Time Warner plans to issue a director's cut of Superman II on Nov. 20 that will feature the work of director Richard Donner, who was fired from the movie and replaced by Richard Lester midway through the movie in 1979. According to today's (Wednesday) London Times, the film will include 15 minutes of previously unseen footage of Marlon Brando as Superman's father, Jor-El. The film also employs footage from Donner's screen tests and numerous alternate sequences. In fact, according to the Times, the film uses less than 20 percent of the footage shot by Lester. A spokeswoman for Warner Home Video told the newspaper that the new film was made possible because producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind, who fired Donner, sold their interest in the film to Time Warner. A critic for Britain's Empire magazine who viewed the new version said that it was plagued with continuity problems arising from the fact that Donner was forced to make do with footage on hand, including the screen-test footage. "It's patchy (Reeve's hairstyle changes from shot to shot), badly lit and stagy, but watching Reeve's performance is electrifying," according to the Empire review.

Miramax founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein have suggested that they might have remained with the Disney Co. had Robert Iger been running it while they were there instead of Michael Eisner. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Bob Weinstein said that they now "have a very good relationship with Bob Iger ... He's set a fantastic tone. There's no animosity. It's actually been good. We've wondered if we'd still be there." Weinstein said that what caused "friction" with the previous regime was that "we walked in every day with the attitude that we were running our own company." The Weinsteins also told the newspaper that their recently acquired Genius video distribution unit has already produced a profits bonanza for their company, putting it ahead of analysts' projections. "When people read Genius's profit statement next year, and the size of the company that we're building, I think they'll weep," Harvey Weinstein told the Journal.

How can a studio promote and market a film whose title is the F word? That is the challenge facing ThinkFilm, which is releasing F**k the movie in New York and Los Angeles on Nov. 10 before expanding it. Bloomberg News quoted ThinkFilm's marketing chief, Mark Urman, as describing his quandary this way: "Newspapers, unless they are alternative weeklies, cannot print the word ... and movie theaters cannot put the title on a marquee." Another complication facing the company -- the title of the movie would also force the MPAA ratings board to issue an NC-17 rating; ThinkFilm has therefore decided to release it unrated. However, Mark Cuban's Landmark Theatre Corp. has reportedly agreed to exhibit it in 57 theaters in 23 markets.

Former Congressman Mark Foley, who was accused of engaging in sexually explicit instant messaging with congressional pages, appeared in a 2003 film called Strike Force as a congressman who hires a band of vigilantes to rescue his daughter. According to Radar Online, which discovered Foley's role in the movie, the Lionsgate film went straight to DVD and later aired on Showtime (it was also known as The Librarians). Radar reported that Foley "was regarded as one of Hollywood's go-to Republicans" and that during the 2000 Republican convention in Philadelphia, "he was feted at a nightclub party hosted by then-MPAA President Jack Valenti, Disney, Viacom and Time Warner."

DreamWorks Animation outperformed analysts' expectations for the third quarter as it reported net income of $10.5 million, versus a net loss of $700,000 during the comparable period a year ago. Nevertheless, news reports continued to cite analysts' worries about the studio's Flushed Away, a claymation feature from Wallace & Gromit creators Aardman Animation. The film opens this weekend amid a glut of family films that have been churned out this year, including Disney's The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause, which also debuts this weekend.

In order to prevent being toppled by ABC's Good Morning America on the days that it aired Diane Sawyer's exclusive interview with Mel Gibson last month, NBC pulled all of its national advertising from the Today show during the competing time period, the New York Observer reported today. Calling the tactic "a little clever ratings jujitsu that went unnoticed by almost everyone in TV news," the Observer noted that Nielsen only measures audiences for programs that air national advertising. While hundreds of thousands of dollars in national spots were dumped out of the time period, Jim Bell, executive producer of the Today show observed, "We did not lose any money," since, in the end Today could report a larger average audience for the sponsored part of the broadcast than GMA. [ABC was also unable to capitalize on the Gibson interview in primetime, since Primetime Live, the magazine show that Sawyer once hosted, no longer has a permanent spot on the ABC schedule.]

Despite stronger competition this season than it has experienced in recent years, CBS continued to lead in the ratings race, with all three CSI shows landing among the top ten, according to Nielsen Research. The news was not good for Fox, however, as, for the first time, not a single World Series game landed at the top of the list. The St. Louis-Detroit contest plummeted to a record low -- down 8 percent from last year, which also was a record low. For the week, CBS averaged an 8.0 rating and a 13 share. ABC followed with a 7.3/12. Fox placed third with a 6.5/10, edging out NBC with a 6.3/10. CBS's strong showing in primetime was tempered by the fact that the audience of Katie Couric's CBS Evening News program continued to decline. It averaged just about the same number of viewers as her predecessor, Bob Schieffer, drew during the comparable week a year ago.

The top ten shows of the week according to Nielsen Research: 1. Dancing With the Stars, ABC, 13.6/20; 2. NFL Overrun (Sunday), CBS, 13.3/23; 2. Dancing With the Stars Results (Wednesday), ABC, 13.3/21; 2. Desperate Housewives, ABC, 13.3/20; 5. CSI: Miami, CBS, 11.7/19; 6. Sunday Night Football, NBC, 11.2/18; 7. CSI: NY, CBS, 11.1/18; 8. Criminal Minds, CBS, 11.0/16; 9. 60 Minutes, CBS, 10.9/17; 10. CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CBS, 10.8/16.

Last week's No. 1 show, ABC's Dancing With the Stars showed an uptick in its ratings Tuesday night as it dominated the primetime schedule with an average 13.7 rating and a 21 share, peaking at 9:00 p.m. with a 14.4/21. Remarkably, CBS's NCIS was able to challenge the dance contest effectively with a solid 10.6/17 to place second in the 8:00-9:00 p.m. hour. according to Nielsen overnights. At 9:00 p.m. Fox's House also made a strong showing against Dancing, pulling a 10.0/15.

The top five cable broadcasts during the month of October were all ESPN Monday Night Football telecasts, according to Nielsen Research. The top-rated cable show of the month was the Oct. 23 New York Giants vs. Dallas Cowboys game, which averaged 16 million viewers in primetime, a record for the network and for cable television as a whole. The NFL games also put ESPN far ahead of its cable competitors with an average of 3.54 million viewers in primetime during the month versus 2.43 million for second-place USA Network.

Former ESPN baseball analyst Harold Reynolds has sued the cable sports network for breach of contract, alleging that he was wrongfully fired last July after a female intern filed a sexual harassment complaint against him. Reynolds maintains that it was nothing more than a "brief and innocuous" hug. ESPN declined to discuss the matter. Reynolds was signed to a $6-million, six-year contract with the network last March.

The Walt Disney Co. will sell its 39.5-percent stake in E! Entertainment Channel to Comcast for $1.2 billion as part of a larger deal covering license-fee renewals for Disney's ESPN cable sports network, the Disney Channel, and other Disney-controlled cable outlets, the Los Angeles Times reported today (Tuesday), citing people involved in the talks. Comcast, the nation's largest cable operator, currently pays Disney about $1 billion yearly in licensing fees. A separate licensing deal with Time Warner Cable is also expected to be announced imminently. Both companies, the Times observed, are seeking an agreement that will allow them to sell Disney movies for viewing on demand over the Internet.

The Arab news channel al-Jazeera announced today (Wednesday) that it plans to launch its English-language channel on Nov. 15. The channel's broadcasts will originate in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London, and Washington D.C. Wadah Khanfar, director general of the al-Jazeera Network, said that the new channel, dubbed al-Jazeera International, "will provide the same ground-breaking news and impartial and balanced journalism to the English-speaking world." The channel has reportedly been unable to sign a major distribution agreement with any U.S. cable operator and is reportedly planning to reach American audiences via the Internet.

After 50 years as a television game-show host -- the last 35 as the emcee of The Price Is Right -- Bob Barker plans to retire next year at the age of 83. He holds the record for continuous performances on the same network show. In a statement, CBS president and CEO Les Moonves said, "Bob Barker is a daytime legend, an entertainment icon and one of the most beloved television personalities of our time."

NBC Universal CEO Robert Wright has denied reports that Aaron Sorkin's Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip is about to be canceled. In an interview with FoxNews.com's Roger Friedman, who originally quoted insiders as saying that the show was about to be yanked from the network's schedule, Wright said such a move was unlikely because "We have too much money invested in it. ... I think it will go on."