Hollywood's major studios, many of whom decided to buy station-break spots in select local markets during last year's Super Bowl rather than shell out $2.5 million or more for spots on the network telecast, have decided to return to the main telecast, Daily Variety reported today (Thursday). Each spot during the game, to be televised Feb.3 on Fox, has been sold for between $2.7 million and $3 million. Variety attributed the studios' decision to Fox's plan for a red-carpet pregame special in which host Ryan Seacrest will interview stars from the films being promoted in the ads. Fox is offering ad buyers a package deal that gives them a MySpace.com page as a bonus.

In what amounts to a recall of its high-definition Blu-ray edition of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, Disney has informed purchasers that it will replace the discs with ones that correct a framing problem. The website High-Def Disc News reported that the framing problems "wreaked havoc with the film's intended compositions." According to the website, replacements have been pressed and will be shipped free to consumers requesting them within two business days. Those wishing replacements were advised to call Disney's customer service line at 800-723-4763.

In an editorial packed with schadenfreude, the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano said that it found the mediocre box office for New Line's The Golden Compass "consoling." The film had been denounced in America by the Catholic League, the country's largest Catholic lay group, as an introduction to atheism. Although the film itself has no overt anti-religious message the Philip Pullman book trilogy on which it is based, does, and the Catholic League had expressed concern that children who were exposed to the movie would be drawn to the book. "In Pullman's world, hope simply does not exist, because there is no salvation but only personal, individualistic capacity to control the situation and dominate events," Wednesday's editorial said. The editorial also took note of reports that poor returns for the movie would discourage the studio from producing a sequel. "If that should happen, it wouldn't be a big loss," the newspaper said.

Following FBI accusations Tuesday that she accepted $1.7 million in kickbacks from the U.S. couple who staged the Bangkok Film Festival (BFF) for four years, Juthamas Siriwan abruptly resigned today (Thursday) as deputy leader of the Puea Pandin Party, the Bangkok Post reported on its website. On Wednesday she also withdrew her candidacy in next week's elections for a seat in Thailand's parliament. "Juthamas has resigned in a show of responsibility," said Puea Pandin party spokesman Wachiramon Kanakasemthanawat. "Her resignation will facilitate a transparent investigation into her case." Juthamas had previously served as head of the Tourism Authority of Thailand, the government agency responsible for the BFF. Her resignation comes on the heels of reports that the FBI had arrested Gerald and Patricia Green on charges of violating the corrupt practices act by bribing Juthamas in order to receive the lucrative contract to manage the film festival. Juthamas has denied the charges.

A top Angolan official has denounced police who killed two actors and injured others while a scripted robbery scene was being shot in a suburb of Luanda, the capital. Interior Minister Roberto Leal Monteiro described the shooting as an "undue use of firearms." In an interview with the BBC's Portuguese Service, the director of the film described the sudden arrival of police at the location site, who immediately began firing at the actors, who were carrying unloaded weapons. "They went on shooting until I shouted out: 'Please don't shoot, this is a movie, '" he said.

Two separate raids by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Wednesday on alleged counterfeit DVD operations in Montreal netted thousands of DVDs and more than 200 DVD burners, the RCMP said. The raids were reportedly the culmination of an operation dubbed Operation Copyright aimed at bootleggers who reportedly sold the disks through a number of websites. Earlier this year, the Motion Picture Association of America claimed that Canada was the source of a quarter of all camcorded DVDs distributed worldwide.

Bookers for late-night talk shows have been struggling to find A-list personalities willing to cross picket lines to appear on the shows when they return on January 2, the New York Times reported today (Thursday). An unnamed publicist told the newspaper that her agency is taking a wait-and-see approach in order to judge reaction to actors who do cross picket lines. Asked whether the shows had been able to book any guests, producers at each of the late-night shows declined to comment, the Times said. However, Donald Trump, who is booked on Late Show With David Letterman on January 2, personally phoned media outlets Wednesday to inform them that he will appear on the program to promote his The Celebrity Apprentice, which is due to debut on January 10. There was still no word on when Comedy Central's The Daily Show With Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report might return. "It's a little bit of a different challenge for them," a source told today's (Thursday) New York Post."Even without writers, the other shows can fall back on booking additional guests or adding musical performers" to replace monologues and sketches that require writing talent. Both Comedy Central shows are formulated around topical satire.

The Writers Guild of America is scheduled to meet with representatives of David Letterman's Worldwide Pants company on Friday in hopes of reaching an agreement that would enable Letterman to return to the air with his writing staff on January 2. The agreement would also affect Craig Ferguson's late-night show, which is also produced by Letterman's company. Unlike the Tonight show, which is produced by NBC, the two Letterman shows are independently produced. The problem that the negotiators face, however, is that CBS distributes the Letterman shows, and the sticking points in the current dispute involve distribution, not production, issues -- primarily how much writers should be paid in residuals when programs are distributed on the Internet. Presumably a most-favored-nation clause could be written into the deal stipulating that the writers would receive the same amount that other writers do when the networks and the WGA finally reach an agreement.

CBS said Wednesday that the 34th annual People's Choice Awards, scheduled for to be broadcast from the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles on Jan. 8, will be revamped due to the writers' strike. After numerous reports appeared on various websites saying that the show had been canceled, the network issued a statement saying, "The show will go on. ... The People's Choice tradition on CBS will continue and we plan to introduce some new ideas in the process." Several TV journalists speculated that the show would be taped without a red carpet, without writers, without stars, and without a studio audience (and presumably not much of one at home, either).

A federal jury on Wednesday rejected former prosecutor Robert Baer's claim that he helped David Chase develop The Sopranos. While the jury agreed that Baer had indeed discussed mob activities in New Jersey with Chase and had introduced him to several people who provided useful information for the show, it found that Baer had not proved that he had a reasonable expectation to be compensated for those services. After the ruling, Chase told reporters that he had always regarded the lawsuit as a nuisance "This has been like having a fly buzzing in your bathroom for seven years and now it has been swatted," Chase said. Baer, however, continued to maintain, "I helped him to create it. I was feeding him information, bringing him to people."

Jack Linkletter, a frequent host of game and variety shows in the '60s and '70s, died Tuesday of lymphoma at age 70. He was the son of Art Linkletter, 95, who hosted several popular afternoon shows in the early days of television and is probably best known for his Kids Say the Darndest Things series. "He always did ad-lib shows, just like me," the senior Linkletter told today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times. "Sons of famous people have a tough time, because they're expected to be as good as their dad right away." However, Jack Linkletter wound up hosting seven different TV series as well as such special events as the Miss Universe pageant and the World's Fair.

Stone Phillips, who was let go as co-host of Dateline NBC last May as part of an overall cutback at NBC News, will return to the program on Dec. 28 for a report on how easily documents allowing people to travel to the U.S. can be obtained. Phillips reportedly had been working on the investigation at the time he was fired.