Movie Studios

Hard-core Harry Potter fans who devoured the books, camped out for the movies and trekked through the theme park now have a new way to relive the boy wizard's adventures. PHOTOS: Making of Harry Potter studio tour Debuting Saturday, the Making of Harry Potter behind-the-scenes tour at theWarner Bros.studios in England will let wizards, mudbloods and muggles pull back the curtain on the movie-making secrets of the most successful film series of all time. Located 20 miles outside of London, the three-hour self-guided tour will take visitors past sets, props, costumes, models and special effects exhibits from the eight "Harry Potter" movies.

Yahoo Inc. is trying to stake a claim on the summer movie season with the launch of Movieland, an interactive online game promoting 35 upcoming big-budget films. Developed with participation from all the major movie studios, Movieland is laid out as a virtual board game, with each square representing a summer film. Users will be able to watch trailers, answer trivia questions, earn and share online badges, buy tickets and win prizes. Ken Fuchs, vice president and head of sports, entertainment and games at Yahoo Media Network, said Movieland "game-ifies moviegoing in an interesting way. It sucks people into an experience.

An ex-convict who was free on probation has been arrested after police discovered tens of thousands of dollars' worth of items they say he may have stolen from cars parked near movie studios. Police believe Sean C. Ray, 35, of Los Angeles rented a Mercedes-Benz convertible to avoid calling attention to himself while driving the streets and scouting cars to burglarize. Ray was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of receiving stolen property, LAPD Det. Jim Hays said at a news conference in front of the Hollywood Community Police Station.

For most of the year, theater owners are worried about the price of movie tickets, what kind of candy to stock the concession area with and keeping tweens out of R-rated movies. But for four days at Las Vegas' CinemaCon, the official convention of the National Assn. of Theatre Owners, exhibitors get to mingle with Hollywood stars and see previews of the industry's most anticipated films. On a trade show floor at Caesars Palace, they can check out vendors pushing new popcorn toppings, the latest 3-D glasses and new 3-D and sound technology.

Sony Corp., the company that came so triumphantly to Hollywood on Wednesday, shelling out $3.4 billion to buy Columbia Pictures, is now a $16-billion (sales) giant in two industries, entertainment and electronics. It's both the world's largest record producer and the world's leading manufacturer of compact disc players; it's a leading maker of television sets and now the owner of a movie studio and film library. And yet, scarcely six years ago, Sony was troubled.

A move to preserve some of the movie studio buildings dating to Hollywood's golden age has gained acceptance from studios and preservationists, City Councilman Michael Woo said Thursday. "I think that we can preserve Hollywood's precious past without sacrificing its future," Woo said at a press conference at the gates of Paramount Studios on Melrose Avenue.

Japan's Sony Corp. will invest about $55 million in a movie studio near Berlin, where developers are hoping to revive a film production operation that once rivaled Hollywood. Sony is investing in the Babelsburg studio, which was known in the 1920s and 1930s as Universal Film Co. and featured work from directors such as Fritz Lang and Josef von Sternberg and stars such as Marlene Dietrich.

Hollywood studios have approved a new technology and licensing arrangement that should remove a major obstacle consumers now face with burning movies they buy digitally over the Internet onto a DVD that will play everywhere. Sonic Solutions today is introducing the Qflix system for adding a standard digital lock to DVDs burned in a computer or a retail kiosk.

Britain's Pinewood Studios, famous for James Bond movies, is buying rival Shepperton Studios for $50.55 million, creating a company capable of taking on Hollywood, British newspapers reported today. The merger of Europe's two biggest studios will enable the joint company to attract major filmmakers with the biggest budgets. Already, two-thirds of the work undertaken at Pinewood and Shepperton comes from Hollywood.

Motion picture studios can now move into a business zone of Burbank's Rancho neighborhood, but only after obtaining a permit from the city. An amendment to city zoning laws to allow the change was approved by the City Council in a 4-1 vote Tuesday night, with Councilman Bob Bowne dissenting. The change alters the Rancho Master Plan, adopted by the city last year to preserve the mainly single-family residential area, which also includes some properties that permit horse ownership.

An ex-convict who was free on probation has been arrested after police discovered tens of thousands of dollars' worth of items they say he may have stolen from cars parked near movie studios. Police believe Sean C. Ray, 35, of Los Angeles rented a Mercedes-Benz convertible to avoid calling attention to himself while driving the streets and scouting cars to burglarize. Ray was arrested Tuesday on suspicion of receiving stolen property, LAPD Det. Jim Hays said at a news conference in front of the Hollywood Community Police Station.

Google Inc.'s YouTube has struck a movie-rental deal with a fifth major Hollywood studio, Paramount Pictures, adding 500 titles to its expanding online library. The addition of Paramount's films brings YouTube's rental library to nearly 9,000 titles, featuring such popular mainstream movies as Martin Scorsese's Academy Award-winning "Hugo" and director Michael Bay's action-packed "Transformers" and classics including "The Godfather. " The deal reflects YouTube's strategy to provide its millions of online viewers with a range of entertainment options, from its trademark user-created video and polished Web originals to professional long-form content.

Hard-core Harry Potter fans who devoured the books, camped out for the movies and trekked through the theme park now have a new way to relive the boy wizard's adventures. PHOTOS: Making of Harry Potter studio tour Debuting Saturday, the Making of Harry Potter behind-the-scenes tour at theWarner Bros.studios in England will let wizards, mudbloods and muggles pull back the curtain on the movie-making secrets of the most successful film series of all time. Located 20 miles outside of London, the three-hour self-guided tour will take visitors past sets, props, costumes, models and special effects exhibits from the eight "Harry Potter" movies.

Channing Tatum lowers his green eyes and stares at the camera. "Your friend wanted me to tell you that they think you're pretty awesome," the 31-year-old actor says. "And they love hanging with you. " Tatum's performance wasn't from a movie, but a "Sweet Nothings" video that marketers for his new film, "The Vow," posted on Facebook in advance of its opening last weekend. It worked: The romantic tear-jerker blew past expectations to open at No. 1 with $41.2 million in North American ticket sales.

Combining Hollywood's two biggest independent film studios and the blockbuster young adult franchises "Twilight" and "The Hunger Games" into one powerful entity, Lions Gate Entertainment has agreed to acquire Summit Entertainment for $412.5 million in cash and stock. The two Santa Monica companies have engaged in on-and-off merger talks since late 2008 as Lions Gate sought to bolster its library of film and TV properties and Summit's investors tried to cash in on the lightning-in-a-bottle success of the "Twilight" movie series, which has grossed $2.5 billion worldwide over four films.

Billionaire Ron Burkle has added movie production and concert promotion to the arenas he wants to play in. The man who made his fortune bagging supermarket chains and selling them off for billions went into the live music business Thursday by purchasing Artist Group International, a New York agency that books concerts for Billy Joel, Metallica and others. He concurrently invested in the movie business by taking a stake in independent movie studio Relativity Media. Y Entertainment group, a newly formed subsidiary of Burkle's investment firm Yucaipa Cos., made the two deals separately for undisclosed sums of money.

Moguls, yes. Dictators, not so much. Which is the short way of saying that David Welky's long and dutiful study of Hollywood's relationship with the larger political world in the years prior to World War II is a lot less melodramatic than its title implies. That's because Welky has the academic's tendency to get lost in the archives, stressing material only a professor can love. That's too bad, because there is a powerful story buried in this mound of material.

In an attempt to duplicate the success of its Florida studio tour, Walt Disney Co. will open a French entertainment production facility and tour next to Euro Disneyland in 1996, the Burbank company announced Thursday. Disney MGM Studios-Europe will, like the Disney MGM Studios Theme Park that opened in May at Florida's Walt Disney World, be a combination working studio and theme park. Located 18 miles east of Paris, the $2.5-billion, 4,800-acre Euro Disneyland is scheduled to open in 1992.

In many quarters, Hollywood has long been regarded as an essentially godless place. But judging by the offerings at the movies this season, and more in the works, Tinseltown is rediscovering religion. In the span of just a few weeks starting in late August, audiences looking for God at their local multiplex have had their choice of titles, including "Higher Ground," a chronicle of one woman's struggle with her faith; "Seven Days in Utopia," an inspirational golf drama; and "Machine Gun Preacher," about an evangelist who takes up arms in Africa.

Across Hollywood, a quiet revolution is brewing that's about to transform living rooms around the world. After desperate attempts to prop up the industry's once-thriving DVD business, studio executives now believe the only hope of turning around a 40% decline in home entertainment revenue lies in rapidly accelerating the delivery of movies over the Internet. In the next few years, the growing number of consumers with Internet-connected televisions, tablets and smartphones will face a dizzying array of options designed to make digital movie consumption a lot more convenient and to entice users to spend more money.