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NBC offers trivia game to Facebook users
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NBC News has made a big pitch to the Facebook generation, offering users of the social-networking site the chance to test their knowledge using video from the network's vast archives.
The "What's Your ICue?" application pits Facebook members one on one or in teams, answering trivia questions on current events, history, arts and technology. All of the video comes from NBC News archives, which already populate the network's educational site iCue.com.
NBC News CFO Adam Jones said Thursday that the original iCue is based on social networking, educating and gaming, so it was natural to find a way to extend the brand on other platforms. The team hit upon a Facebook application after seeing how the social-networking site has grown.
"There's no video trivia application on Facebook as it exists, so we felt there was an opportunity to jump in," Jones said. The idea came up earlier in the year but was developed in about 12 weeks beginning in August.
"All of the work was done in house at a very modest cost," Jones said. The first two sponsors are Lexus and the University of Phoenix, which have a strong branding presence throughout the application.
Beyond the initial categories of questions, Jones said there are plenty more where they came from. NBC News' iCue has about 12,000 videos to draw upon, and more topics and themes are in the works.
Paul J. Gough
THR
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Mila Kunis booked for 'Eli' role
Mila Kunis has joined the cast of "The Book of Eli," the Denzel Washington action thriller from Warner Bros. and Alcon Entertainment. Albert and Allen Hughes are directing.
The script, by Gary Whitta and a rewrite by Anthony Peckham, centers on a lone hero named Eli (Washington) who must fight his way across the wasteland of a near-future America to protect a sacred book that might hold the key to saving the future of humanity.
Kunis plays a woman named Solara, at first enlisted to betray Eli, she ultimately joins him in his quest.
Alcon is financing and co-producing with Silver Pictures. Warners will distribute domestically while Summit Entertainment will handle international sales.
Principal photography begins in February in New Mexico.
Kunis, repped by CAA and Curtis Talent Management, most recently starred opposite Mark Wahlberg in "Max Payne," and in the comedy "Forgetting Sarah Marshall."
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Borys Kit
Hollywood Reporter
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Panel Tackles Tour Sponsorship Strategies
Corporate sponsorships continue to play an important role in the touring industry as various companies partner with artists to reach potential consumers. In 2008, approximately $1.04 billion will be spent on live music sponsorship, according to IEG Sponsorship Report senior editor Bill Chipps, who moderated the "We Can Work It Out" panel at the Billboard Touring Conference at the Roosevelt Hotel in New York.
Although many recent tour sponsorships have proven to be effective, most companies aren't "sitting around their office waiting to sponsor the next act," Live Nation Alliances president Russell Wallach said. "So we spend a lot of time with agents and managers trying to help them understand what [companies] are looking for."
Wallach noted that corporate sponsors are more likely to partner with artists that are willing to participate in hands-on marketing of a product, which may include meet-and-greets at concerts, and participating in viral marketing campaigns and webisodes. "It's not putting up an advertisement on the concourse" of a venue, he said.
As an example of partnering brands with artists, GMR Entertainment managing director of global operations Bobby Oppenheim pointed to a recent partnership between rapper Ludacris and men's body spray brand Axe. Since Ludacris didn't want to participate in hands-on marketing for Axe, the rapper instead accepted a tour bus from the company, who branded the inside of the bus with Axe logos. The bus served as the primary spot where Ludacris did most of his press interviews and meet-and-greets, which automatically exposed fans to the brand, Oppenheim said.
Mitchell Peters
Billboard |
Dubai parties despite economic gloom While the rest of the world was tightening its belt, Dubai threw a $20 million party Thursday complete with Hollywood celebrities likeRobert DeNiro and a fireworks show that organizers said was visible from outer space.
The party, which was headlined by Australian pop star Kylie Minogue in her Middle East debut, was to celebrate a new $1.5 billion marine-themed resort built off the Gulf coast on an artificial island in the shape of a palm tree.
Minogue reportedly earned $4 million for her performance in front of stars like Charlize Theron and Lindsay Lohan. Does this all seem a bit much at a time when much of the world is reeling from the global financial crisis?
Not really, according to Sol Kerzner, the chairman of Kerzner International, which owns the Atlantis hotel. "When you consider $20 million, it's a lot of money (until) you consider it up against establishing a $1.5 billion resort," Kerzner told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Kerzner International split the $20 million bill with state-owned Nakheel, which built Palm island where Atlantis is located. Kerzner acknowledged that the party was planned long before the global economy slipped into a tailspin.
"If I had it all over again and I understood that the timing was what it was, one might modify a couple of the things ... but not significantly," said Kerzner, who announced sweeping layoffs last week at the original Atlantis in the Bahamas.
Kerzner said new projects are being put on hold at his company as costs are being scaled back — a response to cash-strapped tourists rethinking their holiday plans.
Just days before Thursday's party, Nakheel announced it was re-examining staffing needs and the pace of construction of its other man-made islands in light of the worldwide economic slowdown.
The Atlantis resort opened for tourists in September. The hotel's top floor aims squarely at the ultra-wealthy. A three-bedroom, three-bathroom suite complete with a gold-leaf, 18-seat dining table is on offer for $25,000 a night.
The rest of the 113-acre resort is dedicated to family entertainment with a giant, open-air tank with 65,000 fish, stingrays and other sea creatures, including a rare whale-shark captured by the hotel in the Gulf and considered a hostage by environmental activists.
There's also a dolphinarium with more than two dozen bottlenose dolphins flown in from the Solomon Islands last year amid protests from animal rights organizations.
Thursday's lavish party is only one of Dubai's many attempts to remain in the spotlight — part of the city-state's meteoric rise from little more than a patch of sand to the business and entertainment capital of the Middle East in about a decade. Britain's most famous cruise ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, will sailing in next week and will be converted into a floating hotel off Palm island.
BARBARA SURK
Associated Press
Teen lives 4 months with no heart, leaves hospital D'Zhana Simmons says she felt like a "fake person" for 118 days when she had no heart beating in her chest. "But I know that I really was here," the 14-year-old said, "and I did live without a heart."
As she was being released from a Miami hospital, the shy teen seemed in awe of what she's endured. Since July, she's had two heart transplants and survived with artificial heart pumps — but no heart — for four months between the transplants.
Last spring D'Zhana and her parents learned she had an enlarged heart that was too weak to sufficiently pump blood. They traveled from their home in Clinton, S.C. to Holtz Children's Hospital in Miami for a heart transplant.
But her new heart didn't work properly and could have ruptured so surgeons removed it two days later. And they did something unusual, especially for a young patient: They replaced the heart with a pair of artificial pumping devices that kept blood flowing through her body until she could have a second transplant.
Dr. Peter Wearden, a cardiothoracic surgeon at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh who works with the kind of pumps used in this case, said what the Miami medical team managed to do "is a big deal." "For (more than) 100 days, there was no heart in this girl's body? That is pretty amazing," Wearden said.
The pumps, ventricular assist devices, are typically used with a heart still in place to help the chambers circulate blood. With D'Zhana's heart removed, doctors at Holtz Children's Hospital crafted substitute heart chambers using a fabric and connected these to the two pumps.
Although artificial hearts have been approved for adults, none has been federally approved for use in children. In general, there are fewer options for pediatric patients. That's because it's rarer for them to have these life-threatening conditions, so companies don't invest as much into technology that could help them, said Dr. Marco Ricci, director of pediatric cardiac surgery at the University of Miami.
He said this case demonstrates that doctors now have one more option. "In the past, this situation could have been lethal," Ricci said. And it nearly was. During the almost four months between her two transplants, D'Zhana wasn't able to breathe on her own half the time. She also had kidney andliver failure and gastrointestinal bleeding.
Taking a short stroll — when she felt up for it — required the help of four people, at least one of whom would steer the photocopier-sized machine that was the external part of the pumping devices.
When D'Zhana was stable enough for another operation, doctors did the second transplant on Oct. 29. "I truly believe it's a miracle," said her mother, Twolla Anderson. D'Zhana said now she's grateful for small things: She'll see her five siblings soon, and she can spend time outdoors. "I'm glad I can walk without the machine," she said, her turquoise princess top covering most of the scars on her chest. After thanking the surgeons for helping her, D'Zhana began weeping.
Doctors say she'll be able to do most things that teens do, like attending school and going out with friends. She will be on lifelong medication to keep her body from rejecting the donated heart, and there's a 50-50 chance she'll need another transplant before she turns 30.
For now, though, D'Zhana is looking forward to celebrating another milestone. On Nov 22, she turns 15 and plans to spend the day riding in a boat off Miami's coast.
RASHA MADKOUR
Associated Press
Web ad sales rise slightly from prior quarter
Despite the bad economy, U.S. Internet advertising revenue rose in the third quarter, according to an analysis released.
The report from the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP said that online advertising revenue totaled almost $5.9 billion in the third quarter, up 11 percent from the same period last year. It marked a 2 percent rise from the second quarter.
Companies that depend on Internet advertising, including Google Inc., have seen their shares plummet recently on fears that the economy will inhibit growth in what remains a relatively small market. About 10 percent of all money spent on advertising in 2008 is going toward online ads, according to U.K.-based advertising company ZenithOptimedia.
Because of the economic climate, David Silverman, a partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said the third-quarter growth is "nice to see." "I think given the economic environment, seeing any increase in any economic activity — let alone advertising — would be a bit of surprise, but speaks maybe to the strength of interactive advertising," he said.
Silverman thinks advertisers will keep spending on online ads, especially in an economic downturn, because they are often paying for ads based on performance — such as when a consumer clicks on an ad to visit an e-commerce site.
"They actually see they're getting a result for their dollars spent," he said. For the first nine months of the year, online advertising revenue totaled $17.3 billion. This compares with $15.2 billion in the same period last year.
AP
Hollywood moguls see cinema's future in 3D
Three-dimensional films, once blamed for making audiences nauseous, are making a comeback and are likely to become the future of cinema thanks to digital technology, Hollywood studio moguls say.
The latest advances have enabled studios to use special effects and state-of-the-art projectors to create 3D films far superior to their predecessors, they said at the 3DX Festival in Singapore this week.
"In the history of film, there have been two great revolutionary events -- the transition from silent movies to synchronised sound that happened in the early 1920s, and the arrival of colour in the 1930s," said Jeffrey Katzenberg, chief executive of DreamWorks Animation, which created the "Shrek" series.
"Now more than seven decades later, the movie industry is entering the third period of revolutionary change with the arrival of 3D," he said in an address to the festival. Speaking to reporters later, Katzenberg said innovation and technology "have made this the magic moment" for 3D films to make a return.
3D technology enables the viewer to feel part of the movie. Objects, for example, can seem to fly directly toward them.
Film studios are banking on the new, dramatic visual experience to lure moviegoers back to cinemas, which have seen audience numbers fall with the rise of DVDs and other home entertainment formats.
While patrons still need to wear dark glasses to watch 3D films, these now come with advanced lenses and stylish designs. Digital technology enables clear images and pristine bright colours, giving filmgoers a 3D experience without the headaches or nausea.
Katzenberg said 3D films being made now were a far cry from those in his father's era, which were viewed through "those kind of goofy red and blue cardboard" eyeglasses.
"Let's be honest, the 3D was pretty terrible. The technology was primitive, the film was blurry, people got headaches and actually some of them got nauseous," he said. "It really wasn't much more than a cheap exploitation gimmick."
Katzenberg showed two clips of DreamWorks' forthcoming 3D animated film "Monsters vs Aliens," which got rave reviews from an audience of directors and film-makers at the festival. Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group, said his company is making "tremendous investments" in 3D films.
It has already released four of them: "Chicken Little," "Meet the Robinsons," "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and the "Hannah Montana" concert film. A fifth, "Bolt," is to hit cinemas soon. Walt Disney says it has committed to make 17 movies in the next three years, 11 of them animated 3D films and six with live-action 3D.
Greg Foster, president of another studio giant, IMAX, said his firm also sees 3D as the future. "3D for us internationally continues to be a very growing market," he said.
AFP
Taco Bell Lawyers Get Tough With 50 Cent Rapper 50 Cent is facing a challenge to his street cred - from Taco Bell. Lawyers for the fast-food chain are calling his federal lawsuit, filed in Manhattan, another attempt to "burnish his gangsta rapper persona by distorting beyond all recognition a bona fide, good faith offer."
The squabble is over a fake letter sent out by Taco Bell Corp. asking 50 Cent to change his name for one day to 79 Cent, 89 Cent or 99 Cent to help publicize its value menu.
In return, the company offered to donate $10,000 to the charity of his choice. The rapper, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, has sued for trademark infringement.
Jackson's attorney, Peter Raymond, says he wonders why Taco Bell would use his client's name in an ad campaign.
AP
Mexican Tycoon Sets Eyes On Circuit City Mexican retail and media tycoon Ricardo Salinas Pliego owns 28 percent of Circuit City and could buy more of the troubled U.S. electronics chain, a Salinas spokesman said.
"Up to date, Mr. Salinas has purchased just under 28 percent (of Circuit City)," Luis Nino de Rivera, a spokesman for Salinas' business group, told Reuters. Asked whether Salinas could buy more Circuit City stock he said: "It is possible, of course."
Nino de Rivera said the acquisition was a personal investment by Salinas and the tycoon, who owns the TV Azteca broadcaster and retailer Elektra, was evaluating what to do with the Circuit City stake.
Circuit City filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, falling victim to tighter credit terms from vendors and decreased consumer spending. It hopes to emerge from bankruptcy in the first half of 2009.
Salinas acquired the stock in the open market before and after Circuit City went bankrupt and he has had no direct talks with the U.S. chain's management, Nino de Rivera said.
Reuters
Barker-AM Crash Recordings Released More details on the causes of the fatal Learjet crash that left Travis Barker and DJ AM badly burned but steadily recovering have been revealed, after cockpit recordings were released by the Federal Aviation Administration.
"Roll the equipment; we're going off the end," copilot James Bland is heard telling air traffic control officials. (The recordings can be heard here and here.)
Bland's warning was the last communication on the Sept. 19 recording before the private plane shot off the Columbia, S.C., runway and came to a fiery end.
Later in the recording, a controller can be heard telling the pilot of an incoming plane, "We've had an emergency," and instructing the aviator to "fly straight ahead" and land at another airport.
"We see it down there and it doesn't look good," a redirected pilot tells the controllers.
At another point, a controller is heard saying that he has attempted to contact the Learjet's pilots, but that they failed to give their "idents" or otherwise respond.
"He went right off the end," the controller tells emergency responders. "You can see the smoke."
The recording backs earlier findings by the National Transportation Safety Board that the flight crew had informed airport controllers that they were heading off the runway.
Early reports also indicated that the pilot and copilot, both among the four dead in the accident, believed they may have blown a tire prior to attempting takeoff, but no sounds on the recordings—at least those released this week—have yet borne that out. However, remnants of shredded tires were found in the aftermath of the crash. The NTSB is expected to release two more reports on the incident next year.
Gina Serpe
E !
DreamWorks sets up 'Old Boy' club Nothing brings people together like $584 million in worldwide revenue. In a potential high-profile star-writer reunion, "I Am Legend" co-scribe Mark Protosevich is in early talks to pen the remake of "Old Boy" that boxoffice king and "Legend" star Will Smith is developing with director Steven Spielberg.
DreamWorks secured the remake rights from Mandate Pictures, which also is staying involved in the project. Although the studio was meeting with several high-profile writers to do the adaptation, Smith invited Protosevich to meet with Spielberg on the project. DreamWorks declined comment. The rights deal with Mandate is not complete.
Mandate acquired the 2003 Korean film co-written and directed by Park Chan-wook from Universal, which picked up the rights in 2004 with Vertigo Entertainment ("The Eye," "The Grudge"). The original film, which like much edgy Asian cinema includes some disturbing material, detailed a man's mysterious kidnapping, 15-year imprisonment and feverish quest for revenge upon being released.
A slew of Asian remakes have found their way into American theaters and onto development slates in the past few years. Screenwriter William Monahan won the best adapted screenplay Oscar in 2007 for translating the Hong Kong thriller "Infernal Affairs" into the 2006 best picture winner "The Departed," at Warner Bros. And Brad Ingelsby is adapting the 2000 Korean gangster movie "Die Bad," which "Quantum of Solace" director Marc Forster is negotiating to helm for Universal.
DreamWorks has engaged in a flurry of activity since its departure from Paramount two months ago. At that time, Spielberg and co-chairman and CEO Stacey Snider took 17 projects with them that DreamWorks had developed at Paramount, which retains an option to co-finance and co-distribute any resulting production.
"Old Boy" would be DreamWorks' first acquisition since the move, though Mandate might retain some ownership role in the film. Spielberg has been working on directing the first of a planned series of "Tintin" films with fellow producer Peter Jackson.
The CAA-repped Protosevich also has written "Poseidon" and "The Cell," and he worked on "Thor" for Marvel Studios.
Jay Fernandez
Hollywood Reporter
Will Satellite Radio Fall To Earth? Barely three months after the long-delayed merger of satellite radio companies Sirius and XM, the newly combined Sirius XM Radio is struggling to stay afloat.
The company has just another three months to start paying down more than $1 billion in debt that's maturing in 2009 at a time when credit markets are freezing up. It remains heavily dependent on automobile sales for new subscriber additions just as U.S. car sales are tanking. And its stock price is in a yearlong free-fall that has sparked an investor lawsuit against it.
For the music industry, the fate of Sirius XM looms larger than before. Under a U.S. Copyright Royalty Board decision made last December, satellite radio broadcasters like Sirius XM pay performance royalties for sound recordings based on a percentage of adjusted gross revenue. That means the better Sirius XM does, the more money labels...
Antony Bruno
Billboard
Perfume Maker Sues Prince A perfume company that went into business with musician Prince to make a "3121" fragrance -- named after his 2006 album -- is suing Prince for $100,000 for failing to help promote the perfume.
According to the lawsuit, filed in New York State Supreme Court, Prince and his music publisher Universal Music Publishing Group reached a licensing agreement with perfume company Revelations in December 2006 to use Prince's name and likeness and the name "3121" to market two fragrances.
The first fragrance was released in 2007 and a second is due out in 2009, the lawsuit said.
According to the agreement, Universal would earn 50% of the net profits from the sale of the fragrances. In exchange the label would arrange the cooperation of Prince for marketing opportunities, the lawsuit said.
"Since July 2007, despite repeated attempts by Revelations there have been virtually no communications from anyone who could commit to or coordinate any promotional efforts by Prince," the breach of contract lawsuit said. Representatives for Prince were not immediately available for comment.
"Although we have not seen the complaint, we are familiar with the claims being asserted by Revelations, and they are completely without merit," Universal Music Publishing Group, which was also named in the lawsuit, said in a statement.
Billboard
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