Lions Gate Entertainment

Many Sundance Film Festival movies left this year's gathering without a distributor, but indie film pioneer Harvey Weinstein is alleging that one of the festival's most acclaimed movies -- "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire" -- actually was sold twice. In three lawsuits filed Wednesday in New York against the film's sales agent, Cinetic Media, Lionsgate Films and the film's producers, Weinstein Co.

Solid gains in its television production business, new revenue from its recently acquired TV Guide Network and lower movie marketing costs helped swing Lions Gate Entertainment to a profit in the company's fiscal second quarter. The Santa Monica film and TV studio, producer of the Tyler Perry movies and "Mad Men" TV series, reported net income of $31.7 million for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with a net loss of $51.8 million for the same period last year. Revenue increased 3% to $393.

Unless you're making "Transformers 3" or "Iron Man 2," every movie in Hollywood is a gamble in one way or another. But some gambles are more intriguing than others, like the one Lionsgate recently announced teaming Russell Crowe and Paul Haggis. The two Oscar winners have joined forces on "The Next Three Days," a Haggis-directed adaptation of the 2008 French film "Pour Elle" that begins production in Pittsburgh in late September.

In a surprise move, Lionsgate Entertainment Corp. agreed Monday to buy TV Guide Network and TVGuide.com for $255 million, torpedoing a deal announced just over two weeks ago with media entrepreneur Allen Shapiro and a private equity unit of JPMorgan Chase & Co. The purchase from Macrovision Solutions Corp. is expected to significantly expand Lionsgate's cable holdings and reach, giving the Santa Monica studio one of the most widely distributed cable networks in the United States.

Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., which recently said it would finance fewer movies to reduce production and marketing costs, has made a multiyear distribution deal to release as many as five films a year from Relativity Media. The arrangement will enable Lions Gate to fill out its annual release schedule without having to spend much more money.

Lionsgate said Wednesday that it would allow YouTube users to watch more of its movies and television shows, marking the top video site's most far-reaching deal with a mainstream Hollywood studio. The studio said YouTube users would be able to see long stretches of movies and TV shows, share them with other users and possibly edit the material or add their own content. Lionsgate will take a share of revenue from advertising viewed with the clips.

Sharply lower movie marketing costs and a surge in home video revenue helped swing Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. into the black, surprising analysts who expected the company behind the recent Jet Li and Jackie Chan movie "The Forbidden Kingdom" and the "Mad Men" TV series to post a loss. The Santa Monica movie and TV producer and distributor reported net income of $7.1 million, or 6 cents a share, for the fiscal first quarter that ended June 30, contrasted with a loss of $53.

The barbarian is at the Gate. Activist shareholder Carl Icahn has more than doubled his stake in Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., the independent film and TV studio behind the "Saw" horror movies and the cable shows "Weeds" and "Mad Men." Icahn said in a regulatory filing that he spent $86.3 million acquiring Lions Gate shares, boosting his 3-year-old stake in the firm to 9.2%.

As the economic downturn continues to sweep across Hollywood, Lions Gate Entertainment is eliminating 41 positions, slashing more than 7% of the 550-strong workforce at its Santa Monica-based independent movie and television studio. Seventeen employees were handed pink slips Friday morning across all divisions of the production and distribution company, including motion pictures, television, home entertainment, business affairs, finance and legal.

Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., the biggest independent film studio, reported a narrower fiscal second-quarter loss on gains from home entertainment and TV. The net loss for the period ended Sept. 30 narrowed to $48.1 million, or 41 cents a share, from $58 million, or 49 cents, a year earlier, the producer of the "Saw" movies said. Sales rose 8.2% to $380.7 million, missing the $382-million average of analysts' estimates compiled by Bloomberg.