported in the New York Daily News as early as October 1, 1997. One of the issues raised by Mr. Dalton during the meeting was the question of media coverage. All understood that any proceedings would be open to the public as required by law. During the meeting, Mr. Dalton pressed Judge Fidler for a resolution of the case that would allow for minimal news media. Mr. Dalton recalled that Judge Fidler would require television coverage at the proposed hearing due to the controversy. Mr. Gunson recalls television coverage discussed at the meeting. Mr. Dalton told documentary director Marina Zenovich of this requirement. It is our shared view that Monday's false and reprehensible statement by the Los Angeles Superior Court continues their inappropriate handling of the Polanski case. Roger Gunson Douglas Dalton

A federal investigation into overseas corruption is making some Hollywood folks nervous, reports Portfolio:

For federal prosecutors, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has become a sleeper hit—but no Hollywood types will be celebrating when this once-dormant bribery statute makes a September Tinseltown debut.

The F.C.P.A., after decades of being ignored, is ensnaring an increasing array of companies, from energy exploration and telecom concerns to medical-device makers and freight forwarders, for alleged kickbacks to government officials around the globe. Now, even Hollywood is in prosecutors' crosshairs for bribery along the film-festival circuit—a case that could mark the beginning of the industry's own serious Syriana-style woes.

The Department of Justice has accused critically acclaimed Rescue Dawn producer Gerald Green and his wife Patricia of attempting to pay more than $900,000 in bribes to a high-level Thai government official in the hope of gaining the concession to run an international film festival in Bangkok. The Greens have plead not guilty on all charges.

I finally schlepped down to the Anthony Pellicano criminal trial in downtown L.A. on Wednesday at 8 AM, sitting with other folks who've been tracking it all along, like the LAT's Rachel Abramowitz, the NYT's David Halbfinger, Portfolio's Fred Schruers, and our own Marc Graser, who reports here. Apparently there were more watchers in the Temple St. courthouse gallery than there have been since the beginning. And there was plenty of fireworks.

While the room is fairly high-tech, with two big plasma screens and monitors showing the various exhibits-- like Pellicano's LAPD database searches and surveillance records of ex-journalist Anita Busch and her collaborator at the NYT, Bernard Weinraub, who both testified on Wednesday-- the reporters sitting on hard wood benches were scribbling madly with pen and paper. (UPDATE: Janet Shprintz analyzes the government's case, which wrapped Thursday.)

Ovitz, wearing a dapper purple tie and glasses, brought me back to the waning days of his 2002 stint at Artists Management Group, when he was so upset by the damaging and "wildly embarrassing" articles being written in the NYT by Busch and Weinraub--as he was readying the company for sale to The Firm-- that he hired Pellicano to get him some info. "He talked to people who source the press," Ovitz explained.

He wanted Pellicano to dig into Universal studio chief Ron Meyer, his former CAA partner, and DreamWorks' David Geffen, whom he suspected of sourcing the stories. Ovitz admitted that he was under enormous pressure--"it was an extremely difficult time"-- and would unburden himself to Pellicano, who was willing to listen, and gave Ovitz the code name "Gaspar" to use when he called. Ovitz said Pellicano was helpful about finding things out around "the campus," what he has always called the entertainment business. "It's very much like high school." Ovitz denied hiring Pellicano to threaten Busch with the dead fish on the car windshield, or doing anything illegal, like wiretaps.

The waterworks came when Busch took the stand. Here's my Variety story. It was painful to watch as the ex-journalist was asked to relive what were clearly still-traumatic experiences. She broke down and was unable to speak several times.

When asked by prosecution attorney Daniel Saunders what happened on June 20, 2002, Busch replied, “I was given a death threat.” She recounted the oft-reported story of how she emerged from her home that morning to find a hole in her Audi’s windshield, an object wrapped in plastic in a baking pan, and a note reading: “Stop.” After a bomb squad cleared the area and blew the object off her dashboard with a water cannon, Busch was told that a dead fish and a rose were in the pan.

She was also nearly run down by a Mercedes, she said, had her files wiped out by a computer virus and her phone tapped. "I was stunned," she said.

Under cross-examination by Pellicano, who was wearing green prison drab and white sneakers, Busch became emotional again. “I was scared 24/7 for my life,” she said. “I didn’t know how I was going to survive financially."

The latest Weinstein brawl is between Harvey Weinstein and NBC/Bravo, now that Harvey is pulling Project Runway away from a cable channel that wants to keep running it in favor of another deal--for five years--at Lifetime. It is highly unusual for a producer to switch gears like this with a hit show. Here's the news story in Variety, EW.com and UPDATE: The NYT. The jubilant Lifetime press release is on the jump.

Harvey is also still fighting the filmmakers of the Star Wars comedy Fanboys, who have launched a major counteroffensive.

The Fanboys Trailer:

Anita Busch, who had been a fearless and forthright star newshound reporter at Variety and editor of The Hollywood Reporter, was under contract at the LAT six years ago when she ran afoul of somebody who left a dead fish on her car and tapped her phones and made her frightened and paranoid and took away her livelihood as a journalist. She has always suspected Mike Ovitz of hiring private investigator Anthony Pellicano to intimidate her into shutting up.

The NYT tells Busch's sad story. She will soon testify in the Pellicano illegal wiretapping and information-gathering trial here in Los Angeles. Here's Variety's trial coverage.

When I last talked to Busch several years ago, she was writing an historic novel and trying to make a living not as an entertainment journalist, something she was born to be. Busch on the trail of breaking news was something to behold.

The Anthony Pellicano case is front and center today as it goes to trial. The LAT sums up the case, complete with chart and arrows (in the print edition, at least). Here's Variety. Some of the Hollywood notables involved in the case, from studio chiefs Ron Meyer and Brad Grey to Mike Ovitz and Bert Fields, may be called to testify.

Monday, Thom Powers, documentary programmer at the Toronto International Film Festival, and filmmaker/blogger A.J. Schnack announced the launch of a new award for nonfiction filmmaking. The ceremony will be held in March at the IFC Center in New York. Nominees in eight categories will be announced in Park City on January 20.

IndieWIRE has the first report of the shortlist of 15 films. Here's the story of why Powers and Schnack were compelled to do this. Here's the initial IndiePix website.

Kristin Thompson has been tracking the ins and outs of Peter Jackson's lawsuit against New Line and the movie version of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit at her blog, The Frodo Franchise. Here she gives context and analysis of the court ruling last week fining New Line $125,000 for failing to come up with relevant documents.

Doc producer Gabriel Rotello (The Eyes of Tammy Faye) lays out the sad but true story of the late Tammy Faye Bakker Messner.

Amd here are the other producers, Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, on Salon.

Judith Regan made tapes of conversations with Fox execs and has juicy details on News Corp's Rupert Murdoch, whom she is suing for defamation, among other things, reports the NYDN, which also reports that when photographer Annie Leibovitz asked Queen Elizabeth to take off her crown during a photo shoot, the Queen gave her an icy retort and walked out.

UPDATE: The BBC had to apologize to the Queen for making it look like she stormed out.

Alan Ladd, Jr. is no longer the lion of industry that he once was. But, as the NYT reports, he still wants to get his due.

The picture LAT writer John Horn paints of the War of the Roses divorce battle between ICM agent Risa Shapiro and Saw producer Oren Koules is not pretty. It reveals that the richer you are, the messier it gets. She wants a piece of his Saw sequels. He wants a piece of her ICM clients going forward. Ouch. They've settled, but not before Horn got hold of plenty of juicy details.

The always fascinating writer Laura Albert, who invented the alter ego JT LeRoy with the help of Savannah Knoop, appeared in a Manhattan courtroom to defend her fictional creation, reports The Washington Post:

LeRoy was supposedly a real-life former boy prostitute who had grown up sexually abused and turned tricks in a West Virginia parking lot. "Sarah," a novel under his name said to be "60 percent true," earned him underground cult figuredom and celebrity endorsements from the likes of Winona Ryder and Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins, not to mention raves from serious publications. As LeRoy gained fame, Albert asked a friend to portray the 20ish writer to make public appearances, and a handful of reporters ultimately profiled a trembling JT -- he was apparently traumatized and exceptionally shy -- in dark sunglasses and a wig. The little fella unspooled a riveting story.

It was all made up. Albert, it turned out, had never set foot in West Virginia, as she testified Wednesday. She was raised in Brooklyn and later moved to San Francisco, which is where Jeremiah "Terminator" LeRoy was born.

Here's Paris Hilton's mug shot. LA County Sheriff Lee Baca is her jailer, the guy who talks to TMZ.com about people like her and Mel Gibson, and the man who tried to set the pampered heiress free. Baca has an unusual degree of autonomy over who stays in which jail for how long. Except in Hilton's case, as the LAT reveals.

Here's the latest AP report situation.

And Paris Hilton's diary.

And a Brit view on how America is treating our most famous prisoner.

Time Warner wasted no time in giving HBO czar Christ Albrecht the boot Wednesday after his arrest in Las Vegas after an alleged violent altercation with a woman friend. At first the company put Albrecht on leave to cope with what he termed an alcohol problem. But today Warners acted more decisively, after the media revealed that a prior alleged abuse of a female coworker that had been swept under the rug in 1991.

Kudos here to the LAT's Claudia Eller. I am quite sure that if Warners had been willing to hide the first incident, they would have cast a blind eye again. But Eller made that impossible. With both Time Warner execs Jeff Bewkes and Richard Parsons harboring lofty career ambitions, there was no way they could afford to be lenient this time.

I managed to score a 4--moderately wise--on the NYT's wisdom quiz. Avoiding extremes seems to be one way to go here; but I didn't score a 5, either.

I have to admit that one of the questions--along the lines of, do you ever derive pleasure from someone else's pain?-- did make me think of Paris Hilton. When one of the privileged few gets their comeuppance for bad behavior, be it Leona Helmsley or Hilton, there is some satisfaction in that. But in this case, as Nora and I agreed, Paris Hilton was asking to be sentenced to 45 days in jail, because she was endangering other drivers and needed to be taught some consequences. One woman summed up the situation up nicely for the LAT:

"I think it's very fair," said Toni Marabou, 39, who was at the courthouse with her 16-year-old son to pay his traffic ticket.

"Even though you may be a high-end celebrity, it doesn't mean you can live recklessly.

"If she was drinking and driving and killed someone, then would she get a slap on the wrist? It's a lesson she has to learn."

UPDATE: Paris Hilton's Must-See Jailhouse DVDs.

Hollywood screenwriter Wesley Strick (Cape Fear) wonders what Lana Clarkson could have been thinking when she went over to Phil Spector's house the night she was shot in the mouth.

The Phil Spector jury includes an NBC Dateline producer and a New Line Cinema marketing executive.

I was thinking about juries today when I went downtown to see Twelve Angry Men at the Ahmanson, starring Richard Thomas and George Wendt. It holds up! It moves fast toward its inexorable climax. Never dull or pedantic. Great fun. It's hard to imagine a time when a jury would be comprised of 12 white men, but this piece, which originated as a 1957 teleplay, is 50 years old. I want Nora to see the Sidney Lumet film with Henry Fonda and Lee J. Cobb.

I love getting a gander at a real movie budget. The numbers are surreal. How does a studio get into a situation where a movie like Sahara, which is obviously a grade-B action adventure, winds up costing $160 million? Paramount acquired some distribution rights to Sahara from Philip Anschutz's Bristol Bay Productions. The LAT's Glenn Bunting, who is not one of the Calendar section's Hollywood beat reporters, reminds us yet again that perhaps the folks who cover the town regularly aren't SHOCKED enough by what goes on. Bunting is plenty breathless about the shenanigans on this movie. But part of the problem here --and one reason the project wound up in court --is that it was made outside the system, and outside the rules.

But these astronomical numbers do show how inflated these budgets can get:

• "Sahara," an action-adventure based on the bestselling novel by Clive Cussler, has lost about $105 million to date, according to a finance executive assigned to the movie. But records show the film losing $78.3 million based on Hollywood accounting methods that count projected revenue ($202.9 million in this case) over a 10-year period.

• About 1,000 cast and crew members worked on "Sahara." The highest-paid was McConaughey, who received an $8-million fee, or $615,385 for each week of filming, not including bonuses and other compensation. Cruz earned $1.6 million. Rainn Wilson, who since has raised his profile through roles in "Six Feet Under" and "The Office," was paid $45,000 for 10 weeks of work.

• "Courtesy payments," "gratuities" and "local bribes" totaling $237,386 were passed out on locations in Morocco to expedite filming. A $40,688 payment to stop a river improvement project and $23,250 for "Political/Mayoral support" may have run afoul of U.S. law, experts say.

• Ten screenwriters were paid $3.8 million in fees and bonuses — highlighting the increasingly common practice of hiring and firing numerous writers on big-budget features. David S. Ward, who won an Academy Award for "The Sting," received $500,000.

• The production firm owned by Denver billionaire Philip Anschutz got $20.4 million in government incentives to film and edit parts of "Sahara" in Europe.

Unlike most financial failures, "Sahara" performed reasonably well, ranking No. 1 after its opening weekend and generating $122 million in gross box-office sales. But the movie was saddled with exorbitant costs, including a $160-million production and $81.1 million in distribution expenses.

The financial documents obtained by The Times were submitted as "confidential" exhibits in an ongoing Los Angeles jury trial.

Cussler initially sued, claiming that Anschutz's producers reneged on his $10-million contract by failing to honor his right to approve the script. Anschutz countersued, alleging that Cussler exaggerated sales of "Sahara" and other Dirk Pitt adventure books and that he refused to promote the film, hurting attendance. Both sides seek millions of dollars in damages.

"I'm floored that these documents could have been provided by someone, despite the fact that there is a clear agreement within the litigation ensuring that they are confidential," said Marvin Putnam, an Anschutz attorney. "They have been provided in clear breach of that agreement."

The records consist of a 151-page final budget, a profit-and-loss statement, a distribution agreement with Paramount Pictures and a six-year analysis of financial transactions.

Check out McConaughey's MTV set diary.

This is BIG NEWS. John Malone doesn't mess around. The inevitable has occurred as the studios play out their long-term hands on changing windows and video downloads. UPDATE: Variety's legal eagle John Dempsey talks to Starz about the lawsuit:

According to a Starz spokesman, Disney is publicly boasting that it will rack up $50 million-$70 million this year from the electronic sale of movies through iTunes. In its claim for damages, Starz asks Disney to turn over all of the profits it has pocketed from these electronic movie sales.

Starz is particularly worried by a new Apple box, now being shipped, that the suit calls "a small, inexpensive device that wirelessly transmits to the consumer's television the movies and TV shows electronically downloaded into the consumer iTunes library."

In the suit Starz says it has ponied up more than a billion dollars to Disney since the two parties first signed a contract for pay TV exclusivity in 1993. The companies renewed the agreement in 1999 and, for a three-year term, in 2005. Disney has an option to engineer another three-year renewal in 2008.

Starz interprets the contract as prohibiting Disney from selling any of its theatricals on the Internet until about 28 months after the movie makes its debut in U.S. multiplexes. That exclusive license period covers the 10 months before Starz takes title to the movie and the 18 months during which the pay TV exclusivity holds sway. Disney's offering of movies on the Internet for pay-per-view is not addressed in the lawsuit.