Entertainment Industry

From Michael Moore's politics to on-screen sex and violence, the movie business is constantly being assailed for not sharing the country's values. Rarely has the morality argument been as rancorous as with the Roman Polanski case. Hollywood is rallying behind the fugitive filmmaker. Top filmmakers are signing a pro-Polanski petition, Whoopi Goldberg says the director didn't really commit rape, and Debra Winger complains "the whole art world suffers" in such arrests. The rest of the nation seems to hold a dramatically different perspective on Polanski's weekend capture.

Location filming for movies and TV commercials on the streets of Los Angeles, once as prevalent as the corner taco truck, is rapidly fading to black. Double whammies of the recession and out-of-state economic incentives for producers have caused on-location film shoots in the Los Angeles area to fall to their lowest levels on record.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a former movie actor, has been trying for years to get tax credits to keep California's signature industry at home. He got his wish early Thursday when the Legislature approved tax credits for film and television productions as part of an economic stimulus provision of the new state budget. The credits -- capped at $500 million over five years -- are modest compared with those offered by other states.

Some of the actors on NBC's drama "Heroes" are among those in Hollywood who may have the superpowers to help Twitter break into prime time. Greg Grunberg, who plays a Los Angeles cop with the ability to hear people's thoughts, pulls out his iPhone nearly everywhere, including between takes on the studio lot, to tap out the short Twitter messages known as tweets. He broadcasts them to the more than 20,000 friends and fans following him.

Over a May 15 lunch at the Beverly Wilshire hotel, William Morris Agency Chairman Jim Wiatt received sobering advice from his close friends, entertainment attorney Skip Brittenham and former Viacom Inc. executive Tom Freston. The more than century-old talent agency was on the cusp of merging with hotshot rival Endeavor, and it was becoming clear that there would be no place at the table for Wiatt.

The Hollywood moguls behind such films as "The Dark Knight," "Watchmen" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" are looking for their next blockbuster in a new realm: video games. An increasing number of big shots from the movie business are seeing new opportunities in the $50-billion global interactive entertainment industry.

The recession is hammering the video game industry. Marking the sector's fourth consecutive monthly decline, sales of video games and consoles in the U.S. fell 31% last month to $1.2 billion, down from $1.7 billion in June 2008, according to a report released Thursday from market research firm NPD Group Inc. It was the largest monthly decline since September 2000, when industry sales slumped 41%, said NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

One of Hollywood's largest prop shops is closing, the latest sign that the falloff in local film and TV production is taking its toll on small businesses that serve the entertainment industry. 20th Century Props of North Hollywood said Thursday that it would shut its doors next month because of mounting business losses. The prop shop, which supplied the chandeliers in the blockbuster "Titanic" and futuristic furniture in "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen," has been a fixture for two decades.

Technicolor has been a fixture since the early days of Hollywood. The company brought color to the big screen in such classics as "Gone With the Wind" and "The Wizard of Oz." When its pioneering "three-strip" color process fell out of favor, Technicolor reinvented itself as a successful film processor. The company later became a leading duplicator of VHS tapes and DVDs. Now, after 94 years of serving Hollywood, Technicolor Inc. has planted itself in the heart of Tinseltown, leaving its nondescript headquarters in an industrial neighborhood near Burbank Airport.

Warner Bros., following a trend that is now all too familiar among American companies, is preparing to outsource jobs to India and Poland as part of a studio-wide cost-cutting move. The Time Warner Inc.-owned studio will join other media companies, including NBC/Universal and Viacom Inc., that have initiated cutbacks and layoffs in the face of weakening entertainment industry revenue and the deepening recession.