Morning Report - News from Aug. 29, 2002

MOVIES

Ex-Con/Writer Claims Credit for ‘Sonny’ Script

“Sonny,” Nicolas Cage’s directorial debut, is hitting rough waters even before its first public screening at the Deauville Film Festival Friday.

A spokesman for Cage on Wednesday denied allegations that the film failed to recognize one of the authors of the screenplay.

According to a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles federal court, veteran TV writer Robert Dellinger (“Starsky and Hutch,” “Kojak”) claims to have written substantial parts of the script while he and John Carlen--the credited writer--were incarcerated in federal prison on Terminal Island in the 1970s.

Charging copyright infringement and failure to identify him as co-author, Dellinger, 72, is asking damages of more than $2 million and wants to block all overseas sales. Named in the suit: Cage; his production company, Saturn Films; and a handful of other companies associated with the movie.

“Cage’s production company, Saturn Films, has engaged in no wrongful conduct and they expect to be vindicated in court,” said his publicist, Annette Wolf.

The film, about a male prostitute who wants to mend his ways, stars James Franco, Brenda Blethyn and Mena Suvari. No release date has been set.

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TELEVISION

‘Anna Nicole’ Keeps Losing Ratings Weight

E!’s “The Anna Nicole Show” may have made a big splash with its premiere, but the series about plus-size model Anna Nicole Smith continues to lose viewers precipitously, based on the latest Nielsen figures.

Viewing of the most recent episode Sunday averaged 1.86 million viewers, a drop of 55% from the more than 4.1 million who tuned in for the show’s premiere four weeks ago.

On the plus side: The series is still outperforming E!’s average rating in its time slot by a better than a 3-to-1 margin.

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THE ARTS

Internet Scam Stealing From Opera Fans

An international scam has been uncovered in which 23 Internet sites were passing themselves off as opera houses in Europe and Australia. Customers who think they’re buying tickets via credit cards are actually channeling money into the pockets of thieves.

The operators replicate official Web sites in almost every detail--including theater layouts and restaurants--and use addresses that are close to the original. A fake site might appear as www.sydneyopera.org, for example, as opposed to the genuine www.sydneyopera house.com.

The Sydney Morning News reports that the ruse was exposed when a would-be customer of the Sydney Opera House complained to the police. When there was no record of his ticket transaction at the box office, he was told that he’d reached a “dud site”--a “common complaint,” according to the chief of the police department’s computer crime unit.

His division contacted the FBI, which embarked on its own investigation. No arrests have been made.

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QUICK TAKES

Director Mira Nair (“Monsoon Wedding”) is teaming up with Oscar-winning screenwriter Julian Fellowes (“Gosford Park”) on a remake of Thackeray’s “Vanity Fair,” a satire about Victorian society and England’s foreign ventures during the Napoleonic Wars, for Universal’s Focus Pictures.... Tom Cruise, Billy Connolly and Tony Goldwyn will play Army officers in Ed Zwick’s “The Last Samurai,” set in Japan during the 1870s.