Thursday, 8 January 1998

Who's the hottest new director in Hollywood? It could well be JayRoach, who debuted with Austin Powers, and who has now been givenDisney's burgeoning non-animated summer "event film" slot for the year2000 with a long-anticipated adaptation of Douglas Adams' TheHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Roach will shoot the film early nextyear after he finishes Disney's David E. Kelley-written hockey movieand presumably, Austin Powers II in the fall. For Disney, theHitchhiker greenlight suggests that Disney will permanently move out ofthe pre-Memorial Day weekend slot that had produced $100 million hitsthe last two summers with The Rock and Con Air, and into the July 4thweekend slot which has the potential for even bigger revenues. Thisyear, Armageddon takes the slot. Disney may back off the slot for ayear though with Sony's Men In Black 2 and WB's Superman Lives bothlikely to be gunning for the "Second Massive Summer Hit" position afterthe new Star Wars in 1999.

From the "So Few Oscars, So Many Movies" file: The Academy reports that275 films qualified for Academy consideration this year, the highest number in 25 years. Have you seen them all? Ballots go out next weekendand nominations will be announced on February 10. The Awards are onMarch 23. Let the partying begin!

Castle Rock, the once white-hot indie, has suffered since beingpurchased by Turner (Rough Cut's parent company, and then later being folded into the massiveTime-Warner family. Since the success of The Shawshank Redemption, thestudio has released 13 financial misses and only one moderate hit -- theSundance pick-up, The Spitfire Grill. The missed list includes suchdoozies as Striptease, Dracula: Dead and Loving It and Alaska, the ads for whichmade everyone think it was an IMAX travelogue. And company co-founderRob Reiner hasn't helped, contributing only the well-intentioned misses,The American President and Ghosts of Mississippi. But now, Warner Bros.and Polygram will split the costs for Castle Rock to make five movies ayear for the next three years. First up, Tom Hanks does Stephen King in TheGreen Mile, a Hugh Grant thriller called Mickey Blue Eyes, the new WhitStillman comedy of manners, The Last Days of Disco and "Seinfeld"co-creator Larry David's feature debut, Sour Grapes.

You know you can e-mail me, right? How else do I know if you're reading? (Well, actually, I have other ways to find that out. I also know where you live.)