NEWSMAKERS | Directors slam $30 early release offer

NEWSMAKERS

Directors slam $30 early release offer

LOS ANGELES

Big-name Hollywood action-flick directors including James Cameron and Michael Bay have come out guns-ablazing against a plan by studios to allow people to rent new movies at home just two months after they debut in theaters, a move that cuts the wait in half for home film buffs.

The directors fear the option will hurt theater ticket sales and “could lead to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue,” they said in an open letter released Wednesday. “Some theaters will close.”

Starting today, subscribers of DirecTV’s satellite video service with a high-definition digital video recorder will be able to rent those movies 60 days after they debut in theaters for $30 and view them as many times as possible over a 48-hour period.

While that costs more than the $6 for a standard new rental or an $8 movie ticket, the offering could be attractive for families with small children or others who can’t make it out but still want to see the latest films.

The average film now takes 132 days to make it to the home market.

Injured ‘Spider-Man’ actor to rejoin show

NEW YORK

A lead producer of the Broadway musical “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” says an actor badly hurt when he tumbled from the stage in December is expected be back rehearsing Monday.

Michael Cohl said Wednesday that Christopher Tierney has been cleared to rejoin the show and hopes to be swinging over the audience again on opening night June 14.

Cohl says “His back’s fine. They’ve taken the bolts and the nuts and everything out.”

Tierney fell 35 feet into the orchestra pit in front of a shocked preview audience when his safety harness failed. The 31-year-old suffered a fractured skull, a fractured shoulder blade, four broken ribs and three broken vertebrae.

His father had said from the family’s Portsmouth, N.H., home he couldn’t wait to resume performing.

The show is on hiatus while a new creative team reworks it.

TV on the Radio’s Smith dies of cancer

NEW YORK

TV on the Radio bassist Gerard Smith died Wednesday of lung cancer, the band said in an announcement on its website. He was 36.

Smith’s death comes a little over a month after it was announced that he was battling the disease.

At the time, the band said Smith had health insurance, great medical care and had already seen “dramatic results.” However, Smith was unable to join the band on tour as they promoted their last album, “Nine Types of Light.”

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, the rest of his bandmates declined to talk about his illness out of respect for Smith.

Lindsay Lohan to play Junior Gotti’s wife

LOS ANGELES

Lindsay Lohan is joining the big screen Gotti family as the wife of John Gotti Jr. in a biopic of one of New York’s most infamous families.

She called her casting in “Gotti: Three Generations” a huge honor and told The Associated Press on Wednesday that the film is an opportunity to prove herself as an actress again.

“I’m really excited to be back on set and clear up all the misinterpretations about me and show this is what I love to do,” Lohan said.

John Travolta has been cast to play John Gotti Sr., the mob family’s patriarch who had a flair for style and a knack for avoiding convictions that earned him the name “Teflon Don.” Joe Pesci will play one of his deputies.

The younger Gotti has insisted he left the mob life in the 1990s, but has been unsuccessfully tried four times on racketeering charges.

He sold the rights to his life story to Fiore Films, which is developing the film focusing on Junior Gotti’s relationship with his father. It will be shot in New York and is set for a 2012 release.