An all-star cast including William Daniels, Elliott Gould, Kent McCord, Diane Ladd, Valerie Harper and Rob Schneider as well as some three dozen other actors, staged a demonstration in front of the headquarters of the Screen Actors Guild Wednesday to protest the union's plans to form a consolidated performers union with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. The actors expressed outrage that the union's board refused to allow a dissenting opinion to be presented to the membership in advance of their vote on the consolidation. In an interview with today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Daily News, McCord, the union's treasurer and defacto leader of the opposition, commented: "It's an ill-gotten, ill-conceived concept to give this union away, and we won't stand for it. ... This isn't a solution; it's the creation of another problem." Reporting on Wednesday's protest, today's Hollywood Reporter commented, "It looks as if those in favor of creating the Alliance of International Media Artists [the proposed name of the consolidated union] are going to have a fight on their hands."

Described by today's (Thursday) New York Times as "part museum, part amusement park and part little boy's fantasy," a $10-20-million project called SFX -- The Science Fiction Experience is expected to be announced in Seattle today by Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. Details of the project were sketchy, except that it will fill 13,000 square feet of exhibit space, will have a "multimedia component," and will open in the summer of 2004. An advisory board includes includes science-fiction writers Greg Bear, Ray Bradbury, Octavia Butler and Arthur C. Clarke but no sci-fi filmmakers, although it is expected that their contribution to the genre will provide a significant presence at the proposed museum. Nevertheless, a spokesman for Allen's investment firm, Vulcan Inc., told the online Sci-Fi Today that the project will be "much broader than just Star Wars or Star Trek."

Despite the travails of its parent company, Vivendi Universal, Universal Pictures could dominate the box office this summer with such features as the Jim Carrey comedy Bruce Almighty, The Hulk, Seabiscuit, 2 Fast 2 Furious, and American Wedding, the New York Daily News observed today (Thursday). "They have the slate," Exhibitor Relations chief Paul Dergarabedian told the newspaper. Analyst Robert Bucksbaum of Reel Source Inc. agreed, telling the newspaper that Universal has "the big A-list titles."

Given the strong sales of the book on which it was based -- 3.5 million are in print -- Disney's Holes could become a surprise hit this weekend, USA Today observed today (Thursday). Although Disney spent only $20 million to produce it and apparently is expecting only modest ticket sales this weekend (analysts are forecasting $7-14 million), the newspaper said that "kids are buzzing about the movie" and that the studio could capitalize on the fact that, according to a recent poll, many kids have identified Holes, written by Louis Sachar, as their favorite book. It reached No. 1 on the children's paperback best-seller list in the New York Times on Sunday.

Director Steven Soderbergh, whose sex, lies and videotape won the Cannes Film Festival's coveted Palme d'Or award in 1989, and Meg Ryan are among the nine jurors who will select this year's winners, organizers announced Wednesday. The jury will be headed by Patrice Chéreau, whose film La Reine Margot (Queen Margot) won the Jury Prize at Cannes in 1994. Others included in the panel are Bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai, French actors Jean Rochefort and Karin Viard, Italian writer Erri De Luca, Bosnian director Danis Tanovic, and Chinese director Jiang Wen. Cannes president Gilles Jacob is scheduled to announce the titles of this year's competing films next Wednesday. The festival will run May 14-25.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said Wednesday that it will take a wait-and-see stance regarding a legal battle over a camera lens that received an Oscar in 1997. A federal judge in Los Angeles last Thursday nullified a patent on the lens, claiming that its inventor, James Frazier, lied to a patent examiner when he presented a demonstration film for it, showing its ability to maintain focus over a wide depth of field. The film, it turned out, had been made with a different lens. On Monday an attorney said that the video had been used only for marketing purposes. Frazier's lens remains in widespread use. On Wednesday AMPAS spokesman John Pavlik told USA Today."We need to see how the court decision compares with the actual facts of why the award was given in 1997. It may not affect [the Oscar] at all."

Just three weeks before it had been scheduled to air, Oliver Stone's documentary about Fidel Castro has been yanked from HBO's schedule. Referring to the execution by firing squad of three men who hijacked a ferry in Havana Bay on April 2 and ordered it to set sail for the U.S. (the ferry ran out of fuel), an HBO spokeswoman told today's (Thursday) Washington Post that "in light of recent alarming events," the Stone documentary, titled Commandante, "appears somewhat incomplete. ... What's important in Cuba today was not important in Cuba in February 2002," when the documentary was filmed. Separately, the Miami Herald reported today that HBO had "ordered" Stone to reinterview Castro and that if he does not, "it's very unlikely" that HBO will ever air the film. ''The rules are totally different on documentaries, '' Scott Sublett, who teaches film at California's San Jose State University, told the Herald. 'Still, that they would tell Oliver Stone where to get off is really amazing.'' Stone was reportedly working in Europe on his upcoming film about Alexander the Great.

An article appearing on FoxNews.com's website has indicated that performers who continue to speak out against the war in Iraq will suffer "repercussions." It quoted Robert Thompson, director for Syracuse University's Center for the Study of Popular Television, as saying: "When those various Hollywood people were speaking out, they were getting a lot of negative response for it, they're getting negative response from it now and if they continue to do it, they will get negative response for it then." But on his website www.michaelmoore.com, Michael Moore, who created an uproar when he attacked Bush's policies upon receiving an Oscar last month, claimed that, far from experiencing a backlash, ticket sales for his movie increased 110 percent, the number of theaters showing it also increased, his book Stupid White Men shot to #1 on the New York Times' best-seller list, more people pre-ordered his movie Bowling for Columbine on Amazon.com than the Best-Film winner Chicago, he received funding to make his next documentary [from Mel Gibson's production company], and he has received an offer to do a new television series.

Fox's American Idol not only overwhelmed its competition Wednesday night with a 12.7 rating and a 19 share, but it also helped boost ratings for the lead-in and lead-out shows as well. In particular, The Bernie Mac Show was lifted to an 8.7/13, making it the second-highest-rated show of the night. Fox won the night with a 9.1/14 rating, well ahead of second-place NBC's 7.9/12. ABC was third with a 7.4/11, while CBS, which saw its audience for Star Search fall to a 5.9/9, fell to fourth place with an average 5.9/9.

Of some 3,500 episodes of the BBC's Top of the Pops that aired in the 1960s at the peak of "The British Invasion" in the U.S., only 55 remain preserved on tape, the British Scotsman newspaper reported today (Thursday). Among the performances apparently lost forever are all of those of the Beatles. Mark Hagen, producer of the BBC's nostalgia show TOTP2, told the newspaper that the shows that do exist "are by no means the 55 you would choose to keep now." The BBC has acknowledged that it simply reused older tapes. "Forty years ago," it said, "few people foresaw the long-term cultural and historical value of television and radio programs." The broadcasting corporation is appealing to the public to bring in tapes of older broadasts that they may have in their possession so that they can be copied.

Banks that had agreed to back media mogul Haim Saban's $2.2-billion bid for Germany's KirchMedia are balking at what they claim is a rewriting of the loan deal, maintaining that it has "substantial disadvantages for the banks' position in comparison with the originally presented" plan. After the banks objections were reported by Reuters on Wednesday, Saban's company played down their importance, saying "These are just regular negotiations, nothing dramatic. We are going to continue the talks next week."