Two major international sports events next year, the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and the Union of European Football Associations' soccer championships, are figuring in distributors' scheduling for next year and may upset the current trend to open many films overseas on the same day that they open in North America, Daily Variety observed today (Thursday). In a report from Amsterdam, where European exhibitors are meeting for their annual Cinema Expo, the trade publication noted that Warner Bros. had decided against releasing Get Smart, starring Steve Carell and Anne Hathaway, in Europe on June 20, the day it is scheduled to be released in the U.S. "That falls right in the middle of the [EUFA championships], so we wouldn't want to go day and date on that movie," Warner Bros. international distribution president Veronika Kwan-Rubinek told the trade publication.

Word that Scientologist Tom Cruise will portray the leader of the so-called Generals' Plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler during World War II has touched off an ever-growing political firestorm in Germany, according to an Associated Press report from Berlin. Following a decision by the German military to bar the producers of the film, titled Valkyrie, after the code name used by the plotters, from using military bases as locales, a number of German lawmakers have gone on record to denounce the entire project. Social Democratic lawmaker Klaus Uwe Benneter said that having a Scientologist play Col. Claus Graf Schenk von Stauffenberg, who is now regarded as a national hero, represents "a slap in the face to all upstanding democrats, all resistance fighters during the Third Reich, and all victims of the Scientology sect." But a Scientology spokeswoman in Berlin called the response a call to religious discrimination. And in an interview with the AP, Carl Woebcken, head of Babelsberg studio, which is co-producing the movie with United Artists, commented, "This is not a Scientology film, it is a Bryan Singer film, and Bryan Singer is Jewish ... and they want to make this film to show that during the Nazi regime there was heroic resistance. [Tom Cruise] is one of the best, if not the best, actors in the world for heroic roles and that is why Bryan Singer approached him."

Starbucks plans to launch a Venti-size marketing campaign for the forthcoming Arctic Tale from Paramount Classics and National Geographic Films and in return receive a piece of the film's back end, the companies said Wednesday. Precise terms were not disclosed, although it was understood that Starbucks will not be contributing cash to the production. The documentary film follows the plight of a walrus and a polar bear in the Arctic as they deal with the effects of global warming. Signs promoting the movie are slated to go on display at 6,800 stores in the U.S. and Canada for a one-month period beginning July 31. Moreover the company plans to stage a National Day of Discussion at many of its stores on August 15, when spokespersons from various environmental organizations will discuss environmental issues.

The Motion Picture Association of America has sued two websites that publish menus of movies that can be downloaded on peer-to-peer websites. The two sites, YouTVpc and Peekvid, receive revenue not from the pirates but from advertisers and from donations by users. Although the MPAA claims that the two sides aid and abet copyright infringement, a notice on Peekvid reads: "Peekvid is committed to an industry solution that will provide a mechanism to compensate artists that create the work you enjoy watching. Peekvid would like to be part of the long term solution." And on his website, Mike Masnick, CEO of Techdirt, observed that the two sites are essentially doing "the same thing that a search engine like Google does. There are plenty of Google searches that will lead you to unauthorized content, but for some reason, the entertainment industry believes that if you make a specialized search engine or directory you're somehow liable."

Warner Home Video, which had announced with great fanfare earlier this year that by fall it would be releasing high-definition titles on a hybrid disc compatible with both Blu-ray and HD DVD players, said Wednesday that it is postponing the fall launch of the discs to "at least" early 2008. The website High-Def Disc News said that the announcement, made during the Entertainment Supply Chain Academy in Los Angeles, came as a surprise, since as recently as March, the company had indicated that all production and replication hurdles for what it calls Total HD had been cleared. "There is no expiration date on the viability of this concept, so we're not in a rush to do it," Warner marketing executive Steve Nickerson told the trade publication Video Business. "We'll do it when it makes sense and when it's right."

The creators of a documentary about the aftermath of the airplane crash that took the lives of the Marshall University football team have filed a $40-million breach-of-contract lawsuit against Warner Bros., claiming that the studio stole their ideas for their drama We Are Marshall and failed to given them writer, producer and consulting credits on the film as promised. The suit cites numerous similarities between the documentary, Ashes to Glory, written by Deborah Novak and John Witek, and the movie. Attorney John Marder, who represents the two, told the Associated Press that the movie industry has a history of stealing from writers. The difference in this case, he said, is that Novak and Witek had a contract with Warner Bros.

A day before it is to be released theatrically in the United States, the Malaysian Star reported today (Thursday) that Disney's animated Ratatouille is widely available in most DVD outlets in the country selling pirated films -- and has been for the past month. One DVD seller told the newspaper that the disks are "not perfect but watchable if you want to be among the first to watch the film."

In what appeared to be a verdict of guilt by association, TV newspaper columnists today (Thursday) chastised CNN in general and Larry King in particular for Wednesday night's interview with Paris Hilton. King, said Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times, appeared "attentive but not all that interested." The interviewer, said Tom Shales in the Washington Post, "seemed to be playing more a grandfatherly than journalistic role." Verne Gay in Newsday referred to King as the "master of the innocuous question, automaton inquisitor extraordinaire." Writing in the Hollywood Reporter, Barry Garron observed that Hilton's purpose was to rehabilitate her image. "Thanks to King's aversion to follow-up after even the most self-serving of Hilton's answers, Hilton accomplished much of what she set out to do." Hal Boedeker in the Orlando Sentinel remarked, "Maybe CNN could market that Paris Hilton interview as a sleep aid." CNN itself devoted hours of primetime to the interview, even covering Hilton's arrival at CNN's studios in Hollywood, then placing a small clock in the corner of the screen to count down the minutes to her appearance. The Huffington Post blog, saying it was "watching CNN with incredulity," asked, "How many 'The Most Trusted Name in News' jokes can you make before it just makes you sad?" Several bloggers posted previous comments from CNN chief Jonathan Klein about the news channel's commitment to airing essential information. "Audiences expect substance, and we deliver that in a way no one else does," Klein said last year. A year earlier he said that cable news has to stop "obsessing over this trivial stuff."

In an interview with Time magazine appearing on its website, Rupert Murdoch has acknowledged that Fox News Channel may well represent a major reason why his plans to acquire the Wall Street Journal have incensed critics. But when asked whether Fox News is an expression of his own political views, he replied: "Yes! No! Yes and no. The commentators are not. Bill O'Reilly certainly not. Geraldo Rivera certainly not. But Brit Hume and his team on the nightly news? Yes. They play it absolutely straight!" On the other hand, he said, "CNN is pretty consistently on the left, if you look at their choice of stories, what they play up. It's not what they say. It's what they highlight. ... And if you look at our general news, do we put on things which favor the right rather than the left? I don't know."

ESPN/ABC and TNT seemed willing to jump through hoops to extend their contract with the NBA Wednesday, signing a new eight-year deal worth about $930 million a year, up 22 percent from the $765 million a year that the basketball behemoth has been receiving under the current contract. The new deal also takes into account digital media rights. Reporters indicated that it may be the first time that broadcasting and digital rights have been packaged together in any deal between a sports league and broadcasters. "It's really a prototype for sports deals going forward," ESPN president George Bodenheimer told reporters. "The desire for sports content hasn't changed, but how fans consume it has," NBA Commissioner David Stern said. "What you're seeing is the movement of rights to follow the fan to enhance the experience for those who want to experience it all."

NBC is hailing a deal with New York's taxi commission allowing it to show clips of its television shows, along with advertising, on NY10, the Clear Channel-owned New York Taxi Entertainment Network. In a statement, Mark French, the head of strategic partnerships for NBC Universal, commented, "Not only can we provide informative and entertaining NBC programming to an on-the-go audience, but we can offer our advertisers a new platform to better achieve their marketing objectives."

Suggesting that it will rank as the greatest advancement in broadcasting since the BBC inaugurated color television 40 years ago, BBC director general Mark Thompson announced Wednesday that the BBC's new iPlayer will become available in the U.K. on July 27. The downloadable software will enable television viewers to watch all BBC programs on Windows-based computers seven days after they are broadcast. (They are automatically deleted 30 days later.) "BBC Television launched color TV in July 1967," Thompson said. "The iPlayer is at least as big a redefinition of what TV can be, what radio can be, what broadcasting can be, as color television was 40 years ago." A Mac version of the iPlayer is expected to become available in the fall.

The Parents Television Council has challenged the license of CBS-owned KUTV in Salt Lake City, citing in particular what it called a "teen orgy" scene that appeared in the drama Without a Trace and which the FCC had claimed was indecent. On its website, Broadcasting & Cable reported Wednesday that in response to the challenge, the FCC has asked CBS to document what steps it took to comply with a consent decree that it signed prior to the broadcast in which it agreed to institute policies to prevent the airing of indecent material. CBS issued a statement saying that it plans to respond promptly to the FCC's demands, adding, "We are confident our position will be affirmed that the episode was not indecent."