New Line Cinema landed on its asp over the weekend as the highly hyped Snakes on a Plane, which analysts had expected would take in more than $30 million, earned only about half of that -- an estimated $15.2 million. (Several reports mentioned that the figure also included $1.4 million from Thursday night's 10:00 p.m. screenings.) The studio had hoped that using the Internet as its chief marketing tool would boost ticket sales and save it millions of dollars in traditional costs. New Line's distribution chief, David Tuckerman, told today's (Monday) New York Times that the studio was "a little disappointed" with the box office results. "We'll make money with this picture, it's just more disappointing because of all the inflated expectations," he told the newspaper. "It basically performed like a normal horror movie." Added Exhibitor Relations chief Paul Dergarabedian: "We see that Internet interest in a movie doesn't necessarily translate to good box office." The results no doubt came as a particular disappointment to New Line's parent, Time Warner, whose other film studio, Warner Bros., has been experiencing one of its worst years in recent memory. Meanwhile, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest added another $5 million to its booty, putting it past the $400 million mark with $401 million.

The top ten films for the weekend, according to studio estimates compiled by Exhibitor Relations: 1. Snakes on a Plane, $15.25 million; 2. Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, $14.1 million; 3. World Trade Center, $10.8 million; 4. Accepted, $10.1 million; 5. Step Up, $9.9 million; 6. Barnyard, $7.5 million; 7. Little Miss Sunshine, $5.7 million; 8. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, $5 million; 9. Material Girls, $4.6 million; 10. Pulse, $3.5 million.

As Chicago Tribune TV columnist Phil Rosenthal put in on Sunday, "The old tradition of Chicago's two major daily newspapers challenging one another on TV over coming movie releases will be revived, at least for one week." The "tradition" began with the debut of Siskel and Ebert, the syndicated TV series in which Gene Siskel of the Tribune vied with Roger Ebert of the Sun-Times over the worthiness of each weekend's movie releases. When Siskel died in 1999, he was replaced by another Sun-Times writer, Richard Roeper. But during Ebert's recent hospitalization for cancer treatment, he has been spelled by a number of fill-ins, and on Sept. 2, his substitute is scheduled to be Michael Phillips, the movie critic for the Tribune. Rosenthal reported that Ebert himself suggested Phillips. "When we first started talking about possible substitutes, Michael was the first person Roger mentioned," Roeper said. "We're both big fans of his work in the Trib, and I'm looking forward to working with him." Meanwhile, Ebert himself released a statement on Friday saying that although his recovery is taking longer than expected, his doctors have given him an "enthusiastically optimistic" prognosis.

The major studios are gambling that the public will be making the switch to high-definition DVD players by Christmas time and are aggressively releasing new titles in the competing and incompatible HD DVD and Blu-ray formats. Home Media Retailing magazine, citing the industry newsletter "The DVD Release Report," reported that 140 high-definition movie titles are either already in stores or are due for release in the next two months, 83 in the HD DVD format and 57 in Blu-ray. The magazine noted that several other titles had been scheduled to be released in Blu-ray but were postponed to allow for further remastering "due to the high level of quality expected by early adopters."

Long-circulating rumors that Amazon.com would soon launch a movie downloading service picked up momentum over the weekend as bloggers discovered what appeared to be screenshots of the planned Amazon video site. Alan Taylor, who said that he once worked for Amazon, said that he found the screenshots in an area of Amazon.com used by developers. One screen offers new users a free TV show or $1.99 off the first movie they download. The website TechWeb.com said that when it contacted Amazon about the screenshots, it declined comment. Taylor himself told TechWeb: "It could be an experiment. ... They may never decide to launch this."

The face of Katie Couric will appear on every single bus in the city of New York as part of an unprecedented $10-million campaign to promote her ascension to the anchor's desk at the CBS Evening News, the New York Times reported Sunday. The network also flew news anchors from its top 48 affiliates to New York to interview Couric for features that will be presented on each local station, the newspaper said. The promotional campaign for Couric, the Times observed, is comparable only to those mounted for hit primetime shows like CSI. Broadcasting & Cable magazine observed that a massive New York poster campaign will also target New York subway stations and Grand Central and Penn stations. CBS is also set to become the inaugural sponsor of the New York Times new online TV section, launching Sept. 4. Couric told the Times that she expects her program will be distinguished by the fact that it will spend less time on "news of the day" and focus "on longer takeouts, if you will." She said that it will also devoted 90 seconds or so each night to a segment titled "Free Speech" that will present opinions of ordinary Americans, scholars, and sometimes even comedians.

The story of the arrest of a suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey case pushed aside seemingly more important matters including Iran's test of long-range missiles and a ruling by a federal judge in Michigan that overturned the Bush administration's domestic-surveillance operations. MSNBC, which scored a beat on its rivals by being the first to report on last Wednesday's arrest in Bangkok of John Mark Karr, continued to devote considerable time to the story as late as Sunday, as Karr was being flown back to the U.S. in the business class section of Thai Airlines. At 10:01 a.m. MSNBC bannered: "BREAKING NEWS; RAMSEY SUSPECT ALLOWED TO DRINK CHAMPAGNE WHEN HE BOARDED PLANE." Five minutes later it changed its "Breaking News" banner to "RAMSEY SUSPECT'S ONBOARD DINNER INCLUDED PATÉ AND FRIED KING PRAWNS." At 12:31, another "Breaking News" banner read, "RAMSEY SUSPECT HAS HAD CHAMPAGNE, A BEER AND GLASS OF WINE ON PLANE."

An episode of The Simpsons, "The Seemingly Neverending Story," beat out "Trapped in a Closet," the Tom Cruise/Scientology episode of South Park, to win the Emmy for best animated series. The victory was announced Saturday at the 58th annual Creative Arts Emmy Awards. Accepting the award, Simpsons executive producer Al Jean quipped, "This is what happens when you don't mock Scientology." Cloris Leachman also picked up an Emmy for a guest appearance on Fox's Malcolm in the Middle. It was her eighth win -- the most by any female performer. Other Creative Arts winners included HBO's Elizabeth I and Rome, each of which took home multiple awards.

EchoStar Communications, which operates the DISH satellite-TV service, was able to persuade a federal appeals court on Friday to block a district court's ruling that EchoStar must stop selling its digital recorders and turn off DVRs already in subscribers' homes within 30 days. The appeals court made it clear, however, that it wasn't ruling on the merits of EchoStar's arguments in its legal battle with TiVo, saying only that it wanted to have time to determine whether whether the shutdown should be delayed until EchoStar's appeal can be heard. The shutdown would affect more than 3 million users of EchoStar's DVRs who are able to use a feature that allows them to record one program while watching another. TiVo had claimed that the technology infringed on its own patents. Besides ordering EchoStar to turn off the settop units, Judge David Folsom also ordered EchoStar to pay TiVo $89.6 million in damages.

With TV networks increasingly finding themselves at loggerheads with local affiliates over plans to make TV series available on the Internet, Fox is testing a new strategy. On Friday it began allowing the websites of nine local stations themselves to offer several primetime shows, including hits Prison Break and Bones. Fox said that it was the first time local affiliates were able to stream network shows online. The shows, which included ads for Toyota, are being provided free