Hollywood Studios

China has become such an important market for U.S. entertainment companies that one studio has taken the extraordinary step of digitally altering a film to excise bad guys from the Communist nation lest the leadership in Beijing be offended. When MGM decided a few years ago to remake "Red Dawn," a 1984 Cold War drama about a bunch of American farm kids repelling a Soviet invasion, the studio needed new villains, since the U.S.S.R. had collapsed in 1991. The producers substituted Chinese aggressors for the Soviets and filmed the movie in Michigan in 2009.

As Hollywood's major movie studios try to trim costs every way they can - including layoffs, mergers and slashed expense accounts and producer deals - there's one budget item that heads ever upward: the movies themselves. This year's summer movie season - which kicks off May 4 with the superhero team-up film"The Avengers"and continues with 16 more "event" films through August - is the industry's most expensive ever. Five of the top titles cost more than $200 million each, a once-unthinkable ceiling that's being broken with increasing regularity.

Setting up opposing camps among the Hollywood studios over $1-per-night kiosk rentals, Paramount Pictures has agreed to provide its movies to Redbox on the same day they go on sale. The move comes soon after Warner Bros., Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox all signed deals with Redbox to block rentals of DVDs until 28 days after they are released. The studios have argued that discount kiosk rentals hamper DVD sales and cut into home video revenue. However, Viacom Inc.'s Paramount views things differently.

BEIJING — News of a U.S. government inquiry into Hollywood studios' business practices in China — now their largest foreign market — caught some Beijing International Film Festival guests by surprise Wednesday. But it didn't surprise others familiar with the Asian nation's long-standing gift-giving culture. No studio representative at a cocktail reception hosted by the Motion Picture Assn. of America here would comment on reports that the Securities and Exchange Commission has asked at least four Hollywood studios about whether they used inappropriate influence on Chinese officials to smooth access to the nation's booming movie market.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sent letters to at least four major Hollywood studios, including Walt Disney Studios and DreamWorks Animation, over dealings in China, a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly confirmed Tuesday. The letters center on the studios' dealings with China Film Group, a state-run company whose responsibilities include determining which foreign movies get access to a limited number of slots each year for revenue-sharing deals in the red-hot Chinese movie market, which is now the second-largest in the world behind the United States.

After less than three weeks of talks, the Writers Guild of America and Hollywood's major studios have reached an agreement on a new three-year contract. The tentative agreement includes a 20% increase in pay-TV residuals, a 2% increase in annual wage rates and an increase in employer pension contributions to 7.5% from 6%, according a letter the WGA sent to its 12,000 members Sunday night. Negotiations to replace the current contract, which expires May 1, began March 3. The swift agreement was widely anticipated and stood in sharp contrast to the bitter standoff that occurred in late 2007, after negotiations with the studios broke down and writers staged a 100-day strike that shut down television production and roiled Hollywood.

About 40 representatives from Hollywood studios and television networks met with Gov. Gray Davis, the mayor and police chief of Los Angeles and other officials Monday to discuss safety precautions since the terrorist attacks. During a two-hour meeting at the Beverly Hilton, Mayor James K. Hahn and Police Chief Bernard C. Parks went over security measures the city has taken. Studio heads, network executives and security officials asked questions about how best to protect their studios.

Studios and the union representing Hollywood's blue-collar workers reached an agreement late Friday on a contract calling for higher pay and increased health and pension benefits. The new three-year contract, replacing one expiring July 31, affects 30,000 film and TV workers belonging to 18 locals of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. The pact will be sent to members in about one month for ratification.

For the last five years, Ryan Kavanaugh has been one of Hollywood's go-to people to share the risk on movies. The chief executive of Relativity Media has invested in 138 films, most of them at Sony Pictures and Universal Pictures, where his company has long-term agreements to co-fund 75% of both studios' film slates. Co-financing movies can be an easy way to lose money ? a large reason the flood of private equity funds that flowed into Hollywood several years ago dried up. And Relativity has seen the downside in the last couple of years through its association with a string of money losers from Universal, including "Land of the Lost" and " The Wolfman.

The Studio/Preservation Task Force announced a set of recommendations Thursday to preserve historically significant Hollywood studios while enabling movie companies to keep the cameras rolling. "The studios will be able to develop and grow, and at the same time historically and architecturally significant buildings will be preserved," Councilman Michael Woo, whose 13th District includes Hollywood, said at a press conference at Paramount Pictures.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has sent letters to at least four major Hollywood studios, including Walt Disney Studios and DreamWorks Animation, over dealings in China, a person familiar with the matter but not authorized to speak publicly confirmed Tuesday. The letters center on the studios' dealings with China Film Group, a state-run company whose responsibilities include determining which foreign movies get access to a limited number of slots each year for revenue-sharing deals in the red-hot Chinese movie market, which is now the second-largest in the world behind the United States.

Not a happy ending Re "Storied studio buildings doomed," March 26 Hollywood history is vital to preserve, if for no other reason than it attracts much-needed tourism dollars to this city and makes this place special, mythic and glamorous to the world. If officials and activists don't care enough to try to save at least a remnant of this historic movie lot - which preserves the look of old Hollywood studios in the early (and glory) days and contains so many great stories connected to each room there - then at the very least they should hire a good photographer to document every room and angle before it is torn down like all the other historic places here we have lost forever.

Filmmakers and history buffs protesting the planned demolition of part of a West Hollywood movie studio once owned by Mary Pickford say they may turn to next door Los Angeles for help in preserving the place. That strategy was revealed during a noisy demonstration Sunday outside The Lot studio at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Formosa Avenue by opponents of the proposed razing of production buildings built in the 1920s and '30s. Passing motorists honked their horns in support of about 50 pickets carrying signs such as "Tell WeHo No" and "Save the Last Silent Era Film Studio.

Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks worked there. So did Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, Clark Gable, Marlon Brando and practically everyone else. Soon, though, wrecking crews will be at work at the storied West Hollywood movie lot at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Formosa Avenue. Once known as the Warner Hollywood Studio, it's now called "The Lot. " Its new owner, CIM Group, intends to raze its aging wooden office buildings and sound-dubbing stages and replace them with glass-and-steel structures.

"The Hunger Games" is big enough of a draw this weekend that movie theaters don't have to do much to sell tickets — in the opening hours, hundreds of thousands of fans dropped nearly $20 million for admission. But those who showed up at the Megaplex Theatre in Sandy, Utah, for the first screenings were able to participate in their own (nonlethal) version of the cinematic teen death match, donning sumo wrestling suits, picking up laser guns and jousting with inflatable swords. Before battling strangers and friends, patrons could visit Cinna's Salon and have their eyes decorated with glitter — just like the film's heroine, Katniss, gets dolled up by a stylist named Cinna before she's thrown into the arena.

Sony Corp. is tapping its Hollywood studio chief, Michael Lynton, as its top entertainment executive in the U.S., the latest development in a well-orchestrated succession plan atop the Japanese electronics and media giant. Lynton will soon be named chief executive of Sony Corp. of America, a role that adds oversight of the company's music sales and publishing businesses to his purview, according to people briefed on the matter but not authorized to speak publicly. He will continue to run movie and television studio Sony Pictures Entertainment in Culver City, although Sony's American unit is headquartered in New York.

Reversing a long-standing practice, the trade and lobbying arm of the Hollywood studios won't disclose the average costs of making and marketing movies. For years, the Motion Picture Assn. of America has annually released a statistical analysis showing average movie costs of its six members, made up of the major studios and their specialty film labels.

Despite the controversy surrounding Ice-T's song "Cop Killer," the rapper hasn't been too busy to pursue his acting career. Between press conferences, tour planning and concerts, the "Ice," as his closest associates call him, is making the rounds of Hollywood pitching movies with himself as the star--not the sidekick or supporting actor as he was in "New Jack City" and the upcoming "Trespass."

SERIES Whitney: Whitney and Lily (Whitney Cummings, Zoe Lister Jones) plan Lily's wedding in this new episode (8 p.m. NBC). American Idol: Hopefuls perform for the judges in Savannah, Ga., in the season premiere (8 p.m. Fox). Criminal Minds: Rossi (Joe Mantegna) and his colleagues suspect that the Zodiac Killer might have resurfaced in San Francisco when some new bodies turn up with signs of the notorious serial murderer's work, while Reid and Prentiss (Matthew Gray Gubler, Paget Brewster)

DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind "Shrek," "Kung Fu Panda" and this week's "Puss in Boots," is taking its first step to possibly go it alone. The Glendale-based studio has tapped respected distribution veteran Chuck Viane to advise the company on a range of distribution options, including the viability of releasing its own movies or finding a new studio to do the job. "In the next six to nine months we have a very important decision to make in terms of our future distribution," DreamWorks Animation Chief Executive Jeffrey Katzenberg said.